LifeLink: Euthanasia: Devaluing Human Life

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April 2007

Euthanasia is a growing problem in the United States and across the world.  Physician-assisted suicide was legalized in Oregon in 1994 (and later implemented in 1997), introducing sanctioned euthanasia to the United States.  Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide have long been practiced without legal consequence in the Netherlands—even though euthanasia was not officially permitted until just a few years ago.  Documented cases already exist in the Netherlands where doctors have escaped jail time for non-voluntary euthanasia after being acquitted by the court system. 

Right-to-Die groups have realized that accepting and promoting suicide is not acceptable to most of the American public.  Their new focus, then, is to euphemize the term “physician-assisted suicide,” which has become “physician-assisted dying” or “aid in dying.”  They are also aiming to convince leading medical organizations to take positions of “studied neutrality,” which means that they are not supporting or opposing physician-assisted suicide.  Unfortunately, many organizations have already accepted this deconstruction of language. 

The American Public Health Association (APHA) has urged educators, policy-makers, health care providers, and journalists to adopt the terms “aid-in-dying” or “patient-directed dying.”  If this language is confirmed by the APHA governing council in 2007, then the language will become official.  Also, the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Physicians has “gone neutral” on assisted suicide and has taken a position of “studied neutrality.”  Those workers who should be ensuring that American citizens are receiving proper pain control and emotional support at the end of their lives are not taking any stance against the uncaring act of assisted suicide.     

Definitions

Euthanasia:  the killing of a patient (usually by his/her doctor) in the belief that death will be a benefit.

• Voluntary euthanasia:  the killing of a person at his/her request.
• Physician-assisted suicide:  the act of a physician giving a patient a lethal drug prescription knowing that the patient intends to use the drug to commit suicide. 
• Non-voluntary euthanasia:  the killing of a person who has never made any determinations known regarding euthanasia. 
• Involuntary euthanasia: the killing of a person who has requested not to be euthanized.

End of Life Concerns

1. A request for assisted suicide is typically a cry for help.  Counseling, assistance, and positive alternatives, and symptom management are better solutions for very real problems. 

2. Suicidal intent is typically transient.  Of those who attempt suicide but are stopped, less than 4% attempt to kill themselves in the next five years; less than 11% will commit suicide over the next 35 years.

3. Terminally ill patients who desire death are depressed, and depression is treatable in those with a terminal illness.  In one study, of the 24% of terminally ill patients who desired death, all had clinical depression.  Once depression is adequately treated in terminal patients, their suicidal thoughts subside substantially.

4. Pain is controllable.  Modern medicine has the ability to control pain.  Killing oneself is not a way to end intense pain; a doctor better trained in palliative care is the solution.

5. In the U.S., legalizing voluntary active euthanasia [assisting suicide] means legalizing non-voluntary euthanasia.  State courts have ruled time and again that if competent people have a right, the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment requires that incompetent people be "given" the same "right."

6. In the Netherlands, legalizing voluntary assisted suicide for those with terminal illness has spread to include non-voluntary euthanasia for many who have no terminal illnesses.  Half of the killings in the Netherlands are now non-voluntary, and the problems for which death is now the legal "solution" include mental illness, permanent disability, and even simple old age.

7. Problems are not solved by killing the people with health problems.  The more difficult but humane solution to human suffering is to address the problems directly.

(Source: National Right to Life)

“We must be wary of those who are too willing to end the lives of the elderly and the ill.  If we ever decide that a poor quality of life justifies ending that life, we have taken a step down a slippery slope that places all of us in danger…  I believe ‘euthanasia’ lies outside the commonly held life-centered values of the West and cannot be allowed without incurring great social and personal tragedy.  This is not merely an intellectual conundrum.  This issue involves actual human beings at risk.”

 -- C. Everett Koop, M.D.