Denver Catholic

4 JULY 23-AUGUST 12, 2016 | DENVER CATHOLIC In-Depth Divine Mercy Supportive Care oers hospice, palliative service W hen California's Brittany Maynard, 29, was grabbing headlines in 2014 for her planned physician-assisted suicide to evade the last stages of brain cancer, Colorado's Jane Smith, 50, was in the final throes of the same cancer. Smith, however, chose a natural death so as to live every second of life God granted her. Rather than turning to physician-as- sisted suicide, Jane and her family turned to their Catholic faith and the apostolate Divine Mercy Supportive Care to make Jane's transition to death and new life comfortable, peaceful and beautiful. Her family says the precious final days they had with Jane and the love and courage it took for her to give them are an incomparable gift. "I wouldn't give up those last moments with my mom for anything in the world," daughter Miranda Smith, a college stu- dent, said in a video on end-of-life care (www.dmsci.org/press/palliative-care). "I can't imagine not having that at all." Divine Mercy Supportive Care oŠers hospice (end-of-life care) and palliative (medical treatment and comfort care) service guided by the US bishops' Ethi- cal and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERD's). When the Smiths, parishioners at St. Thomas More in Centennial, knew Jane was near the end of her life, they researched hospices. "We found Divine Mercy and knew right away it was exactly what we were looking for," Miranda wrote about the organization, which serves non-Cath- olics as well. "[Mom] was surrounded by safety and faith and love." Divine Mercy was recently sanc- tioned by Community Health Accred- itation Partner (CHAP), which aŸrms it meets the health care industry's highest nationally recognized standards. It is also certified as a Medicare provider. "When you put those together— those ERD's along with the CHAP accreditation—you have a hospice that does things very diŠerently," said Kevin Lundy, Divine Mercy's president and CEO. OŠering an example he said, "Our chaplaincy program is diŠerent in that they are priests, not just because we are Catholic but because we are trying to provide the highest degree of excellence." That the organization is a nonprofit, he said, allows it to be "mission focused rather than profit focused. "When you're a nonprofit," he added, "you have no responsibility to sharehold- ers, but to the public to do a public good." That public good extends to helping to build a culture of life by educating the public on ethical end-of-life care through consultations, training and talks. Divine Mercy also helped to defeat two physician-assisted suicide bills in Colorado the past two years. But the physician-assisted suicide movement is back in the state again with ballot issues under way. "Both sides are being compassion- ate in saying they don't want people to suŠer," Lundy notes in the end-of-life care video, which was produced by the Denver Archdiocese. "As Catholics we don't believe that hastening death is necessary to allow a person to die in peace and comfort." Hospice, Lundy said, is the antidote to physician-assisted suicide. Had Jane Smith ended her life pre- maturely with physician-assisted sui- cide, he noted, she and her family would have been denied the knowledge of how profoundly beautiful the dying experi- ence can be. Hospice, he added, is a gift of time that allows for reconciliation, for goodbyes, for treasured last experi- ences and for peace of mind that a loved one lived their life to its natural end. The Smith family agrees. "Divine Mercy was one of the great- est blessings to our family," wrote Miranda Smith, who was so grateful for their service that she served as an intern for the organization the summer after her mother's death. "In that last month of her life, Divine Mercy not only supported my mother but also our family," she continued. "We all had the comfort of knowing that we were doing all that we could to make her time on earth as peaceful and joyful as possible." The antidote to physician-assisted suicide: CATHOLIC END-OF-LIFE CARE BY ROXANNE KING editor_king@icloud.com @RoxanneIKing Online: www.dmsci.org Address: 303 S. Broadway Blvd., Ste. 220, Denver, CO 80209 Phone: 303-357-2540 Email: info@dmsci.org DIVINE MERCY SUPPORTIVE CARE i Miranda Smith. PHOTO BY ANDREW WRIGHT | DENVER CATHOLIC Decline to sign BY MELISSA KEATING O utside groups with big funding have picked Colorado as the next battleground for physi- cian-assisted suicide. Coloradans' testimonies defeated House Bill 1054, "End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Individuals," which sought to legalize physician-as- sisted suicide in the state. However, pro-physician-assisted suicide groups are scheming to raise the issue again in November. Information about this campaign is being printed for parish bulletins. Susan Selner-Wright, associate professor at St. John Vianney Theo- logical Seminary, said that Colorado is targeted by groups that want to see physician-assisted suicide legalized nationally. "They are in Colorado because Colorado looks like a good place for this [physician-assisted suicide] to move to, and that makes it a jumping point for more states. It has nothing to do with the welfare of Colorado," she said. Some of these groups are even hiring people to get signatures to put physician-assisted suicide on the ballot. This is because article five of the Colorado state constitution allows for issues to go to the ballot if enough electors sign a petition. In this case, they need 98,500 signatures. The groups championing physi- cian-assisted suicide may use decep- tive phrasing such as "compassion" and "choice" while collecting signa- tures, Selner-Wright said. "As a citizen of Colorado, I don't think that the provisions in the consti- tution that allow a certain number of signatures to get an issue on the ballot should be exploited this way," she said. Opponents of physician-assisted suicide worry that legalizing it could have negative eŠects on the most vul- nerable in society, such as the elderly and handicapped. "I think that the whole death with dignity movement really poisons our culture, really pushes people to buy into the idea that if you're a burden, you're better oŠ dead," Selner-Wright said. She said she fears what legalized physician-assisted suicide could do to those who are no longer productive. "I have a developmentally disabled child that people urged me to get rid of before she was born. Now that she's here, people are tripping over themselves to welcome her. But if she caught something or was going to cost a lot of money, then it would probably go back to the argument for removing her," she said. Signature-collectors will likely be present at large events and outside of high-traŸc areas like grocery stores. For more information on physician assisted suicide and the legislature surrounding it, visit www.cocatholic- conference.org and archden.org/life.

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