Assisted Suicide

As the value of life has become cheapened, there has been a growing tendency towards the ideals of "patient self-determination" and "death with dignity". Some believe, that if it is done safely and with the proper laws, choosing the time of ones own death through suicide would have "benefits"; death of their own choosing would be "dying with dignity".

What is Assisted Suicide?

Assisted Suicide is when a person provides an individual with the information, guidance, and means to take his or her own life with the intention that they will be used for this intention.

The act becomes "physician assisted suicide" when the person cooperating with the suicider is a physician. From here on, we will refer to this as "PAS".

If a person freely requests death, why should their request not be honored?

Supporters of assisted suicide argue that the right of a competent patient to make medical treatment decisions should include the right to request and receive assistance with suicide.

There are dangers, however, even when patients are allowed to "freely" request assisted suicide:

• Misunderstanding of Desire to Die:
  • It is often assumed that people want to escape their life because of the physical pain of their disease. While the pain of physical disease is tragic, the specific physical disease does not cause an emotional desire to end life. It is the emotional and mental disease (depression, etc) that comes as a result of a person facing illness and death. In fact, research shows that 93% of those who commit suicide suffer with a mental illness that pushed them to that decision (Barraclough, Bunch, Nelson, & Salisbury, A Hundred Cases of Suicide: Clinical Aspects, 125 BRIT. J. PSYCHIATRY 355, 356 (1976) and E. Robins, THE FINAL MONTHS 12 (1981).)
  • While the physical illness maybe terminal and uncurable, the mental illness can be cured through counseling and other measures. The patient does not need death, then, but assistance in working through the emotional and mental pains of aging and/or terminal illness.
• Misunderstanding & Misdiagnosing Pain: Assisted Suicide is often promoted as a way for people to have an escape from their unavoidable suffering. There are two problems with this:
  • There is no reason, with the technological treatments of pain available today, anyone should not be able to receive treatment for pain, even the most severe. “The better response to patients in pain is not to kill them, but to make sure that the medicine and technology currently available to control pain is used more widely and completely. According to a 1992 manual produced by the Washing ton Medical Association, Pain Management and Care of the Terminal Patient, "adequate interventions exist to control pain in 90 to 99% of patients."
  • Also, pain is often never fully treated because physicians do not diagnose “total pain.” Total pain is the understanding that humans do not just feel pain in the body but in the emotional and mental states as well. Even more, mental and emotional pain may exacerbate physical pain. As Dr. Matthew Conolly states, “Failure to remember this complexity is one of the most common reasons why patients fail to achieve adequate symptomatic relief." (Matthew Conolly, "Alternative to Euthanasia: Pain Management," Issues in Law and Medicine v. 4 (Spring 1989): p. 499.)
• Misdiagnoses: Lets face it...physicians are not perfect and often misdiagnosed. Because of this, an irreversible decision to die could be based on the wrong information. It is very common for people to outlive their physician's timeframe, such being told you had three months to live but you survived for a whole year, or even many years, beyond the diagnoses.
• Deferring to Physician: Patients are strongly influenced by their doctors, and if a doctor recommends PAS, they may believe it is their only option.
• Degrading Role of Physician: Allowing physicians to cooperate in bringing about death would degrade the noble role of physician in society.
• Increase of the Duty to Die: With healthcare prices already high, placing more and more strain on families and hospitals, the acceptance of suicide would increase the "duty to die" among older and terminally ill people. Hospitals would see PAS as the cheap route, and the ill and old, seeing the pressure on their family, would choose suicide as the "respectable and loving" thing to do. The door would be opened to the weighing of the value of life with family troubles and monetary issues.
• Increase of Youth Suicide: Suicide among the youth is a serious and growing problem. If society were to legalize suicide, it would be seen as an acceptable, even noble, action. And nobody wants to see teenagers commit suicide.
• Stunting Life Cycle of Terminally Ill: Reports show that terminally-ill patients go through a number of cycles when approaching death, including a stage of acceptance at the end that provides resolution for the person dying and the family members as well. Suicide, however, stunts this process and leaves family members with unfinished business.
• Slippery Slope: Opening the door to assisted suicide could lead society to accept other destructive actions, such as involuntary euthanasia. Jack Kevorkian, a Michigan doctor who assisted in the deaths of over 130 people, helped people to kill themselves even if they were not dying. In the Netherlands, legalized euthanasia for terminal illness has been followed by recognition that it is “needed” for mental illness. The Netherlands has also extended the euthanasia “right” to newborn infants with disabilities.
• Cannot be Uniformly Implemented: For voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide, the patient is to be judged mentally competent to make the decision. However, with “competence” being a very elusive word, how sure can are we of uniform implementation?

Who opposes legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia?

Opposition to the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide is spread across a spectrum or people and organizations. Many medical and disability rights groups have opposed legalization. For example, The American Medical Association has an official position in opposition to legalization of both physician assisted suicide and euthanasia. Disability rights groups are opposed because they recognize that people with disabilities are potential victims of these practices.

In California, state and national Latino organizations worked with a coalition to defeat the proposed assisted suicide law there.

Right-to-life groups and major church denominations also worked to defeat these measures.