Julie Selsberg catches her breath as she talks of the death of her father, Charlie Selsberg, 77, to sponsors and supporters of a bill to give terminally ill Coloradans the legal right to end their own lives. (Photo by Joe Amon/The Denver Post )
Call it death with dignity or physician-assisted suicide, but the debate over legislation that would give terminally ill Coloradans end-of-life choices isn’t about to lose stream or heat.
A poll this week indicated Colorado voters, as a group, have their minds made up in favor of allowing dying people to choose how, when and where they draw their dying breath.
A Talmey-Drake January Omnipoll on how likely voters feel about the issue came out a day after Reps. Lois Court, D-Denver, and Joann Ginal, D-Fort Collins, with Sen. Lucia Guzman, D-Denver. The pollsters asked:
In the 2015 session of the Colorado legislature, legislation may be introduced to give those who are terminally ill a reliable and peaceful way to end their lives if and when they want to. Before being allowed to self-administer lethal medications prescribed by a doctor, a patient first must be diagnosed by a doctor as being terminally ill with less than six months to live, and the patient must make both an oral and written request for the life ending medication, signed in front of disinterested witnesses. If such legislation were introduced in the state legislature and your representative or senator asked you how he or she should vote on it, would you tell them to vote in favor or against this legislation?
Vote for ……………………………………….. 68%
Vote against…………………………………….. 28%
Undecided/DK/NS…………………………………. 4%
Charlie Selsberg of Lakewood, 77, died last year, choosing to starve rather than prolong his suffering from ALS. His op-end letter to The Denver Post inspired “death with dignity” legislation in the Colorado General Assembly. (Photo courtesy of the Selsberg family.)
Bob Drake, a veteran Democratic pollster from Boulder, said the poll wasn’t commissioned by anyone. He added the question to a broader poll he conducted from 500 Colorado voters across the state in December.
Sunday, the conservative Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University released a policy brief and legal analysis by Michael Norton, Natalie Decker and Catherine Foster,
“Indeed, in recent years, physician-assisted suicide has been repackaged and promoted to the American public as ‘Death with Dignity,'” wrote the three lawyers affiliated with the , the Arizona-based conservative nonprofit that ThinkProgress called
“However, physician-assisted suicide is anything but dignified and amounts to eugenics for the infirm, but with the government’s stamp of approval.”
The paper explains eight reasons the lawyers think make death with dignity/physician-assisted suicide a bad choice, including doctors’ integrity to protect and preserve life and the chance an inaccurate prognoses might lead someone to make the wrong decision.
Another of their eight reasons is that “The suggestion that suicide is the ‘dignified’ way to die is offensive to the many Americans who die naturally and with dignity each year, and to their caregivers.”
John Andrews, director of Centennial Institute, a former Colorado Senate president and a leading conservative, took a sharp tone regarding Ginal, a Democrat.
“Amazingly, Rep. Joann Ginal told the media this is not a suicide bill,” he said in a statement Sunday. “You learn in the legislature that when a sponsor uses that kind of double-talk, it’s a red flag.
“Our think tank doesn’t lobby, but we believe that Coloradans deserve straight talk on matters of life and death. The policy brief provides that.”
What Ginal said was, “These people are not suicidal. Their disease is going to kill them. They want to choose the what, the where, the when and particularly the with whom, so that they have comfort when their journey ends.”
Court took the lead on the issue last year after one of her constituents, Charlie Salzberger, explaining his choice to stop eating so he could die on his own terms rather than wait for ALS to kill him.
“I stopped taking any nutrition a week ago,” he said. “It was the only choice I saw to end my life, the only thing I can control. The literature I read said it wouldn’t be hard, and it isn’t — it’s brutal. My loved ones support me, but this is as difficult on them to watch as it is for me to execute.”
