I believe it is time for Hawaii to make medical aid in dying an end-of-life care option for terminally ill, mentally capable adults with six months or less to live, to peacefully end unbearable suffering. The state House is expected to vote on whether to approve legislation authorizing this end-of-life care option, as soon as Tuesday.

As indicated by a local poll in December 2016, an 80 percent supermajority of Hawaii voters also supports this option. Importantly, these results were consistent across all demographics including island of residence, ethnicity, age, economic status and religion.

Regarding religion, my involvement in Hawaii’s interfaith community over the last 20 years shows evidence of strong support from Christian, Jewish and Buddhist congregations. While I’m continually learning about the teachings of other faith traditions, I’m convinced that most of the opposition from Christians is from a small but vocal percentage of them: the leadership of the Catholic, Mormon and Evangelical churches. The general membership of these churches is largely supportive.

In 2004, while I was president of The Interfaith Alliance Hawaii, we established the following position statement: “We respect the right of competent adults to make their own decisions concerning end of life choices according to their own beliefs and values.”

I do not believe it is up to me, or any other religious leader, to dictate how this final, intimate decision between a dying person and his or her God should be made. Instead, we must support and accept such decisions, even if they do not represent the course we ourselves might take. This legislation is the embodiment of freedom, autonomy and mutual respect that we all cherish. It is why we hope our legislators will enact it into law.

After hearing the opposition use the pejorative, scary misnomer “assisted suicide” at last week’s hearing on House Bill 2739, I feel the need to make an important correction. Legally, medically and factually, medical aid in dying is not suicide. Suicide involves people who are so severely depressed that they no longer want to live. Medical aid in dying involves people who want to live. But they can’t. They have a terminal illness; it is their disease that is killing them. This bill does not advocate for the indiscriminate, premature taking of one’s own life. Quite the contrary, it acknowledges that, in carefully defined circumstances when death is certain and suffering is intolerable, a terminally ill adult can opt for a peaceful death through the aid of medication prescribed by their doctor.

HB 2739 is modeled after the medical aid-in-dying law that took effect 20 years ago in Oregon. In Hawaii, we have been debating this issue for even longer than that, and the facts based on 40 years of combined data from Oregon and five other states that have authorized medical aid in dying are now clear. We can no longer be swayed by opponents drumming up uncertainty and doubt, by those who keep repeating the same false, tired and disproved claims about abuse and coercion of vulnerable people and suggesting that our trusted doctors would be a party to it.

Medical aid-in-dying laws work as intended. They have resulted in relief for hundreds of terminally ill individuals and their loved ones. They have led to more meaningful end-of-life care discussions between terminally ill patients and their doctors and a greater utilization of hospice and palliative care services. Not a single case of abuse of these laws has been documented.

Yet, sadly, right here in the Aloha State, terminally ill people are still suffering needlessly because they do not have the option of medical aid in dying to peacefully end their suffering when no other palliative care option will provide relief. It’s time to pass medical aid in dying in Hawaii.

The Rev. John Heidel is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ and a member of The Interfaith Alliance of Hawaii.