Policy Spotlight: Assisted Suicide

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post discussing the twin issues of abortion and the death penalty, and the liberal hypocrisy inherent in the debates over both. Until just the past couple decades, it was these two issues that primarily made up the pro-life debate, with much of the attention and debate in more recent times focused on the former.

But assisted suicide has been slowly emerging as a third hot-button life issue, particularly since Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted suicide with a narrowly-approved ballot referendum in 1994. Since then, Washington, California, and Vermont have also legalized the practice, with five other states currently considering legalization.

Assisted suicide is less clear-cut, from a strictly conservative/libertarian view, than either abortion or the death penalty. Whereas the former is undeniably the killing of an unborn child, who has done nothing to deserve death, and the latter is the killing of a convicted criminal, who has done everything to deserve it, assisted suicide involves a person choosing to end their own life, and seeking medical help to achieve that end. The only person dying in a scenario of assisted suicide has consciously chosen that fate.

But a key indicator in any debate over a given policy is the words its opponents and detractors use to describe that policy. In the abortion debate, proponents of the measure hate using the word abortion, despite its medical and technical accuracy, and always attempt to shift the focus of the language used to debates over “choice”. When discussing the death penalty, in contrast, both supporters and opponents are not afraid of using the words “death penalty”. That accurately describes the issue, and I’ve yet to hear another term for it gain widespread use by either side.

But in assisted suicide, as in abortion, proponents again attempt to play language games, preferring to use the term “medical aid in dying” whenever possible—this despite the fact that “assisted suicide” is an accurate representation of what exactly takes place. This should be an instant red flag.

There are several serious problems with all assisted suicide proposals, beginning with the fact that, contrary to the assumptions of pro-legalization activists, there is more than one person involved. Nearly all of the individuals who consider suicide have family, friends, or someone in their life that would undoubtedly be hurt by their choosing death as preferable to life. Additionally, doctors participating in assisted suicide would be active participants in a purposeful death—something that strikes at the very core of the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm”, let alone the moral center of many doctors, particularly over an extended period. On libertarian grounds alone, then, assisted suicide manifestly goes beyond a strictly personal choice, harming the fabric of the community as a whole.

Obviously assisted suicide proposals are bad in other ways as well, namely the fact that those who pursue suicide are automatically writing off what could be an extremely beneficial and productive life. Even those diagnosed with terminal cancer or another life-threatening disease have the potential to achieve great things, and many who are only given six months to live by their doctors could in fact continue on for many more years—years easily lost through assisted suicide. And, though proponents of the measure argue that only a very few people will ultimately choose to go through with it, records from Oregon and other states which have legalized assisted suicide show that the number of people choosing to end their life is large, and increasing year by year.

Assisted suicide is a dangerous policy that fundamentally harms the individual, their family, their doctor, and their community as a whole.