The Case for Assited Suicide
Teddy Kulmala
Issue date: 1/24/10 Section: News and Opinion
Euthanasia. Physician-assisted suicide. Mercy killing. They all mean the same thing: allowing a person suffering intolerable conditions to choose to end their own life. And they all evoke a host of negative connotations, from the Religious Right's claims that only God should decide life and death, to the publicized battle over Terry Schiavo's bed-ridden life, and prolonged death. The debate over allowing a terminally ill patient to end their own life with the help of a physician has become a clash of morals versus ethics, charged by religious conviction, patient rights, and physician responsibilities.
In the United States, the act of committing suicide or attempting to commit suicide is not a criminal offense, but helping someone commit suicide is considered criminal. Only three states-Oregon, Montana and Washington-allow physicians to administer lethal doses of prescription medication to end a patient's chronic pain and suffering. Like abortion, this is unpleasant to think about, but is of the essence when you're dealing with human life.
This entire debate can be summed up in the words of the title of a 1981 movie starring Richard Dreyfuss: "Whose Life Is It Anyway?" In this film, Dreyfuss plays an artist who becomes paralyzed from the neck down following a car accident. It follows his turmoil over the loss of his quality of life and his grim realization that it was no longer worth living. The conundrum posed to society is just that: Does a sane, competent individual have the right to make a totally sound decision that life has become too painful, too limiting? Maybe the patient's friends and family are also suffering by seeing the deterioration of their loved one. Or, maybe the patient realizes that his special condition places too much of a burden on his loved ones. Shouldn't a person be able to decide when enough is enough? Our government doesn't think so.
Conservative Christians say that we must respect the sanctity of human life and that only God can decide when a person lives and when they die.
In the United States, the act of committing suicide or attempting to commit suicide is not a criminal offense, but helping someone commit suicide is considered criminal. Only three states-Oregon, Montana and Washington-allow physicians to administer lethal doses of prescription medication to end a patient's chronic pain and suffering. Like abortion, this is unpleasant to think about, but is of the essence when you're dealing with human life.
This entire debate can be summed up in the words of the title of a 1981 movie starring Richard Dreyfuss: "Whose Life Is It Anyway?" In this film, Dreyfuss plays an artist who becomes paralyzed from the neck down following a car accident. It follows his turmoil over the loss of his quality of life and his grim realization that it was no longer worth living. The conundrum posed to society is just that: Does a sane, competent individual have the right to make a totally sound decision that life has become too painful, too limiting? Maybe the patient's friends and family are also suffering by seeing the deterioration of their loved one. Or, maybe the patient realizes that his special condition places too much of a burden on his loved ones. Shouldn't a person be able to decide when enough is enough? Our government doesn't think so.
Conservative Christians say that we must respect the sanctity of human life and that only God can decide when a person lives and when they die.
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