Backers of a proposal to allow terminally ill Californians to hasten their deaths with lethal drugs pointed Thursday to legalized assisted suicide in Oregon, where a new report shows it is used sparingly.
Forty-six Oregon residents, most of them cancer patients, used the law to end their lives in 2006, according to the Oregon Department of Human Services’ ninth annual report on the “Death with Dignity Act” that voters there passed in 1994.
That law is unique in the United States. Two Democratic lawmakers in California are making their third attempt in three years to enact a similar law.
Since the Oregon law took effect in 1998, 292 of the roughly 86,000 likely eligible residents have used the lethal prescription to end their lives. To be eligible, people must be Oregon residents, have a prognosis of less than six months to live and be deemed mentally capable of making medical decisions.
“I think the experience in Oregon should reassure Californians that end-of-life choice greatly benefits patients and their families,” said Keith Graham, a doctor in rural eastern Oregon who helped one patient use the prescription last year.
His patient, an 80-year-old with cancer, wanted to die at home rather than in a nursing home, he said.
“She was able to choose the time and place,” Graham said. “She died in the bedroom that she and her husband had shared in the house they had built, surrounded by her five children and many, many grandchildren. The house was just full. It was a very smooth transition. It was very peaceful. The family was very grateful.”
As in previous years, the latest report from Oregon shows that those who choose to hasten their deaths are as likely to be men as women, tend to be better educated than the rest of the population and list their top concerns as loss of autonomy, decreasing ability to engage in activities that make life enjoyable and loss of dignity.
The median age of those who used the lethal drugs in 2006 was 74, and 87 percent had cancer. Nearly all died at home, and all but one patient had health insurance. Most became unconscious within several minutes of taking the drugs, typically barbiturates.
It takes several weeks and multiple requests to obtain a prescription. Not everyone who seeks one uses it.
“I … am not even sure I will use the medication,” said Glenn Elfman, a Southern California native who lives in Pistol River, Ore. He is dying of prostate cancer and has obtained a prescription.
“All I know is that … it has been an enormous comfort knowing that I could spare my family and myself the indignity of an end I would not want,” he said.
