The House of Representatives passed a bill last week that prohibits physicians from assisting in a patient’s suicide by prescribing medications, in direct opposition to Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. The House measure has its shortcomings, but contains an important benefit: It gives physicians increased latitude to prescribe addictive medications to ease the pain and suffering of terminal patients, even if the drugs hasten death.

This may seem contradictory, but it has the effect of allowing doctors to make better judgments for the care of their patients.

Much of the public debate will focus on the freedom of the individual to choose the manner and time of his death versus the dangers to society’s more vulnerable that comes with opening the door to the subject of euthanasia. However, the bill would allow family doctors to make more decisions with long-term patients in the privacy of the examining room. Essentially, giving doctors more leeway to prescribe medications to control pain takes the federal government out of overseeing those treatment decisions.

Doctors all over the country, including one from Machias, have lost their licenses or had prescribing privileges curtailed or suspended by federal drug enforcement officers who didn’t like the amount of medications those doctors were giving to chronic pain patients. This bill returns those decisions to the doctors, and increases federal research dollars for the study of chronic pain. It was these elements that persuaded the American Medical Association to support the measure.

The decision to prematurely end one’s life because of suffering or the erosion of physical and mental capacities is as difficult as any life presents. It ideally is made in privacy, with family and trusted friends, not by Dr. Jack Kevorkian on “60 Minutes” or in a courtroom. This bill allows the conversation to become quiet again. In the Senate, there is strong support for improving research into chronic pain and untying doctor’s hands when treating the terminally ill, but less support for directly overriding Oregon’s approach or the criminal penalties for doing so. The Senate’s version is both less confrontational and more likely to find broad support; it should prevail.

These are emotional issues that touch our loved ones’ final moments. They require sober reflection and wise counsel. Let’s not demonize each side as we have in the abortion debate, at the other end of life’s spectrum. And let’s do what we can to take the pain away, first.