Death With Dignity: A Policy Analysis

Death with dignity is one of many titles attributed to the practice of providing a patient with terminal illness a means to die in light of extreme suffering as a result of a terminal illness. The purpose of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act is to provide individuals suffering from a terminal illness with the right to make a written request for life-ending medication to end their life in a “humane and dignified manner.” Deborah Stone’s policy goals of equity, efficiency, welfare, security, and liberty provides a framework to analyze whether a policy is doing what it says it wants to do. As such, the goal of this presentation is to apply the policy goals framework to determine if the Death with Dignity Act is accomplishing its stated goals. Applying a theory of the policy process, the Death with Dignity Act was analyzed using the most recently available data from the Oregon Health Authority. Results showed that since the Death with Dignity Act passed in 1997, 2,518 people have received prescriptions for life-ending medications, and of those, 1657 or 66% have used the medication to end their lives. Based on the data aggregated between 1997 and 2019, the Death with Dignity Act has mostly met its purpose of providing individuals with a terminal illness with the right to die on their own terms and with dignity. However, there are still several issues regarding equity, especially for low-income BIPOC populations. Implications for practice, policy and research are discussed.

Exploring the language of death with dignity: a comparative and critical content analysis of Canadian news editorials

My major research paper (MRP) focuses on the language and arguments used in the debate surrounding medically assisted dying. This paper was interested specifically in how arguments are framed, and if arguments have changed regarding medically assisted dying in the past twenty years. My central research questions are: what are the arguments on both sides of the debate used in news editorials? And if the arguments changed – how did they change? To answer these questions I compared two case studies: (1) Sue Rodriguez and (2) Gloria Taylor. To compare the two cases I analyzed the editorial pages and online comments of major Canadian newspapers. I used key words in context (KWIC) to identify frames and arguments used. Six frames emerged: medically assisted dying legal (ML), medically assisted dying medical (MM), medically assisted dying moral (MMM), pro-life legal (PLL), pro-life medical (PLM), and pro-life moral (PLM). The frames in support of medically assisted dying were used more than double the amount that pro-life frames were used; they were also used more frequently in 2012 than they had been in 1994. Further, there fewer overall KWICs used in 2012, but they were used correctly more often than in 1994. These findings suggest that the act of medically assisted dying is better understood and defined, and that it seems to have more support now than it did twenty years ago.

Exploring the language of death with dignity: a comparative and critical content analysis of Canadian news editorials

My major research paper (MRP) focuses on the language and arguments used in the debate surrounding medically assisted dying. This paper was interested specifically in how arguments are framed, and if arguments have changed regarding medically assisted dying in the past twenty years. My central research questions are: what are the arguments on both sides of the debate used in news editorials? And if the arguments changed – how did they change? To answer these questions I compared two case studies: (1) Sue Rodriguez and (2) Gloria Taylor. To compare the two cases I analyzed the editorial pages and online comments of major Canadian newspapers. I used key words in context (KWIC) to identify frames and arguments used. Six frames emerged: medically assisted dying legal (ML), medically assisted dying medical (MM), medically assisted dying moral (MMM), pro-life legal (PLL), pro-life medical (PLM), and pro-life moral (PLM). The frames in support of medically assisted dying were used more than double the amount that pro-life frames were used; they were also used more frequently in 2012 than they had been in 1994. Further, there fewer overall KWICs used in 2012, but they were used correctly more often than in 1994. These findings suggest that the act of medically assisted dying is better understood and defined, and that it seems to have more support now than it did twenty years ago.

Dying Well

The most meaningfully charged ethical choices confronted by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and by LDS medical professionals concern decision-making at the end of life. This chapter examines ethical considerations confronting the LDS community in decisions regarding both forgoing medical life support and in medically assisted dying. LDS teaching has supported a negative right to die from treatment cessation while consistently opposing legalization of a positive right to die through a physician-prescribed medication or administration of a lethal drug. The ecclesiastical emphasis on responsible exercise of moral agency leaves open the prospect for adherents to claim that a version of death with dignity is compatible with LDS ethical principles. Nonetheless, ecclesiastical opposition has extended to opposing specific legislative and citizen referenda advancing patient rights to request a life-ending medication from their physician.

Beautiful Deaths and Heard Gazes

Viewers frequently encounter “normative” prescriptions and perceptions through photographs of how images depicting death and dying should loo and, cognitively, how those images ought to be received. In such encounters, varying fundamental views or cultural myths surrounding death and dying, how it is envisioned, how it is, literally, pictured dictate a particular way of seeing and being. This article considers visual representations made of individuals who choose to enact Death With Dignity provisions to end their lives on their own terms and on their own time line. By an interrogation of a corpus of DWD images, the author investigates how such representations challenge a particular cultural logic. This reconsideration may lead to an awareness; a reasoning, creating a space in which reality is constructed beneath the viewer’s gaze. Such a reality, relies on an embodied or pragmatic aesthetic and is co-constituted by expressions of power that emanate from image and viewer. The author dubs this modality the heard gaze; a vision in which the past, present, and future are fused and subject becomes object or vessel of understanding by perceiving a visual, auditory “cue”.