As a professor, now retired, of Christian ethics at Bangor Theological Seminary, I read your recent article on a pending bill in Augusta with great interest (“Bill to amend medically assisted suicide law draws emotional debate from Maine lawmakers,” June 9).

The article describes the debate now going on in our state legislature about whether or not to tweak Maine’s existing medical-aid-in-dying public policy in order to permit doctors to waive the waiting period for terminally ill patients and allow them to receive life-ending medication in a more timely manner.  Neither the strenuous debate nor the strong emotion about this matter surprises me.

While the article’s description of this debate was helpful, the headline was not. Using an outdated and misleading term like “assisted suicide” is not only inaccurate, it does an injustice to those in the dying process who are ready to die and have expressed their wish to die, but find that they cannot yet die, so they request medical assistance to quicken the process so that they can bring an end to what they are experiencing as tortuous.

In so doing, they are not “rejecting” or turning away from life; rather, insofar as they are ready and willing to turn toward death, they are seeking to shape their ending, as best they can, according to their own wishes and values.

Because medical aid is quite different from suicide, our language should reflect that important distinction. Suicide is the abrupt interruption of the life process by someone seeking to upend their living. Medical aid in dying, on the other hand, is the choice by a dying person of accelerating their inevitable death, a process that is already underway and has, for them, a welcome outcome.

For those nearing death, the choice is not between life or death. Rather, it’s about choosing the kind of death we’ll have and whether, from our perspective, it’s more likely to be a good death or not-so-good death. It’s also about whether we’ll have our say in these tender matters and whether our wishes will be honored.

When all is said and done, our legislators in Augusta are debating, as many of us are also sorting out within our families and among our friends, whether it’s better to require someone, against their will, to extend their suffering unnecessarily at the end of life or whether to respect their moral freedom and allow them to escape a tortuous ending according to their own timing.

As a Christian minister, I choose always to stand against torture and for moral freedom.