Somehow I managed to group my mail ballot with a graphic novel created in part by the young son of an old friend.
For a few days the items sat together on my desk. The odd pile reminded me that while I have been dreading the ballot, I have the delightful prospect of reading the illustrated story filled with wild plot twists, spaceships and laser-gun duels.
You’d think that by this point I would have little trouble filling out the ballot. Our editorial board met with both sides of the ballot measures, researched, debated and then crafted and published our positions.
But I’ve been dreading the ballot for one reason: How to vote on Colorado’s Proposition 106, the aid-in-dying measure?
Our board struggled with the question, too. In meetings on both sides of the debate there were tears. Everyone, it seems, has a personal story connecting them to the issue.
As I’ve considered my vote, I’ve let my mind turn to the graphic novel. Enjoying the work of a young mind just getting started in life reminds me almost painfully of what it is people mean when they say they wish to hang on to every last second of life that they can.
And I foolishly went into the debate thinking it would be simple. I’d argue for individual freedom and have done with it.
Our editorial Proposition 106. This column is not meant to challenge or double down on that decision. Rather, I wish to bring into more focus what I see as three important points that are key to the debate.
The first is the suicide question. Many aid-in-dying supporters argue it is wrong to call the act of taking drugs to end a life in one’s last months of terminal illness an act of suicide. This is a tricky one.
What I’ve come up with is the rather straightforward logic that a patientap ending his life in these situations wouldn’t be suicide if Proposition 106 became the law. The language of the proposition removes suicide from the legal interpretation.
The more I ponder the question, the more I see the value of the distinction. Adhering to the social contract means abiding by the rule of law. Certainly, that allows for legal challenge, and Prop 106’s crafters were wise to keep the measure accountable to lawmakers for this reason. But the truth is that the law would make it possible to both discourage suicide among healthy individuals while accepting the passage of its ultimate users.
The second point is that those opponents who base their decision-making on religious faith ought to be more up-front about the fact there is no way that Proposition 106 could have been written that they would have supported.
Viewing the issue from a religious perspective is valid, of course. But our laws contradict plenty of religious beliefs. Thatap one of the beauties of our legal system. Freedom-lovers who enjoy a Martini at the end of the day, or a little cannabis, certainly can’t look to the Ten Commandments for cover. Much less so if they want to marry within their gender or allow a woman control over her body.
Finally, opponents argue that a patient in a Proposition 106 world could feel pressured to make things easier for their family members and end their lives before they were truly prepared to do so. I believe that is true.
But what about patients who don’t want to force their family members or emergency personnel — or any other human being — to find them dead as a result of violence by their own hand? Without the law, they will feel pressured to grind through the pain until death comes for them.
I would hate to live a life where I couldn’t enjoy a young boy’s first graphic novel, but I also would hate a system that pressured those who wish to fight to the end to instead give up. The question of individual liberty cuts both ways here.
Thatap what you have to decide with Proposition 106. What, ultimately, does individual liberty mean to you?
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