Assisted suicide is currently being discussed and debated in many countries. The central question is: If a terminally ill person decides that he or she wishes to end his or her life, is it acceptable for others, primarily physicians, to assist them? For many years assisted suicide was illegal in all US states, but in the past decades organizations such as the Compassion and Choices have campaigned for a change in the law. They argue that terminally ill patients should not have to suffer needlessly and should be able to die with dignity. In 1997 Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted suicide. Four years later conservative Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered federal drug agents to punish doctors who used federally controlled drugs to help the terminally ill die. In 2002 a district judge ruled that Ashcroft had overstepped his authority; in 2006 the Supreme Court let the Oregon law stand. In 2001 the Netherlands became the first country to legalize euthana- sia and physician-assisted suicide.
PROS
Every human being has a right to life, perhaps the most basic and fundamental of all our rights. However, with every right comes a choice. The right to speech does not remove the option to remain silent; the right to vote brings with it the right to abstain. In the same way, the right to choose to die is implicit in the right to life. Those in the late stages of a terminal disease have a hor- rific future: the gradual decline of the body, the failure of organs, and the need for artificial life support. In some cases, the illness will slowly destroy their minds, the essence of themselves. Even when this is not the case, the huge amounts of medication required to “control” pain will often leave them in a delirious and incapable state. Faced with this, it is surely more humane that these indi- viduals be allowed to choose the manner of their own end and die with dignity.
Society recognizes that suicide is unfortunate but accept- able in some circumstances. Those who end their own lives are not seen as evil. The illegality of assisted suicide is therefore particularly cruel for those who are disabled and are unable to die without assistance.
Suicide is a lonely, desperate act, carried out in secrecy and often is a cry for help. The impact on the family can be catastrophic. By legalizing assisted suicide, the process can be brought out into the open. In some cases, families might have been unaware of the true feelings of their loved one. Being forced to confront the issue of a family
CONS
There is no comparison between the right to life and other rights. When you choose to remain silent, you may change your mind at a later date; when you choose to die, you have no such second chance. Participating in someone’s death is to participate in depriving them of all choices they might make in the future and is therefore immoral.
It is always wrong to give up on life. Modern pallia- tive care is immensely flexible and effective, and helps to preserve quality of life as far as possible. Terminally ill patients need never be in pain, even at the very end. Society’s role is to help them live their lives as well as they can. Counseling, which helps patients come to terms with their condition, can help.
Those who commit suicide are not evil, and those who attempt to take their own lives are not prosecuted. How- ever, if someone is threatening to kill himself or herself, your moral duty is to try to stop them. You would not, for example, simply ignore a man standing on a ledge and threatening to jump simply because it is his choice; and you would definitely not assist in his suicide by pushing him. In the same way, you should try to help a person with a terminal illness, not help him to die. Demanding that family members take part in such a decision can be an unbearable burden. Many may resent a loved one’s decision to die and would be either emo- tionally scarred or estranged by the prospect of being in any way involved with the death. Assisted suicide also introduces a new danger, that the terminally ill may be
|The Debatabase Book
member’s illness may do great good, perhaps even allow- ing the family to persuade the patient not to end his life. In other cases, it makes the family part of the process. They can understand the reasons behind a patient’s deci- sion without feelings of guilt and recrimination, and the terminally ill patient can speak openly to them about her feelings before her death.
At the moment, doctors are often put into an impos- sible position. A good doctor will form close bonds with patients and will want to give them the best qual- ity of life possible. However, when a patient has lost or is losing his ability to live with dignity and expresses a strong desire to die, doctors are legally unable to help. To say that modern medicine can totally eradicate pain is a tragic oversimplification of suffering. While physi- cal pain may be alleviated, the emotional pain of a slow and lingering death, of the loss of the ability to live a meaningful life, can be horrific. A doctor’s duty is to address his or her patient’s suffering, be it physical or emotional. As a result, doctors are already helping their patients to die—although it is not legal, assisted suicide does happen. It would be far better to recognize this and bring the process into the open, where it can be regu- lated. True abuses of the doctor-patient relationship and incidents of involuntary euthanasia would then be far easier to limit.
pressured into ending their lives by others who are not prepared to support them through their illness. Even the most well regulated system would have no way to ensure that this did not happen.
A doctor’s role must remain clear. The guiding principle of medical ethics is to do no harm: A physician must not be involved in deliberately harming her patient. Without this principle, the medical profession would lose a great deal of trust; admitting that killing is an acceptable part of a doctor’s role would likely increase the danger of involuntary euthanasia, not reduce it. Legalizing assisted suicide also places an unreasonable burden on doctors. The daily decisions made to pre- serve life can be difficult enough. To require them to also carry the immense moral responsibility of deciding who can and cannot die, and the further responsibil- ity of actually killing patients, is unacceptable. This is why the vast majority of medical professionals oppose the legalization of assisted suicide: Ending the life of a patient goes against all they stand for.
PROS CONS
Sample Motions:
This House would legalize assisted suicide. This House would die with dignity.
Web Links:
• Doctor-Assisted Suicide: A Guide to Websites and the Literature. <http://www.longwood.edu/library/suic.htm> Links to general information and sites, pro and con, on physician-assisted suicide. Contains an excellent chronology of the issue.
• End of Life Choices. <http://www.hemlock.org/> Right-to-die group provides information on organization services and the progress of legislation legalizing assisted suicide.
• Euthanasia.Com. <http://www.euthanasia.com/> Provides medical and legal information from those opposed to assisted suicide. • FinalExit.Org. <http://www.finalexit.org/> General site containing information on legislation, euthanasia in practice, and indi-
viduals prominent in the campaign to legalize assisted suicide.
Further Reading:
Dworkin, Gerald, R. G. Fry, and Sissela Bok. Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide. Cambridge University Press, 1998. Gorsuch, Neil M. The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. Princeton University Press, 2006.
Shavelson, Lonny. A Chosen Death: The Dying Confront Assisted Suicide. University of California Press, 1998.