SUN CITY – Do terminally ill patients have the right to decide when and how they will end their lives?
This intensely personal, highly emotional, and often controversial question was brought front and center before a small group in Sun City and other residents on May 14 at Fountain View Center.
Nineteen people attended an informal, informational meeting arranged by Sun City resident Kurt Geier, who wants to form a group to discuss this complex issue and educate the community on end-of-life matters. Geier said he invited a representative from Compassion and Choices, a national end-of-life advocacy and educational organization, to lead a presentation at the meeting. But that didn’t happen, because Geier said CAM officials told him it would have violated “outside group” guidelines.
While Compassion and Choices does advocate for “aid-in-dying,” “It operates within the law of all states in which it functions,” Geier said.
A Compassion and Choices representative told the Sun Day on May 9 that it gives advice only within the boundaries of what is legal. On its website, Compassion and Choices says: “Professional counselors and trained volunteers work by phone or in person to offer assistance in completing advance directives and living wills, referrals to local services, including hospice and illness-specific support groups, advice on adequate pain and symptom management, and information on safe, effective methods of aid in dying as an option of last resort.”
Geier himself stated his beliefs and then invited the group to ask questions and comment. The dialog lasted an hour.
“I want to start the group within the rules of the Sun City association,” Geier said. “They were established and agreed to by all of us.”
There currently are three states that have legalized a patient’s opportunity to choose when and how to end life. They are Washington, Oregon, and Montana. In Washington and Oregon, the issue was widely debated and then decided in public referenda.
In Oregon, one attendee said a person must be a resident of the state for one year before end-of-life actions can be taken. In Montana, the state’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of not punishing doctors for aiding a death process.
On May 13, the Vermont legislature approved a bill aimed at legalizing the practice, and it has been sent to the governor for his signature.
“Recent surveys and polls reveal that half of our nation’s seniors want the option of developing a dying plan,” Geier said. “Also, one in 10 persons has indicated they would seriously consider getting help with dying if they were allowed to do so.
“This is an intensely personal issue in which most persons are very interested,” Geier added. “If you’re here to hear people from Colorado teach you how to kill yourself, that’s somewhere else; it’s not here. This is simply a meeting about end-of-life issues.
“In Sun City, I envision the possibility of a group of like-minded people meeting together on one of life’s most important issues,” he said. “We would decide collectively what we would do and what our activities would be.”
Geier, who cared for his sister through the end of her life and currently is a caregiver to a friend, said he has come to feel passionately about the matter.
“I think there are certain circumstances when I should have the option of choosing how and when to end my life,” Geier said. “It’s nobody else’s business unless I choose to make it so. I should be accorded the option of ending my life when my death appears to be inevitable, painful, emotionally exhausting, or, dare I say it, expensive.”
“I like the idea of a group, and I like the idea of it being an open-minded and free discussion, and that we would not be judgmental,” one attendee said.
“I hope it would help teach people about the importance of planning ahead in case of serious illness or end-of-life,” another said. “I watched my husband die of ALS. He refused to face the fact of death, and as a family we couldn’t bring anything to resolution about how things were to take place until two days before he died.”
One attendee asked Geier how he would justify his beliefs in light of the biblical standard of “Thou shall not kill.”
“I respect people’s relationship with God enormously,” Geier responded. “I have prayed about this with my God, and I feel He has given me free will to make choices. I feel comfortable with that. I have an obligation to share my beliefs with others.”
Another attendee, who said she was a registered nurse, repeated the idea that families should prepare directives, such as power of attorney, a living will, and treatments, so that medical personnel will know what to do in an end-of-life situation.
“We too often have a problem with death, and we don’t deal with it properly,” she said.
While the dialog was civil and most attendees appeared to be on the same page with Geier, he said controversy arose before the meeting. After the Sun Day article appeared on May 9, Geier said he received several phone calls.
“Some were supportive of my ideas, but some were not,” he said. “One caller threatened to call the police and mount a demonstration in Prairie Lodge at the meeting.”
No such activities took place.
Geier collected the names and email addresses of all the attendees, asked those who didn’t want to participate to cross their names off, and said he planned to set up a meeting with most of the attendees as soon as possible.
