Assisted Suicide

What is Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide?

Euthanasia is acting, or not acting, in such a way as to directly and intentionally bring about someone else’s death; whereas assisted suicide is when a person ends their life with the aid or encouragement of another person.

Is Assisted Suicide legal in the United States of America?

Unfortunately, yes, assisted suicide is legal in 12 USA jurisdictions: California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Montana, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.

Why do individuals consider Assisted Suicide?

A common misconception is that individuals choose assisted suicide mostly because of physical pain. In fact, the most cited reason for assisted suicide in Oregon and Washington State is the loss of autonomy, followed by the inability to engage in enjoyable activities and the undignified loss of ability. Each of these reasons, while understandable, is actually a symptom of a greater problem that can be solved in other ways than intentional death.

Suffering is a reality of life that comes and goes, even if it intensifies at the end of life. Medications and palliative care can address the physical pain and discomfort, while presence and accompaniment by caring individuals can help ease the emotional pain of losing one’s autonomy and abilities. It is important to work to alleviate the suffering, not the sufferer. One way to do this is to ask questions like: Are they in physical pain? Are they in emotional pain? Do they feel like a burden? Do they feel worthless, not being able to accomplish much that they used to do with ease? Each of these problems can be addressed by the appropriate medical, psychological and emotional or spiritual treatment.

Can Doctors be wrong about diagnosis and prognosis?

There are stories of patients who survived long past a doctor’s predictions, or who were cured of their illness entirely despite receiving a terminal diagnosis, so it is possible for doctors to miss the mark in their predictions and diagnoses. What patients require is not further assistance ending their lives but help comfortably living out the remainder of their time. This occurs not just through medications, but also through the compassion of those who walk alongside the patient in their time of need.

What is a good alternative to Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia?

The three underlying problems behind a request to be killed rather than await natural death are physical pain, emotional pain, and the realities of death. Palliative care seeks to address all of these problems to ensure a more peaceful passing when the time comes. Also called comfort care, supportive care and symptom management, palliative care aims not to cure but to mitigate the effects of the disease or its treatment by addressing the physical, psychological, social and spiritual problems that result. This enables patients to receive physical and emotional comfort while allowing nature to take its course. This is a truly more compassionate alternative for patients at the end of life because it addresses the underlying problems that prompt people to request assisted suicide in the first place.

Reasons to Oppose Assisted Suicide

There are many reasons why legalizing assisted suicide is a bad and dangerous idea:

1. Financial incentives can corrupt a profit-driven healthcare system. In cases reported in Oregon and California, patients were informed that their health insurance will pay for assisted suicide but not life-sustaining treatment. This represents a possible abuse of a system that sees death as a cost-effective alternative to life.
2. Vulnerable persons are most at risk of abuse. Current assisted suicide laws have no requirements for assessing a patient’s competency, voluntariness and consent, nor do they require oversight of the lethal drugs once they leave the pharmacy. On top of that, assisted suicide laws often allow at least one witness to the request for lethal drugs to be a beneficiary of the patient’s estate. Without a reporting system that guards against potential abuse, persons such as the elderly or those with mental or physical challenges are left vulnerable to the pressures and whims of bad actors.
3. Terminal illness is too broadly defined. Although most assisted suicide laws limit eligibility to terminally ill patients who are expected to die within six months, these laws don’t distinguish between those who are expected to die in six months even with treatment and those who would die in six months without necessary treatments. This would allow patients with treatable diseases, such as diabetes, chronic respiratory or cardiac disease, and those with disabilities requiring ventilator support to obtain lethal drugs on the basis that they will die in six months if untreated. Again, this creates an opening for abuses by the healthcare system, heirs of the patient, and others who might gain by the patient’s death.
4. Pain is not the primary issue for patients. According to 2016 Oregon state reports, 90% of those who sought lethal drugs cited their reason for doing so was because they were “less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable,” and 49% said they felt they were a “burden” to family, friends and caregivers. These reasons do not point to physical pain so much as emotional and spiritual pain, which can be resolved by other means than lethal drugs and suicide.
5. “Impaired judgment” becomes the only standard for treating psychiatric issues. Again in Oregon, the state’s official annual report showed that from 2013–2016, fewer than 4% of those seeking lethal drugs were referred for counseling, out of concern for “impaired judgement” and not specifically to evaluate and treat any underlying depression or anxiety leading the patient to request assisted suicide. These laws appear more focused on protecting institutions from liability than protecting patients from harm.
6. Assisted suicide undermines improvements to palliative care. There are greater financial incentives to promote assisted suicide and euthanasia than there are to promote developments in palliative care through improved research, training and technologies. If the dignity of the human person does not direct the standard of care, the bottom line will, to our detriment.
7. Assisted suicide fosters discrimination. Assisted suicide fosters perverse incentives that lead to unfair discrimination. While most laws exist to prevent harms perpetrated by doctors, insurance companies and pharmaceuticals, assisted suicide laws sanction these harms in the name of compassion, thus protecting the institutions and individuals who would otherwise be held to account. The practice of assisted suicide protects elites from the burden of caring for those in need rather than protecting those in need from the predations of the elite.