To the Editor:
Re “Legislators Pass Aided Suicide for California” (front page, Sept. 12):
Aid in dying is no more a suicide than other forms of hastening death, and the California End of Life Option Act clearly states that actions taken within that act are not a suicide or assisted suicide.
And such language has been rejected by the American Public Health Association, the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, the American Medical Women’s Association and the American Medical Student Association, among others.
These are dying patients. They are not suicidal and do not want to die, despite what many assert. They opt to take prescribed medicines only because they can no longer endure terrible suffering.
The arguments against aid in dying have no basis. Some 25 years of hard evidence from Oregon and Washington State, which have similar laws, demonstrate that there are no vulnerable populations: just about all who end their lives by aid in dying have health insurance, the majority are college educated, and the vast majority are receiving hospice care.
There is no evidence of family pressure, coercion or abuse: none. And aid in dying is used very sparingly, only about 3 of every 1,000 deaths. The laws have worked as intended.
New York, where both legislation and litigation are pending, should be the next state to explicitly allow [sic] aid in dying so that terminally ill, mentally competent patients can achieve a peaceful death on their own terms.
DAVID C. LEVEN
Pelham, N.Y.
The writer is executive director of End of Life Choices New York.
Note from KBJ: This is a good example of persuasive definition, about which I wrote 20 years ago this month. Persuasive definition has two varieties. In the first, the person redefines a word that has a favorable connotation so that it includes what he or she wants it to include. In the second, which is illustrated by this letter, the person redefines a word ("suicide") that has an unfavorable connotation so that it excludes what he or she doesn't want it to include (taking drugs that bring about one's death). Persuasive definition is objectionable because it's manipulative. It seeks to bypass people's rational faculty by playing fast and loose with word meanings.
