Letter: It’s all about choice for terminally ill patients

Yes, physicians need not help patients die, as the headline states in the commentary by Pastors Klayton Ko and Bill Stonebraker, and Bishop Larry Silva (Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, June 2).

But, with Hawaii’s Our Care, Our Choice Act, our physicians now have the choice to prescribe lethal medications to end a terminally ill patient’s life.

As they rightly state, if a physician does not want to participate, he or she can opt out. For terminally ill patients who want to make their own decision about when death happens, they now have a legal means to do so.

For those gravely ill patients who do not want to use physician-assistant suicide, there are other choices, as the authors stated: hospice, palliative care, etc.

The operative word here is choice. The authors suggest that physicians should “cherish life.”

Of course. But when a patient doesn’t cherish his or her life anymore, to the point that their choice is to end it, we should honor that choice. Honoring that choice is dignified and respectful.

Anne Wheelock

Nuuanu

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