
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 16, 1994                   TAG: 9401160136
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

LAWYERS HEAR DEBATE ON ASSISTED SUICIDE

Assisted suicide, and the question of whether it should be permitted under state law, was the subject of a two-hour panel discussion and debate Friday at the Virginia Bar Association's annual meeting in Williamsburg.

"Helping someone die is not something a family member should be doing. As a society, we can't be doing it this way," said NBC news correspondent Betty Rollin. "Family members often don't do it right, they feel guilty and sometimes they are guilty. We need an orderly, compassionate system for those who are ill and who want to die."

More than a decade ago, Rollin researched suicide and helped her 72-year-old mother die painlessly after a bout with ovarian cancer.

Ida Rollin told her daughter that she wanted to end her life.

"She couldn't understand why her doctor wouldn't help her," Rollin said.

Other panelists at the association's meeting included University of Virginia professor John Fletcher, Richmond lawyer Matthew Jenkins and Herbert Titus, a constitutional scholar and former Regent University law school dean.

Titus disagreed with Rollin.

"Life is worth living even when one is dying and dying painfully. It is the creator of life who determines when life ends and not the creature who is given that life," he said. "What God has given, no man has a right to give away or take away."

Rollin said those who oppose assisted suicide do not understand true suffering.

"There are people who have never been very ill and just don't get it," she said. "If they did, the question would be not whether to pass a law, but how" to regulate it safely.

No state has a law permitting assisted suicide. Attempts at passing such laws failed last year in California and Washington.

In Virginia, no statute expressly forbids it. But anyone assisting in a suicide in Virginia would more than likely be charged with murder or manslaughter, Jenkins said.

Fletcher said he once believed that hospices were sufficient to take care of those who were terminally ill and in pain.

But after seeing that many people slipped through the cracks, Fletcher now believes several states should begin experimenting with "carefully regulated, physician-assisted death."

by CNB