Switzerland Wrongly Pushes Assisted Suicide for Mentally Ill Patients

LIfe News ^ | 02.19.07 | Wesley J. Smith, Esq.

[Coleus]

LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. Visit his web blog at http://www.wesleyjsmith.com.

The Swiss Supreme Court recently ruled that people with mental illnesses can be legally assisted in suicide. The case came about when a member of Dignitas, an organization, which, for a fee, provides a safe house for—and assistance with—suicide, brought a lawsuit seeking the right to die.   The man does not have cancer, AIDS or other physical illness, as that term is popularly understood. Rather, he is depressed from bipolar disease. But this did not prevent the court from giving its imprimatur to his assisted suicide.

According to the International Herald Tribune, the Swiss high court ruled, "It must be recognized that an incurable, permanent, serious mental disorder can cause similar suffering as a physical (disorder), making life appear unbearable to the patient in the long term."   No one should be surprised by the Swiss ruling.   The two weight-bearing ideological pillars of euthanasia/assisted suicide advocacy—a radical individualistic notion of "self ownership" and the deemed propriety of killing as an acceptable answer to the problem of human suffering—virtually compel this result. After all, many people suffer more intensely and for far longer than people who are dying. And, if "choice" is the be all and end all of personal freedom, then who can gainsay a suffering person's decision to die? Hence, rather than being a radical extension of assisted suicide ideology, the Swiss court decision is simply its logical outcome.

Indeed, the Swiss court is not the first to issue such a ruling. More than ten years ago, the Dutch Supreme Court reached a strikingly similar conclusion in a decision interpreting the parameters of the Netherlands' euthanasia program.  The case involved the 1991 assisted suicide of a depressed woman named Hilly Bosscher. After Bosscher's two sons died, she became obsessed about being buried between them. She approached the Dutch psychiatrist Boutdewijn Chabot, an assisted suicide advocate, seeking his help in killing herself.    Chabot met with her on four occasions, but did not attempt treatment. Instead, believing that she would never improve, he assisted Bosscher's suicide. The Dutch Supreme Court subsequently approved, finding, like the Swiss court after it, that the law cannot distinguish between suffering caused by physical illness and that caused by mental anguish.

These European cases are consistent with ongoing advocacy among some American mental health professionals for the recognition of what is called "rational suicide" or "permitted suicide." Under this view, if a patient is deemed by a psychiatrist or psychologist to suffer from a "hopeless illness," and if the patient has a sustained desire to die, the mental health professional is not duty-bound to engage in suicide prevention, and indeed, may even be permitted to facilitate a patient's demise.   This begs the question: What is a hopeless illness? The term has been defined broadly in mental health literature as "including but limited to people with:

Terminal illnesses, [maladies causing] severe physical and/or psychological pain, physically or mentally debilitating and/or deteriorating conditions, and circumstances where [the] quality of life [is] no longer acceptable to the individual."

We can thus see that rational suicide advocates seek to implement a policy of suicide permissiveness. After all, "severe physical or psychological pain" could include almost any sustained illness, injury, or emotional malady; from multiple sclerosis to chronic migraine headache, from clinical depression to schizophrenia, from rheumatoid arthritis to cancer. Indeed, hopeless illness could even be reasonably interpreted to apply to almost anyone with more than a transitory desire to die, since by definition, a suicidal person believes that his or her "life is no longer acceptable."  For political reasons, savvy euthanasia advocates, aided and abetted by the media, continue to pretend that "the right to die" is about last resort "escape valves" for the dying few (which would be wrong in any event). A few may even believe it. But the evidence demonstrates that the ideology of "death with dignity" leads inexorably to "death on demand."

[NoGrayZone]

Ummmmm, hi. I woke this morning to find a wrinkle. I would like to partake in your assisted suicide program....No no, please, you cannot talk me out of it. I'm very depressed about this wrinkle. Kill me now!

[NY Attitude]

I hear you. Unfortunately, when laws like this are passed it sets a very dangerous precedent. It then becomes a routine matter for those that do the selection. The SS used to select people for the gas chamber on looks as well as ethnicity.

[VeritatisSplendor]

I look at it another way - for something to be urged or mandated, it first has to be established as a good. The euthanasia forces are on the way with that.

Mrs VS

[NoGrayZone]

Looks like it's making a comeback!!

[NY Attitude]

I am afraid that you are correct. Next thing you know we will be poking our fingers and rubbing blood into our cheeks to make us look healthier.

Or, letting our hair grow super long and pulling it really tight to remove any facial wrinkles.

[-YYZ-]

You may be right. I just don't agree that it is inherently immoral or selfish for one to commit suicide. Not that I can imagine many circumstances where it is not a selfish act, as so many suicides result in someone being traumatised by finding the body, and it invariably causes great distress to family and friends.

I do see the slippery slope from permitting assisted suicide, to encouraging it for some, to actually mandating it, ie euthanasia. I've read that in the Netherlands many elderly people feel pressured to kill themselves to remove "the burden" on family and friends. It's certainly a complicated issue. I can certainly imagine circumstances where I might not want to go on living. If I couldn't do it myself, then what?

[NoGrayZone]

Or, letting our hair grow super long and pulling it really tight to remove any facial wrinkles.....

Oh my, I feel a headache coming on!

[8mmMauser]

Pinged from Terri Dailies

8mm

[Lurker]

If I don't own my body, who does?

These folks would say God does I believe.

I would suggest that the opposite viewpoint, that my person belongs to "society", is the radical one.

I would concur in that.

If society owns me, than they can just as easily decide I should be dead as they can insist that I stay alive.

That's why we've got to be constantly on guard against anyone who says that you don't own yourself.

L