Posted on: Wednesday, March 13, 2002

VOLCANIC ASH
Assisted suicide: no easy vote

By David Shapiro

State Sen. Fred Hemmings, always a thoughtful guy, had been reading "The Federalist Papers" a few weeks back and wanted to talk about political right and wrong.

"Is it my duty to vote my conscience, or is it my duty to vote to represent public opinion?" he mused.

Lawmakers are grappling with exactly that question on the touchy issue of physician-assisted suicide and coming up with a lot of different answers — none of them necessarily wrong.

The bill supported by Gov. Ben Cayetano and passed by the House 30-20 last week would allow a terminally ill patient to seek a lethal dose of medication from a doctor. Sen. David Matsuura refuses to schedule a hearing on the measure before his Health Committee.

Lawmakers break into four groups on this issue:

• Those who fully support physician-assisted suicide as a basic right.

"Each individual should have the ability to make the decision for themselves how to handle end-of-life decisions," argues House Judiciary Chairman Eric Hamakawa.

• Those who oppose it as morally wrong, often as a tenet of their religion.

Says Rep. Lei Ahu Isa, "My philosophy is not one of cruelty, but of respecting a greater power than ourselves."

• Those who have personal moral objections, but won't impose their own religious beliefs on others.

Rep. Joseph Souki, a Roman Catholic, says, "I don't believe it is my right to tell the people of the state of Hawai'i that you cannot use your free will to decide whether you would want to end your life when the moment comes."

• Those who see the devil in the details, worrying that some terminally ill patients choose suicide only to end the burden of weary caretakers.

"This right to die becomes a duty to die," says Rep. William Stonebraker.

All are positions of genuine conscience and deserve respect as we resolve this sensitive and complex issue.

Matsuura is under fire for calling the House bill "dumb" before he read it and refusing to call a hearing because of his religious beliefs against suicide.

He's wrong to not give the other side a fair chance to make its case and change his mind. But in the end, it goes back to the question raised by Hemmings: Is Matsuura obligated to abandon his own conscience for the beliefs of others?

He was elected on his beliefs, and voters in his district can bring him home if they're no longer comfortable with his beliefs. Other senators can pull the bill from his committee if they wish to pass it. Why not leave the man his conscience?

Most of us would want the choice to end our lives in dignity if disabling terminal illness and unbearable pain left us without further hope of quality existence. Unfortunately, it's not that simple when writing law.

How do we define these terms? How can we be certain that treatable conditions such as depression, loneliness, guilt and poor care aren't behind the suicide? We're not quite there yet in answering these questions.

Oregon is the only state that now has an assisted-suicide law, and it's beset with problems. It makes sense for Hawai'i to take as much time as we need to get this right.

In his State of the State address, Cayetano addressed the Hemmings question when he admonished lawmakers, "Do your job to make Hawai'i better — even if it means you may lose your job. You owe it to the people and, most of all, you owe it to yourselves."

On this issue, there's no one answer on how that applies.

David Shapiro can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net