West Virginia’s Amendment 1 in an affront to dying with dignity

West Virginia's Amendment 1, if passed, would ban medically-assisted suicide — which is already illegal in the state. (Getty Images)

I was once told by a funeral director that death is the great equalizer. While there’s some truth to that, there is often great inequality in how one dies. Some slip quietly away in their sleep, while others are taken by brutal force. Both of my parents experienced the latter: My mother died from cirrhosis of the liver when I was 18 and she was just 46. My father died after a grueling bout with head and neck cancer when I was 28 and he was 63.

Eleven years after the first tumor was removed, we were told that the cancer had invaded his lymph system: My father was terminal and looked to me for his end-of-life care. The most grueling and haunting part of his care was dressing and cleaning the enormous wound from the cancer eating into his neck.

To my father, maintaining dignity while this disease ate away at him was important. He didn’t allow anyone to see the debilitating wound he’d developed except for me and a wound care specialist.

This happened to him in 1994 when Dr. Jack Kevorkian was in the news for physician-assisted suicide. Despite being an extremely controversial topic at that time, the practice is now legal in 10 states and the District of Columbia. Even my father who was raised a strict Catholic, (the church considers suicide a mortal sin) towards the end of his life told me, “Now I understand why people need Dr. Kevorkian.” I believe wholeheartedly that, were that option available to him he would have taken it — to end his own suffering and to spare that of his children.

Watching my dignified and powerful father slowly being eaten alive will haunt me for the rest of my life. I tried very hard to help him die with the dignity with which he lived, but he — and all who are similarly suffering — should be able to choose their own path. If they want to avoid minimizing their suffering and that of their loved ones, they should be able to do so on their own terms.

But to be clear, that’s not what Amendment 1 does. Medically-assisted suicide is already illegal in the state of West Virginia. Amendment 1 goes a step further to insult people like my father and his family. If passed, the ballot measure would put our state’s prohibition on medically assisted suicide into our constitution.

Why on earth would we need to take this extra step? The answer lies in the fact that this current legislature is more concerned in taking health care options away from West Virginians than it is in figuring out how to stop the horrific health outcomes for our residents.

Even worse, the language in this ballot measure paves the way for the state to bring back the death penalty by clarifying, “The amendment also does not prevent the state from providing capital punishment.” While capital punishment is already illegal in the state of West Virginia, several prominent lawmakers have campaigned on making us the first state in our nation’s history to bring back the death penalty.

In other words, you can’t decide how and when you die, but the government can.

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