Choosing Their Time

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Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski, a backer of his state's pioneering law, does not want to be one of those pols. "Oregon should be a model for every state," he says. "We live longer through medical technology. But there is more to life than breathing." A Roman Catholic, Kulongoski is knowingly taking a position in defiance of his church, which opposes his state's law. The church, in turn, is joining hands with disability-rights activists, who see assisted suicide as a first step to euthanasia. Even many doctors, who understand better than most what a horror a slow death can be, have trouble with the idea of speeding up the process. The American Medical Association remains opposed to any aid-in-dying laws, and the group speaks for a lot of its members. "When a doctor writes a prescription for lethal drugs," says Portland, Ore., radiologist Kenneth Stevens, "the message to the patient is, 'I don't value you or your life.'"

Patients such as Steve Mason don't view it that way. A retired Army captain who served in Vietnam and has published three books of poetry, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer last April. Eventually, his longtime internist agreed to write his Nembutal prescription, but only after Mason cleared all the law's hurdles: submitting oral and written requests in the presence of two witnesses, waiting a mandatory 15 days and getting the concurrence of a second doctor that he had less than six months to live. "This isn't suicide," Mason insists. "Suicide means a needless taking of life. When five doctors tell you nothing can be done, you are merely insuring that your life ends at the proper time. I don't want my daughters to see me wither away to 80 lbs. and have some night nurse shave my beard to get some tubing into my mouth."

What's perhaps most remarkable about the Oregon law, despite its opponents' fears, is how few people have used it. In seven years, according to the Oregon Department of Human Services, 208 people took legal, lethal overdose prescriptions--out of 64,706 Oregonians who died of the same diseases. Last year 40 doctors wrote 60 lethal prescriptions, but only 37 were used. For many patients, the drugs are a form of insurance. They can take the medicine if the pain gets too bad or if they deteriorate to the point that they feel ready to go, but otherwise not.

Dick Farris, a Portland photographer, saw his father and brother felled by incurable pancreatic cancer. When he came down with the same condition, "he asked his friends for a gun," says his widow Gloria. "He could smell the decay inside himself." But after getting the prescription from his family doctor, she recalls, "he was able to relax, knowing he had control over his death." He chose to die on a Sunday morning, surrounded by his wife's three daughters and 9-year-old granddaughter. Says Gloria: "He told us, 'If I had any more love in this room, I'd have to keep it in Fort Knox.' Then he drank the Nembutal, and in five minutes, he was gone."