At last, the end appears near for medical-aid-in-dying debate

Hawaii advocates for “death with dignity” legislation to allow the hopelessly ill the choice to end their suffering on their own terms have felt for 20 years like Charlie Brown and his football — so close, but always snatched away.

Measures permitting terminal patients to ask their doctors for lethal prescriptions have twice passed one house of the Legislature, only to die in the other.

This year is looking like it might be the charm after the House passed a medical- aid-in-dying bill, 39-12, and sent it to the Senate, which last year approved similar legislation, 22-3.

The bill cleared its first Senate hearing Friday before the Commerce, Consumer Protection and Health Committee, passing unanimously and without amendment, leaving a Judiciary Committee hearing before a possible final vote.

After coming so far, hopefully a bill with such strong legislative and community support is beyond being derailed by egos, political rivalries and relatively small policy differences between the houses.

This legislation has been diligently vetted by Hawaii lawmakers over many years and is now law in five other states without adverse consequences.

The latest bill is based on Oregon’s 20-year-old Death with Dignity Act, a similar law enacted in California in 2016, and safeguards added by local legislators.

To obtain a lethal prescription, a patient would need certification from two physicians that he or she has less than six months to live, is mentally able to make an informed decision, is not being coerced by others and has been counseled on comfort options.

Patients must make a written request with two witnesses and also two verbal requests 20 days apart. Counseling from a psychiatrist, psychologist or clinical social worker is mandated — a safeguard that goes beyond other states — and patients must ingest the medication without a doctor’s help.

Death should never be taken lightly and it makes good sense to start conservatively with safeguards; the law can be refined in future years, as happened with medical marijuana.

There’s no avenue for further appeasing religious opponents, who have made clear that no safeguards will satisfy them.

They have a right to live their own lives according to their beliefs, but not to force their beliefs on the majority who don’t share them.

Life is precious, but it ends; it is basic compassion to allow sound-minded adults to end it on their own terms when intolerable pain and lost bodily function make a life of any quality impossible.

In the House debate, Rep. John Mizuno, who chairs the Health and Human Services Committee, described it as “the defining civil rights struggle of our time.”

With such lofty words, 61 of the 76 legislators on record in favor of medical aid in dying and Gov. David Ige on board, it’s time to get it done.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.