Euthanasia or the Right to Die
We live in an age of medicine filled with technological wonders – and difficulties. Medical technology has given us the power to extend the lives of patients whose physical capacity and mental faculties cannot be restored, whose degenerating state of health cannot be reversed, and whose pain cannot be relieved. This has led us not only to a moral and ethical struggle between proponents of euthanasia, also known as physician-assisted suicide or the right to die, and those who oppose it, but also to a history of legal decisions that have come to determine our rights to liberty – and life itself.
At the heart of the controversy surrounding euthanasia is whether, once born, an individual has a fundamental right to his or her own life – can he choose not only how he wants to live, but also when and how he wants to die? In its 1996 Amicus Brief in Vacco v. Quill (ProCon.org, 2012), the American Civil Liberties Union says, "The right of a competent, terminally ill person to avoid excruciating pain and embrace a timely and dignified death bears the sanction of history and is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” Supreme Court Chief Justice Rehnquist, however, in its 1997 decision (also in ProCon.org, 2012) on Washington, et al, Petitioners v. Harold Gluckberg et al. claims otherwise in his written opinion: "The history of the law's treatment of assisted suicide in this country has been and continues to be one of the rejection of nearly all efforts to permit it. That being the case, our decisions lead us to conclude that the asserted 'right' to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause [of the 14th Amendment]." This federal court ruling left the option of legalizing euthanasia up to the individual states.
While rejecting the “right” to euthanasia, the Court also noted that “Public concern and democratic action are sharply focused on how best to protect dignity and independence at the end of life, with the result that there have been many significant changes in state laws and in the attitudes these laws reflect. Many States, for example, now permit "living wills," surrogate health care decisionmaking, and the withdrawal or refusal of life sustaining medical treatment. [See Vacco v. Quill, post, at 9-11; 79 F. 3d, at 818-820; People v. Kevorkian, 447 Mich. 436, 478-480, and nn. 53-56, 527 N. W. 2d 714, 731-732, and nn. 53-56 (1994).] At the same time, however, voters and legislators continue for the most part to reaffirm their States' prohibitions on assisting suicide.” This view of the public’s opinion holds true, as to date, only two of the fifty states, Washington and Oregon, have laws permitting physician-assisted suicide, or PAS.
A third case of note, especially because it affects the euthanasia-permitting state of Oregon, is Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U.S. 243 (2006) (U.S. Supreme Court, 2006). The Oregon Death with Dignity Act grants both civil and criminal immunity to doctors who either prescribe or dispense a lethal drug to a patient who is terminally ill and who requests them to do so. Nevertheless, in 2001, the U.S. attorney general claimed that physicians using controlled substances to assist in patients’ suicides were not engaged in a “legitimate medical purpose” and that those actions were therefore not permissible under the federal Controlled Substance Act (CSA). The State of Oregon challenged his Interpretive Rule, and the case went to the Supreme Court. After due consideration, the Court ruled that the attorney general could not ban physicians under the CSA from prescribing federally regulated drugs for PAS use in a state that permitted them to do so, again affirming the role of the states in establishing the laws governing end of life issues. It further claimed that “the legislative intent of the CSA was to regulate medical practice only insofar as it bars physicians from using their prescription writing powers as a means to engage in illicit drug dealing and trafficking.” As a result, Oregon could continue to allow physicians to assist in euthanasia for the terminally ill.
Clearly, this is not a simple issue, and there are no convenient solutions. While, as part of a representative democracy, we are bound by the laws set down by the courts and our legislators, we are also bound by our personal morals and ethical obligations, and there are people who sit on both sides of the fence. Some claim that euthanasia has less to do with the rights of the person who wants to die than it does about the people around him, those whose real motive is to change the law and public policy to allow doctors and relatives to end someone else’s life. Yet others say that every person has a moral right to choose what they will or will not do with their own lives, up to and including when to end them, so long as they do not hurt others in the process. They also feel an obligation to relieve the suffering of others and respect their right to die with dignity.
The problem is further compounded when, in the case of states that permit living wills and advanced directives, patients fail to prepare themselves and their families adequately for a situation in which they might end up – for example, not informing relatives or friends what measures they would want put in place if they were to fall into a coma or remain in a persistent vegetative state before that situation arises. The family, then, is forced to guess the individual’s intent, and they often find themselves in conflict with the law as it stands in their state or within the scope of the federal government.
Despite many of the rulings mentioned here, I do believe that we have a fundamental right to determine our own fate, including the time and place of our death if we should become terminally ill or in unrelenting, excruciating pain. We do not want to suffer, nor do we want to watch members of our family suffer when there is an option that will end our lives with dignity. If we have a moral obligation to protect life, we should have an equally sound moral obligation to end life when it becomes unbearable. To that end, as democratic citizens, we must speak out and make ourselves heard by those who govern us and who enact our laws.
References
Euthanasia. (2012). ProCon.org. Retrieved from http://euthanasia.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000126
U.S. Supreme Court (2006). Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U.S. 243 (2006) in Court Cases – Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia. Retrieved from http://www.wrtl.org/legislation/courtcases/assistedsuicide.aspx
