physician-assisted suicide — VOICES for REASON

The death of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who agitated ceaselessly for laws that would allow competent adults to seek medical assistance in ending their own lives, painlessly and with dignity, brought to mind an op-ed I wrote a while back. Here’s an excerpt:

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed, for the first time in the history of nations, that each person exists as an end in himself. This basic truth—which finds political expression in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—means, in practical terms, that you need no one’s permission to live, and that no one may forcibly obstruct your efforts to achieve your own personal happiness.

But what if happiness becomes impossible to attain? What if a dread disease, or some other calamity, drains all joy from life, leaving only misery and suffering? The right to life includes and implies the right to commit suicide. To hold otherwise—to declare that society must give you permission to kill yourself—is to contradict the right to life at its root. If you have a duty to go on living, despite your better judgment, then your life does not belong to you, and you exist by permission, not by right.

For these reasons, each individual has the right to decide the hour of his death and to implement that solemn decision as best he can. The choice is his because the life is his. And if a doctor is willing (not forced) to assist in the suicide, based on an objective assessment of his patient’s mental and physical state, the law should not stand in his way.

While I don’t necessarily endorse all of Dr. Kevorkian’s positions and actions, I do honor his insistence that the legal system should accommodate the right of a competent, terminally ill adult to end his life at the time, and in the manner, of his own choosing.

It is a national disgrace that only two states (Oregon and Washington) make physician-assisted suicide legal under procedures calculated to supply objective evidence of the patient’s choice in the matter, and only one other state (Montana) has opened the door to reform.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Montana has joined the short list of states that permit physician-assisted suicide . . . sort of.

It started with a court case brought by Robert Baxter when he was terminally ill with lymphocytic leukemia. His symptoms included infections, chronic fatigue, anemia, night sweats, nausea, massively swollen glands, digestive problems and generalized pain.

“I have lived a good and a long life, and have no wish to leave this world prematurely,” Baxter told the trial court back in 2008. “As death approaches from my disease, however, if my suffering becomes unbearable I want the legal option of being able to die in a peaceful and dignified manner by consuming medication prescribed by my doctor for that purpose.” Without court permission, Baxter’s doctor could not prescribe such a lethal dose without exposing himself to a charge of homicide.

The trial court granted Baxter’s petition—but tragically, not until the day he died.

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With Congress on the verge of expanding government control over health care, heated discussion has arisen about whether Obama’s reforms will result in old people being killed. It is, of course, important to carefully consider the implications of health-care rationing under socialized medicine. But there’s a completely distinct issue that’s being dragged into this debate, an issue that must be kept separate from the overblown rhetorical exchanges concerning “death panels.”

That issue is physician-assisted suicide.

At stake are the survival and spread of the kind of pioneering legislation by which Oregon and Washington have legalized physician-assisted suicide.

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