Talk show host Diane Rehm discusses medical aid in dying
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Scott LaMar
The nation – and really the world – has had to think about death and dying often during the COVID-19 pandemic. Deaths approaching 600,000 Americans from the virus have left many contemplating their own mortality and in some cases what measures they want taken to keep them alive or allow them to die if they are suffering and may not survive.
It’s an issue longtime public radio talk show host Diane Rehm has considered extensively. Rehm’s husband of 54 years, John, died in a Maryland nursing home in 2014 after he refused food and water while suffering from the effects of Parkinson’s Disease. In essence, John Rehm starved himself to death.
Maryland is not one of the nine states and the District of Columbia where medical aid to die is legal (neither is Pennsylvania). Where it is legal, patients that are terminal, as determined by physicians, can decide to be provided with medication that the patient would administer to themselves to end their lives.
Diane Rehm said she championed giving terminally ill patients a choice after her husband’s experience. However, John Rehm’s death wasn’t the first time a family member’s suffering left Diane wishing for options to end life. She said she “watched my mother, who was 49 years old at the time, suffer and die from liver cancer and who begged to die.”
Rehm wrote a book, When My Time Comes – Conversations About Whether Those Who Are Dying Should Have the Right to Determine When Life Should End, that has been made into a documentary film that will air on PBS and WITF-TV Thursday, April 15 at 8 p.m.
In both the book and the film, Rehm talks with people who want the option to decide about medical aid to die, those who oppose it, doctors and religious leaders.
Rehm cites polls that indicate nearly three-quarters of Americans would like a choice in their own deaths, but also admits there are many who “want God to be the only decider.” She often addresses what opponents call “the slippery slope” of medical aid to die leading to euthanasia, or patients wanting to die because they have a disability or are in great pain. Rehm says the current laws she supports don’t allow those scenarios to happen.
WITF will have a virtual screening and preview of When My Time Comes and a question and answer session with Diane Rehm on Friday, April 9 at 7 p.m.
A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.
