INDIANAPOLIS — An aid in dying bill that would allow the terminally ill to die on their own terms was shut down by Indiana legislators a second consecutive year.

 

The Indiana General Assembly wrapped up the 2018 session in March, but did not give House Bill 1157 a hearing. The bill, authored by Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, would provide terminally ill patients the option to “die with dignity.”

 

The bill would allow an individual to request a medication that he or she may self-administer to end their life. After the medication is prescribed, it is up to the individual to decide if they want to take it.

 

According to the proposed bill, anyone requesting the medication would have to be an Indiana resident, 18 or older, diagnosed with a terminal illness and told he or she only has six months to live.

 

Pierce said he modeled the bill after Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, which has been in place for 20 years.

 

“There’s a lot of safeguards in the bill,” Pierce said.

 

When requesting the medication, the individual must have two disinterested witnesses in writing, and a second physician must verify the person’s diagnosis and make sure the individual isn’t suffering from a mental issue that could cloud their decision-making process.

 

Christie Soaper, CEO and founder of Hip on Hep C Support Group, supports the bill and hopes to see Pierce back at the Statehouse with a new version of the bill next year.

 

Soaper contracted Hepatitis C from a blood transfusion when she gave birth to her second son in 1987. She has had four strokes and four heart attacks in the past nine years, and has been Cirrhosis positive for eight years.

 

Although Soaper is devastated the bill did not pass, she hopes to see changes made to the next version. She said the bill needs to get to a point where it is not only self-administered.

 

“If I stroke out and I become a vegetable, this is my choice,” Soaper said. “Give me that medicine to go to sleep. Don’t keep me alive as a vegetable.”

 

Soaper hopes the next version of the bill will allow people to have a clause in their will, that serves a similar purpose to a Do Not Resuscitate Order. Soaper said the clause would specify when it would be time to administer the medication.

 

Katie Bailey, nurse practitioner for Schneck Medical Center in Seymour, Indiana, said she agrees with the bill’s requirements. Bailey said she would not be comfortable administering the medication herself, but is not opposed to serving as a witness if the bill passes in the future.

 

“Just from a psychological standpoint, to administer medicine that is going to end somebody’s life, if you don’t have a good psychiatric background, then what’s that going to do to that person later on in their life?” Bailey said. “That’s kind of a heavy load to carry for the rest of your life.”

 

Matthew Woods, associate pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in New Albany, Indiana, opposes the bill. He said no doctor or hospice worker should support the bill based on their professional duties.

 

“I see that as a major contradiction on the doctor’s part to be promoting this bill and supposedly be the one that’s supposed to help people,” Woods said. “I don’t see how the two can live together.”

 

One of the biggest problems Woods has with the bill is that he said it often leads to a slippery slope, and it doesn’t remain static.

 

“Once they’re established, they’re pushed,” Woods said. “And then it’s almost marketed, if you will.”

 

The terminology is another problem for Woods, who said it is used as a tactic to get more people on board with the bill.

 

“It’s doctor-assisted suicide, it’s euthanasia,” Woods said. “Part of my concern is we’re changing the terminology to make it more acceptable to people. More welcome, more benign than it actually is.”

 

For Woods, palliative care is the best option for those who are terminally ill. Palliative care, also known as “comfort care,” is a type of medical care focused on providing patients with relief from serious illness.

 

Dr. Chris Adamson, a former hospice and palliative medicine specialist, does not think a bill like HB 1157 should be necessary. In hospice, Adamson said 98 percent of the time a person’s pain is controllable.

 

“When it does come to this [palliative sedation], everything should’ve been exhausted prior to it happening,” Adamson said. “And then if you decide on palliative sedation, it has to be with informed consent with the patient.”

 

If an aid in dying bill were to pass in the future, Adamson said he would tell his patients up front that he isn’t going to participate.

 

“Just because patients want a certain treatment or whatever does not mean that you have to render it to them,” Adamson said.

 

For the most part, Pierce has received positive feedback on his proposal, but said he’s heard arguments from people against it saying it will lead to a slippery slope, or cause people to force their family members into a quicker death to receive an inheritance faster.

 

“I just point out the fact that we’ve got a 20-year track record in Oregon, years of experience in some other states, and really there’s not been a single recorded case of somebody coercing someone into ending their life early,” Pierce said. “It hasn’t been happening.”

 

Pierce based his argument on statistics in Oregon and other states that show that not everyone who requests the medication ends up taking it. There are six states that currently have laws permitting physician-assisted suicide: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.

 

According to the 2017 Data Summary for the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, there were 218 patients in Oregon who requested and were prescribed the medication. Only 130 of those patients took the medication, and 44 individuals chose not to take the medicine. The ingestion status is unknown for 44 patients.

 

In California, the 2016 Data Report for the California End of Life Option Act reported 191 patients requested the medication in 2016. Out of those individuals, 111 ingested the medication, 21 did not, and the status of the remaining 59 individuals is unknown.

 

The results in Washington were similar to those in California and Oregon. Washington’s 2016 Death with Dignity Act Report documented 248 patients were prescribed an aid in dying medication in 2016. Out of those individuals, 192 ingested the medication, 36 did not ingest the medication, and the status of the remaining 20 individuals is unknown.

 

Although the bill has yet to make progress, Pierce said he plans to continue pushing for it if his constituents continue to request it.

 

Due to the Indiana legislature being primarily Republican controlled, Pierce said he wasn’t surprised that it has yet to receive a hearing because most of the Republicans are social conservatives who tend to not favor the bill.

 

Rep. Thomas Washburne, R-Inglefield, was chairman of the Courts and Criminal Code Committee, the committee that was assigned HB 1157. Washburne was unavailable for an interview, but said in an email statement that there wasn’t enough time to hear HB 1157 this year with the number of bills going through his committee. He also stated he didn’t feel his committee had the expertise to handle the bill.

 

Pierce was glad the bill received media attention at a press conference in January, and hopes more constituents start having conversations with their legislators about the bill to generate awareness.

 

“There are five or six states that have an aid in dying law, and I think that Indiana is the kind of state that doesn’t often like to be on the front end of the new trends in the law,” said Pierce. “You’ve kind of got your work cut out for you if you’re trying to get the state to move to the front of the pack.”