Aid offered for issues on death
People in Idaho can ensure that they end life according to their plans without expensive lawyers and reams of confusing paperwork.
Living wills, durable powers of attorney and do-not-resuscitate orders are available free through Compassion and Choices, a nonprofit group that spread to North Idaho from Eastern Washington last year.
Living wills specify what life-prolonging measures a person wants after that person can no longer make his or her wishes known. Durable powers of attorney give two or three people the right to decide on care for a person who can’t decide on his or her own. In Idaho, do-not-resuscitate orders work everywhere but hospitals and nursing homes, where doctors’ orders outweigh everything else.
“We have the forms. You can do all this on your own,” says Bob Brown, president of Compassion and Choices in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho’s only chapter.
On Feb. 26, Compassion and Choices will feature Coeur d’Alene attorney Michael Wytychak speaking about the various end-of-life issues people in Idaho should be prepared to face at any age. He’ll explain Idaho’s two definitions for death, which, he says, people will find surprising.
“Medical technology changes everything,” Wytychak says. “At what point can the medical community actually take organs for donations?”
He’ll also discuss Idaho’s definitions of suicide and homicide, important to understand as the concept of assisted suicide gains attention.
North Idaho has its share of deathbed dramas, but confidentiality blocks those cases from public view.
“There are questionable cases all the time. Doctors and hospitals and nursing homes are dealing with these things on a daily basis,” Wytychak says. “That’s the reason the medical and legal community want the public educated about its rights and to make some decisions. They have a tremendous impact.”
Compassion and Choices is the new, more positive name for the Hemlock Society. The society began in 1980 to lobby state Legislatures to permit people dignified deaths. Until the end of the 1970s, people had no choices about what measures doctors took to keep them alive. California was the first state to allow people to choose the life-prolonging measures they wanted, but they had to have it specified on paper and witnessed.
The group doesn’t promote suicide, but it supports such a decision when a patient is diagnosed as terminal, two doctors agree and the patient shows competency during three checks on different days.
The Hemlock Society spread to 36 states before it changed its name.
Brown, a Coeur d’Alene man with a law degree, began attending meetings of the Compassion chapter in Spokane a few years ago. He noticed other North Idahoans among the 80 or so attendees and proposed an Idaho chapter. The Spokane group covered end-of-life issues based on Washington law, which is different from Idaho law.
Nearly 40 people showed up for the first meeting in Coeur d’Alene a year ago. The group meets quarterly. It wants Idaho to adopt a death with dignity law similar to Oregon’s. Such laws allow a person with a terminal illness to choose life-ending drugs over palliative care.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled it wouldn’t interfere with Oregon’s law, but former Attorney General John Ashcroft appealed that ruling last fall. The court hasn’t taken action yet on the appeal.
North Idaho’s Compassion group won’t pursue death with dignity legislation until the courts are finished with the issue, Brown says.
Compassion and Choices’ Feb. 26 meeting will be at 1 p.m. at the clubhouse in the Village subdivision. Turn left off Fourth Street onto Knotty Pine to reach the clubhouse. Call 667-7507 for more information.