The Elizabeth Whitefield End-Of-Life Options Act

While my late wife, the artist Rini Price, was struggling to survive a potentially lethal and pernicious form of thyroid cancer diagnosed in the mid 1970s, she would often tell me that what was keeping her going was the thought that if the effort became too much for her “the door is always open,” and she could leave.

Rini was quoting a famous phrase of the Roman stoic philosopher Epictetus, who placed a supreme value on self-control, inner poise and self-determination. In those days, though, the “leaving,” by one’s own hand, was still illegal in New Mexico and, despite the guidance of groups like the Hemlock Society, entailed a troubling, furtive and even frightening process.

If she were alive today, Rini would have given her wholehearted support to a bill moving through the Legislature this year, one that has the potential of relieving the often horrific and heart-rending suffering of terminally ill New Mexicans and their families. It’s called the Elizabeth Whitefield End-of-Life Options Act and is sponsored by State Representatives Deborah A. Armstrong and Dayan Hochman-Vigil and State Senators Bill O’Neill and Elizabeth “Liz” Stefanics.

The Elizabeth Whitefield Act extends and refines New Mexico’s Uniform Health-Care Decisions Act of 1997, which replaced the New Mexico Right to Die Act of 1977. According to medical ethicist Joan Gibson, both acts “established our state as a national leader” in honoring “the medical choices of decisionally capable adults.” And the current act would strengthen “New Mexico’s ongoing commitment to honor patients’ autonomous health care decisions.”

In an open letter supporting the End-of-Life Options Act, Gibson, the founder and long-time director of the UNM Health Sciences Ethics Program, wrote, “Unlike the medical decision-making landscape 75 years ago, the 2021 health care reality is this: There is almost always ‘something more’ that can be done. Decisions to treat or not to treat are everywhere and unavoidable. The overriding question remains: Who should make these decisions? For over 30 years, New Mexicans have answered this question: Medical decisions belong to the patient, or the patient’s designated decision-maker. Treatment decisions must be driven by the patients own values, beliefs and assessment of quality of life.”

The End-of-Life Options Act is named after New Mexico judge Elizabeth Whitfield, who died of cancer in 2018 and was a long-time advocate of patient rights. She was among the founders of the New Mexico Woman’s Bar Association. The year she died, Judge Whitfield testified at the New Mexico Legislative Session in support of a version of the current bill. She told legislators in what now has become an iconic statement, “Cancer has stolen everything from me: my ability to work, my ability to eat, my ability to drink. Don’t let me die without dignity. I implore you to give me the choice that is right for me.” Despite her eloquence, legislators rejected the death-with-dignity bill that year.

This year’s bill, which has been victorious in various committees, will be voted on by the full Legislature soon. It removes “criminal liability for providing assistance” for a terminally ill patient seeking death with dignity in New Mexico.

It requires that patients be diagnosed as having a terminal disease that could end their lives within six months, that they have decision-making capacity, that they are not under any pressure from anyone to choose suicide and that they have “the ability to self-administer the medical aid in dying medication.” The patient must also not be suffering from a “mental health disorder.” And they must be able to sign a form labeled “Request for Medication to End My Life in a Peaceful Manner.” Finally, the terminally ill patient must authorize their physician “to contact a willing pharmacist” to fill the prescription for “aid in dying medication.”

The provisions in the Elizabeth Whitefield End-of-Life Options Act are exactly what I would hope for if I should need them when my time comes. And I deeply wish that everyone I love will have the same opportunity to make such a choice if need be.

This act does not give physicians and health care workers the legal right to help someone commit suicide beyond providing the necessary medications. It is not a matter of so-called “death panels,” nor is it a sinister Dr. Kavorkian-esque license for physicians to kill their patients. The act basically allows anyone of us who makes a decision to end our lives not to have to resort to gruesome means, but to be prescribed drugs, which we may take when and under what circumstances we choose. The Elizabeth Whitefield Act makes it so that death with dignity is a realistic option for everyone in New Mexico.

I know that my late wife’s struggle to survive her cancer, a struggle in which she prevailed for over 30 years, would have been made so much more bearable and humane for her and her family if the “door” to legal “death with dignity” really had been “always open” for her, if she had needed it.

I fervently support the Elizabeth Whitefield End-of-Life Options Act in Rini’s honor and in her memory.

*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it