More than 100 testify as aid-in-dying bill debated in Connecticut for 15th time

With only months left to live, Moregan Zale mixed a cocktail of drugs and alcohol in an attempt to end her six-year battle with ovarian cancer.

Zale’s widow, PJ Schimmel, described the October 2016 episode as “one of the saddest nights” of her life. When Zale woke up the next morning, Schimmel begged her “not to try any other methods that might leave her brain damaged but not dead.” Months later, in the spring of 2017, Zale decided to hasten her already painful death by refusing to eat or drink.

It took 23 days.

“She chose this course because she thought it was the only way left for her,” Schimmel said. “Seeing someone shrivel up and die of thirst is inhumane, but it was her wish, and I respected her decision, though it tortured me. … I told everyone I met at the hospice as she was dying that I would be there to testify when a right-to-die law came up in Connecticut. Moregan wanted that law badly.”

Schimmel’s testimony was one of hundreds received by the Public Health Committee Monday at a hearing on the General Assembly’s aid-in-dying bill that continues to divide doctors, patients, caretakers, lawmakers and faith leaders on the moral merits of allowing doctors to prescribe terminally ill patients medication to expedite death.

In an emotional debate before the committee, supporters of the bill emphasized the importance of letting patients have the choice to end their lives peacefully without suffering, as opponents stressed their belief that the legislation would cast Connecticut down a “slippery slope.”

Nowhere was the separation between the camps seen more clearly than in their language, with proponents preferring the term “medical aid-in-dying” over the opposing “assisted suicide.”

S.B. 1076, “An Act Concerning Aid In Dying For Terminally Ill Patients,” marks the 15th time such a proposal has been introduced in the General Assembly since 1995. Last session, an aid-in-dying bill died in the Senate Judiciary Committee after passing a Public Health vote.

Sen. Saud Anwar, co-chair of the Public Health Committee said that the safeguards included in this year’s proposal would make Connecticut’s aid-in-dying legislation “the safest in the country.”

Among other provisions, S.B. 1076 restricts access to aid-in-dying services to terminally ill Connecticut residents who have lived in the state for at least one year and are age 21 or older. It also requires confirmation from two physicians that the patient has six months or less to live, a mandatory mental health evaluation, and two written requests made at least 15 days apart that are signed in the presence of two witnesses.

“I imagine that both sides of the debate will be unhappy today,” Anwar said. “Some will say that these guardrails have become barriers and others will say that the law does not go far enough to protect the vulnerable … this is the time for all of the conversations.”

At a press conference opposing the bill Dr. Diane Meier, a specialist in geriatrics and palliative medicine at Mount Sinai called the safeguards “unrealistic and demonstrably ineffective,” as she spoke of faulty prognosis, family coercion and monetary stress.

“I can imagine that I might like to have the option of medical aid-in-dying at some point in my future. However, my personal preference does not outweigh the very real risks of public policy normalizing state-sanctioned suicide. Such a change in policy puts tens of thousands of my fellow citizens, particularly the poor, the disabled, the chronically ill – the highest need and highest cost people among us – at risk of being encouraged to die because our society will not pay for what people need in order to live,” Meier said.

Cathy Ludlum and members of the disability-rights organization Second Thoughts Connecticut, said that they fear the passage of aid-in-dying legislation would open up the door for broader application and the eventual loss of safeguards.

“It is clear to those of us who already have to fight for medical care that offering poison as a treatment option will have far-reaching consequences,” Ludlum said. “Many of us have survived medical crises in spite of being written off as close to death or assumed to have a poor quality of life. We have also seen this happen to people we care about. Although the drafters of assisted suicide legislation work to include safeguards, no safeguard can prevent receiving the wrong diagnosis or a wrong estimate of life expectancy, or not getting needed treatments.”

At the hearing, supporters of the bill argued that those in opposition to aid-in-dying make up the minority of Connecticut residents. Tim Appleton, the senior campaign director of the Compassion and Choices Action Network, cited a survey by the organization in which 75% of Connecticut voters supported the option of aid-in-dying care.

He said that an aid-in-dying option is important even though only 6,300 people in the U.S. have chosen to end their lives through this method since it was first legalized in Oregon in 1994.

“For some people, even the best pain and symptom management from a world-class palliative and hospice care team cannot alleviate all suffering,” Appleton said. “There’s certainly not been evidence of any slippery slope in 25 years. … This legislation, if enacted, when enacted is the toughest in the nation. And it’s really difficult to surmise and be hypothetical about what could happen.”

During his testimony, Appleton also took issue with opponents who criticized the legislation for not calling the manner of death “suicide.”

“Suicide has a very loaded and specific meaning that’s full of stigma and tragedy. Suicide is the act of a mentally unwell person who would otherwise live because they’re physically healthy. Aid-in-dying is a measured act of a terminally ill person, many times, only days or weeks from death,” Appleton said. “To stigmatize that person, that loved one’s death as somehow an assisted suicide or a suicide, that is traumatic for them and causes harm.”

As Lynda Shannon Bluestein nears the end of her battle with late-stage fallopian tube cancer, she said that she hopes Connecticut will pass the aid-in-dying bill.

“It’s not as if my death is optional. Yours either. It’s also not as if I would choose to seek out medical aid in-dying did I not have a terminal diagnosis,” Bluestein said in written testimony to the committee. “I want to see Connecticut finally get this bill passed, this year, in time for me. I want to be able to look forward to an end of life where I will be able to remain in my home, surrounded by my husband, my children, and grandchildren as well as my neighbors, friends, caregivers, and members of my faith community. When I, like so many before me, have just wanted ‘to wake up dead,’ I want it to be at home and at peace.”

Alison Cross can be reached at across@courant.com.