An oft-cited rationale for imposing a waiting period on gun purchases is it will curb their use in suicides. The thinking goes that despair and desperation will give way to hope with the dawn of a new day.
How ironic a bill now in the Legislature to expand Colorado’s physician-assisted suicide law would do the opposite — shortening the waiting period for ending one’s life with the help of a medical professional. It’s as if the bill’s backers don’t really want an ailing patient to give it too much thought.
And reducing the wait time from 15 days to 48 hours isn’t all Senate Bill 24-068 would do. It extends the ability to prescribe the necessary lethal drugs beyond MDs to advanced practice registered nurses. What is literally a life-or-death judgment no longer would be restricted to a doctor’s discernment.
Most alarming, the pending legislation eliminates the requirement that only Colorado residents may invoke the law. That opens it up to visitors from the rest of the country. Of the nine other states that permit medically assisted suicide, only one other has lifted its residency restrictions.
It’s a safe bet Colorado would become a de facto destination for death tourism. Which would make a tragic and, at best, wholly unnecessary policy even more reprehensible.
The Gazette editorial board has opposed the deadly law from the beginning, when it was adopted by state voters in 2016.
It undermines a core precept for medical professionals since ancient times — to do no harm — and instead encourages them to do just that.
It also leaves patient and doctor alike in a precarious position. Docs aren’t deities. Neither are nurses. As any will tell you, they are far from confident they can determine in every case precisely when someone will die from an ailment.
Yet, the law purports to restrict participation to those who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness and have been given six months to live — a squishy standard if ever there was one.
Undoubtedly a lot of doctors don’t participate, and not just for fundamental moral reasons. Plenty of practitioners likely don’t wish to sign off with certainty on something only the Almighty can know for sure.
Meanwhile, the policy shoves society down a slippery slope. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Joann Ginal, D-Fort Collins, and Rep. Kyle Brown, D-Louisville, could turn out to be merely the first such embellishment. How about adding nonterminal but chronic, debilitating diseases?
Or changing the law’s competency standard to allow those with severe mental illness to end it all? What about those born with physical or developmental defects?
Too repugnant to contemplate? Exactly. Yet, Coloradans would be wise to ponder the possibility that lawmakers might propose those and other add-ons in years to come. All in the name of being humane, of course.
In the final analysis, Colorado’s law cheapens life by normalizing suicide. The proposed legislation only would add insult to the injury. Suicide isn’t a health care option; it is a tragedy.
And it isn’t needed. As any provider involved in hospice care can tell you, the physical pain associated with advanced stages of most terminal illnesses has been mitigated significantly by modern medicine. Today’s palliative care often enough ensures pain-free final days.
Decline and death are natural parts of life’s cycle. A key component is loved ones who give comfort to the dying; who remind them of the great value of their lives; who mourn their loss.
Which leaves one to wonder if Colorado’s assisted-suicide law isn’t so much about easing the suffering of the afflicted — as it is about giving their survivors an easy out.
