Re: April 8 Diane Carman column.
I read Diane Carman’s column about her aunt, who said she was “assembling the ingredients for a final cocktail should she ever need it.” I advocated for years while a practicing physician for the right of individuals to make a positive, affirmative choice to end their lives electively. Now in retirement, I have seen no reason to change that view and I find it very difficult to acknowledge any so-called moral grounds for opposing that right.
For anyone to claim a higher ground that allows them to dictate to any other person the right to make such a decision is the very height of arrogance and hubris. Jack Kevorkian went about it the wrong way, and I can understand the opposition to his methods by physicians and others of the public. However, the current policy adopted by the majority of Coloradans is both sensible and sound in that it allows us to choose a quiet, private and dignified death over that of forced pain and suffering from an illness that is going to kill us in any case. I vote for the individual and that right of choice.
Allen Beck, M.D., Montrose
I would like to thank Diane Carman for her clever piece about her Aunt Margaret and Colorado’s aid-in-dying law. She humanized a law that is repulsive to many people by revealing the life-ending wishes of a wonderful woman, her late Aunt Margaret. Her aunt was simply going to end her life rather than suffer a terminal illness. Thankfully, she did not have to do this.
Until Proposition 106 was enacted into law last year, my life-ending plans involved one 75-cent bullet and a high-powered weapon. Thankfully, I will never have to do this. Proposition 106 allows a simple, direct decision that is a lot less messy than a bullet from a high-powered weapon.
Roy Legg, Highlands Ranch
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