Nov 22, 2014 4 min read

The issue of assisted suicide was back at the forefront of the news recently with the story of Brittany Maynard, an Oregon woman who ended her life at the age of 29 rather than continue to suffer the ravages of terminal brain cancer.

Maynard was able to die on her own terms – and with the help of the medical community – because of her state’s Death with Dignity Act, which allows doctors to provide terminally ill adults in Oregon with the drugs they need to end their lives at the time and place of their choosing.

Pennsylvania, which on a variety of fronts has proven to be reluctant to enter the 21st century, doesn’t have this sort of law, but state Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery, and state Rep. Mark Rozzi, D-Berks, have been working to change that.

Thus far, their legislation hasn’t gained traction in Harrisburg, but they intend to push anew next year.

According to a recent story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the lawmakers’ bills would require people seeking assistance to end their lives to get the certification of two doctors who will confirm that their patients in all likelihood have less than six months to live.

“This is someone who is dying,” Leach told the newspaper. “Do they want to die in their home with their family, or do they want to die connected to tubes, at 3 o’clock in the morning, alone in a hospital?”

It would seem to us that the first option is the better, if that’s what a person chooses, but Leach and Rozzi have opposition, primarily in the form of religious organizations, most notably the Catholic Church.

Amy Hill, who speaks on behalf of the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference – described by the P-G as “the public affairs arm of the state’s Catholic bishops and dioceses” – told the newspaper, “Assisted suicide, or whatever they would call it, is intentionally killing yourself or helping someone else, and is immoral. Life is worth something at every stage.”

That’s easy for Ms. Hill to say. She, presumably, is not spending every waking hour in crippling pain, or losing control of her faculties because of some dread disease.

She, presumably, doesn’t have to go home every day to watch a spouse or parent slowly, inexorably succumb to a terminal ailment. At least we hope she doesn’t.

But who is she to impose her values, or those of her church, on the life of someone she doesn’t even know, whose circumstances she could not possibly fully understand?

Her stance was echoed by Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik, who told WPXI-TV, “I think the movement toward that practice of euthanasia is a very dangerous one because I think it tries to take in our hands, as human beings, what ultimately belongs to God.”

Or to self-important religious leaders.

Bishop Zubik is free to believe that God decides on a daily basis who gets cancer, whose heart fails, who gets well, who dies, how long and how hideously they might suffer and, ultimately, the exact second when they will draw their last breath; that’s certainly his prerogative.

But the idea that other people should be made to live with unrelenting pain and suffering, and no hope of getting better, just so a supreme being is not deprived of deciding when they will die, is barbaric and reprehensible.

We wish Leach and Rozzi success in making Pennsylvania a more humane, sympathetic and caring place for those whose journeys on this Earth are nearing their end.

Because if they fail, those who decide that they can no longer endure the effects of their diseases and are determined to end their lives are left to employ more old-fashioned approaches, like jumping off a bridge, putting a gun to their head or turning on the gas in their home and striking a match.

Is that what we really want?