His daughter Barbara Mancini, an emergency room nurse, had earlier that dayhanded morphine to her terminally ill, 93-year old father when he’d requested it. A hospice nurse stopped by the house soon after the dose and immediately – against Yourshaw’s wishes – dialed 911. Yourshaw went to the emergency room. Mancini was brought to the police station.

Aiding someone to end his or her own life was and is illegal in Pennsylvania, as it is in Connecticut. Simply by handing her father his prescribed morphine, Mancini faced 10 years in prison.

Yourshaw died four days later, and – inexplicably – his death was ruled a homicide. So in addition to mourning her father, Mancini started a painful pass through the judicial system until the one-year anniversary of her father’s death, when a judge wisely dismissed the charges, citing a “lack of competent evidence.”

Last month, on the heels of the death of Brittany Maynard, a 29-year old woman with brain cancer who chose to end her life, a HealthDay/Harris Poll said 74 percent of Americans believe that terminally ill patients who are in pain should have the right to end their own lives. Just 14 percent were opposed. Yet the discussion of a rational approach to such end-of-life decisions never seems to get off the ground in Connecticut.

Proponents of last year’s death-with-dignity bill, which died in committee, say the Catholic Church holds far too much sway in this conversation. In fact, a Vatican official condemned Maynard’s choice of death an “absurdity.” And there’s no shortage of anti-death-with-dignity literature on the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The American Medical Association, another powerful lobby, calls “physician-assisted suicide” “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer.”

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Aid-in dying display at legislative office building in 2014.

But that won’t stop proponents from trying again this legislative session, which starts Wednesday.

“This has entered the national conversation – not death and dying but rather respect for choices. Who am I to begin to question those choices?” said Tim Appleton, Connecticut campaign manager for the national advocacy group Compassion & Choices.

During the last state legislative session, Compassion & Choices hung 30 large portraits of aid-in-dying supporters in the Legislative Office Building’s concourse. The portraits were to be displayed – as are other signs and posters that push other legislative agendas – for two weeks. But at the request of House Minority Leader Larry Cafero, R-Norwalk, the portraits were removed after just a week because, the representative said, the posters were “a paid ad on state property.” Cafero opposes aid-in-dying legislation. Other states where similar bills didn’t pass include Hawaii, Kansas and Massachusetts, among others.

Opponents generally fall into one religious camp or another. Some opponents worry that allowing terminally ill people to end their lives would open the door to potential foul play. But Oregon has had similar legislation in place for 18 years, and there’s been no such challenge. In 2013, 71 terminally ill people chose to end their own lives in Oregon, according to the annual report produced by the state’s Department of Human Services.

Passing a death-with-dignity law is especially pertinent in Connecticut, which is aging rapidly. According to the state’s Commission on Aging, by 2030 Connecticut’s over-65 population could grow by 64 percent. They’re calling this a “silver tsunami.”

By the end of Mancini’s legal ordeal, her bills were more than $100,000, and she was unable to work. And for what? Her father had a living will and a do-not-resuscitate order, and his daughter had power of attorney. In great pain the last few weeks of his life, he’d explicitly said and written that he did not want to extend his life with medical intervention.

Mancini was in Connecticut recently lobbying for a death-with-dignity law.

“Unless people who support death with dignity let their legislators know, the vocal minority will continue to defeat these bills,” she said. “It really, really matters that people take the time to contact their elected officials. If people don’t pressure the lawmakers, it’s easy to see why they won’t vote to pass death with dignity. It appears that the electorate doesn’t care that much about it, no matter what the polling says.”

As for local efforts to pass a law, “we are going to keep doing what we have been doing all along,” Appleton said. “The more we keep educating the public, educating the legislators, the more support we get.”

“I’ve watched people at the end of their lives,” said Rodiger. That includes 30 years ago, when she was living and ministering in New York City. “I lost a lot of friends to AIDS,” she said. “Medical science kept pushing drugs, and they were begging to go.”

Like 65 percent of the state’s residents, Rodiger, who is a mission collaboration administrator at the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut, would like to see a comprehensive aid-in-dying law, also known by proponents as “death with dignity” and – by its opponents — “assisted suicide.”

Hugh McQuaid Photo

Posters by Compassion & Choices displayed in the Legislative Office Building.

And though there are deep-pocketed opponents, this could be Connecticut’s year to join the nation’s five other states that allow terminally ill, mentally competent patients to end their own lives. (A state court in New Mexico opened the door to aid-in-dying with a decision in January.)

An aid-in-dying bill is before the state legislature’s Public Health Committee, and Tim Appleton, Compassion & Choices’ state campaign manager, is encouraging supporters to e-mail committee members to let them know it’s time.

An independent poll commissioned by that non-profit advocacy organization – formerly known as The Hemlock Society — said that 65 percent of Connecticut residents favor a bill that would permit doctors to prescribe lethal medication to patients who have less than six months to live. As a reflection of public sentiment after last year’s unsuccessful bill, this year’s piece of legislation requires the input of a second physician, and includes a waiting period between a written request by the patient and an oral request – similar to the statutes in other states with end-of-life provisions.

Sixty-percent of Massachusetts residents supported a similar bill (known as Question 2) in 2012, yet that bill did not pass.  There, as in Connecticut, opponents included advocacy groups for people with disabilities, and the Roman Catholic Church. The powerful U.S. Conference of Bishops supports palliative care, which focuses on alleviating pain when the end of life is near. They like to talk about a “slippery slope” – as if helping the terminally ill to end their lives will unleash a rash of people taking their own lives.

Appleton suggests those opponents should think more about friends and family members who have been charged in courts with helping dying loved ones end their lives. No one wants to be in the barbaric position of breaking the law over honoring someone’s dying wish, yet that is precisely what happens in states like Connecticut.

In this, we are far behind Oregon, where legislators passed a death with dignity law in 1997. The law requires the state to keep track of patients who avail themselves of the law’s benefits; last year’s report said 122 Oregonians received prescriptions for lethal medication. Most were older, Caucasian, well-educated, and their most common diagnosis was cancer. The vast majority – 97 percent – died at home.

This year’s push for an aid-in-dying law in Connecticut started a few days before the legislative session began, when Compassion & Choices hung 30 large portraits in the Legislative Office Building’s concourse – Rodiger’s portrait among them. The portraits were to be displayed – as are other signs and posters that push other legislative agendas – for two weeks, but at the request of House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, R-Norwalk, the portraits were removed after just a week. Cafero, who opposes aid-in-dying legislation, said the posters were too political for the State Capitol.

The posters came down, but Appleton says momentum is on the side of aid-in-dying proponents.

“With social change, opponents who fought and fought seeking to deny any expansion of our rights, over time history has shown us those efforts always fail,” said Appleton. “Aid-in-dying is similar. We have history on our side.”