Q&A Katie Engelhart

THE CANADIAN PULITZER Prize-winning journalist Katie Engelhart wrote the new book The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die.

- Kevin P. Alexander

In this conversation with Reason's Kevin Alexander, Engelhart discusses why people choose assisted death, compares U.S. and Canadian health care systems and assisted-dying laws, and addresses debates about disability rights and media coverage of medically assisted dying.

Q: Why did you choose to structure your book around these different stories?

A: I wanted to bring readers on this journey of increasing discomfort. I opened the book with a legal, medical assisted death that I watched in California of an 89-year-old man. His doctor predicted that he had two or three weeks left. This man decided he wanted to die by medically assisted death. His three adult children, who lived in three different states, had flown in for it. They were all literally embracing him at the time of his death. The alternative would have been for him to wait the two or three weeks. His kids may or may not have been there. He would probably have felt increasing pain. Drugs would have helped that, but also had a side effect of sedation. He would’ve stopped eating and drinking. His death certificate would have said prostate cancer, but he probably would have died of kidney failure. That felt like a noncontroversial case.