Ending deserves compassion

I am responding to Andrew Flescher's Oct. 16 guest column 'There is no glory in the right to die.” His column is confusing. He believes that 29-year-old Brittany Maynard made a difficult moral and legal choice between her death, which was not preventable, and increasing pain and debilitation caused by an aggressive form of brain cancer. She was an Oregonian who used that state's Death with Dignity Law.

Flescher acknowledges the grief and sadness that pervade this story. He also acknowledges the loss of her person to the world as well as her intimates. What he seems to take exception to is her announcing the date that she intended to die and that by doing so, she was attaching glory, celebration and fascination to her death.

I, on the other hand, think that she was doing the following: Ensuring everyone whom she wanted to be present when she died could be there, alerting people to the fact that young, vital, attractive people face terminal illness, not just the old and feeble, and that Oregonians, in their wisdom, provide a law to ease the dying for those that choose to use this law.

Further, I would say, that it is audacious for one who is not dying to proscribe how another prepares for their death.

Lea Halterman

President, Iowa Chapter of Compassion and Choices

Des Moines