Brand it "dignity+compassion." That's how supporters of physician-assisted suicide are positioning the initiative which could get on the ballot in Massachusetts in 2012. That would require 70,000 signatures on the petition.
One of the key advocates is Dr. Marcia Angell, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, reports Eileen McNamara in BOSTON Magazine. Her father, at 81 and in the last stages of cancer, did himself in, alone, with a pistol. So much more dignified and compassionate would it have been for society to provide him with the openness to say good-bye to his loved ones, then just drift away with a fatal mixture of medications. On "Criminal Minds," that's sort of how David Rossi's wife delivered herself from ALS. Rossi was with her in the hotel room.
Of course, the Roman Catholic Church, notes McNamara, is pushing back. But it is not the brand it used to be. BOSTON GLOBE broke the sexual-abuse story. Anyway, demographics give the initiative the edge. Here in the senior-housing development where I bunk there are some who might welcome deliverance if it were socially acceptable. Currently it's not, unfortunately.
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