Legalized assisted suicide grants medical professionals, death-dealing authority; this in turn results in irreparable damage to the doctor-patient relationship. Introducing death as a medical treatment option that can be offered by health care professionals transforms a trusted profession that has been solely dedicated to healing for millennia. It is because of this dedication to healing that doctors have enjoyed such respect and trust from their patients and society as a whole. The idea that government can give death-dealing power to certain individuals means that they can also enforce and regulate it. With an already broken healthcare system plagued with a spending problem, it is not difficult to imagine that assisted suicide will be an easy “fix” to our spending problem and legitimate treatment options will be refused.
In an attempt to limit who “qualifies” for assisted suicide, the legislation states that an individual must have been given a prognosis of six months or less left to live. All doctors who deal with terminal illnesses on a regular basis will tell you that these prognoses are an educated guess at best. It is dangerous and irresponsible to allow patients who have received such a prognosis (and who may be disoriented and vulnerable) to make lethal decisions based upon a “guess.”
Legalized assisted suicide will likely lead to poorer healthcare and increased pressure on the sick, the elderly, the disabled, and the traumatically injured. Those who advocate for the physically and mentally disabled have good reason to fear that pressure will be applied to euthanize the disabled and those who have been in traumatic accidents. As the concept of “a life not worth living” grows, and as the idea gains traction that disability (even milder forms) is a fate worse than death, those who struggle with disability may well be easy targets for those who advise suicide. Some may feel pressured to no longer be a “burden.” Many will have the sense of their dignity being lessened.
Granting individuals the right to end their life ultimately threatens us all because it implicitly denies the dignity of the dying. Failing to understand this dignity will lead to poorer care and will increase pressure on the elderly and dying to end their lives prematurely so that they are no longer a burden.
In other words, the “right to die” too easily becomes the “duty to die.” What begins sociologically through pressure not to be a burden, soon enough becomes economically necessary because insurance benefits may vanish. And one can’t ignore the possibility of eventual legal pressure. The experience in the Netherlands is particularly sobering.
>>In other words, the “right to die” too easily becomes the “duty to die.”<<
“Slippery slope” arguments are specious. With or without a law allowing legally assisted suicides such pressures (which I have yet to see scientifically verified and tabulated) would just as easily still be equally present.
I dare say no more on this subject so I leave that for all to consider.
Sometimes people live much longer than their prognosis. I worry that doctors that have to make decisions based on guidelines mandated to them by administrators, like Kaiser for example, will have to give the six month prognosis much more often, and encourage the end of life option. Think how much money they will save!