EUTHANASIA AND ASSISTED SUICIDE
Margaret Somerville
For millennia, euthanasia
(a word I use to include assisted suicide) has been considered morally
and legally unjustifiable. People who oppose euthanasia still believe
it's inherently wrong it can't be morally justified and even compassionate
motives don't make it ethically acceptable.
But what are the attitudes of pro-euthanasia advocates regarding whether
its use needs to be justified, were it to be legalized? And, if justifications
are required, what are they?
People who would accept euthanasia, but only in some circumstances, usually
limit its access to people who are
terminally ill, in serious unrelievable pain and suffering, and require
that euthanasia be used as a last resort. These
limitations show these people believe each case of euthanasia needs moral
justification to be ethically acceptable.
But although the need for euthanasia to relieve pain and suffering is
the justification given, and the one the public accepts in supporting
its legalization, research shows that dying people request euthanasia
far more frequently because of fear of social isolation and of being a
burden on others, than pain. So, should avoiding loneliness or being a
burden count as a sufficient justification?
Recently, some pro-euthanasia advocates have gone further, arguing that
respect for people's rights to autonomy and self-determination means competent
adults have a right to die at a time of their choosing, and the state
has no right to prevent them from doing so. In other words, if euthanasia
were legalized, the state has no right to require a justification for
its use by competent, freely consenting adults.
For example, they believe an elderly couple, where the husband is seriously
ill and the wife healthy, should be allowed
to carry out their suicide pact. As Ruth von Fuchs, head of the Right
to Die Society of Canada, stated, life is not an obligation.
But although Ms. von Fuchs thought the wife should have an unfettered
right to assisted suicide, she argued that it would allow her to avoid
the suffering, grief and loneliness associated with losing her husband
that is,
she articulated a justification.
We can see this same trend toward not requiring a justification
or, at least, nothing more than that's what a competent person over a
certain age wants to do in the Netherlands. This year a group of
older Dutch academics and politicians launched a petition in support of
assisted suicide for the over-70s who consider their lives complete
and want to die. They quickly attracted more than 100,000 signatures,
far more than needed to get the issue debated in parliament under citizens'
initiative legislation.
And what about avoiding health-care costs as a justification? Although
this question has largely been dodged one
could say religiously by pro-euthanasia advocates,
euthanasia could be used as a cost-saving measure, and is likely to be
if legalized.
Half of the lifetime health-care costs of the average person are incurred
in the last six months of the person's life. Euthanasia would be a way
to implement a reasonably well or dead approach sometimes
referred to as squaring the curve of health decline at the
end of life, so the person drops precipitously from being reasonably well
to dead
which would avoid those costs.
The medical authority of the U.S. state of Oregon where physician-assisted
suicide is legal seems to have adopted this approach. Shortly before
he died this month, Montreal journalist Hugh Anderson wrote in The Gazette
that Oregon has acknowledged that when it turns down an application
to cover the cost of an expensive new drug, it sends out simultaneously
a reminder that the state's assisted suicide program is available at an
affordable cost. As Mr. Anderson noted, What a great way to
put a crimp in medical costs. Have the patients kill themselves when the
cost of keeping us alive gets too high.
The Netherlands' 30-year experience with euthanasia shows clearly the
rapid expansion, in practice, of what is seen as an acceptable justification
for euthanasia. Initially, euthanasia was limited to terminally ill, competent
adults, with unrelievable pain and suffering, who repeatedly asked for
euthanasia and gave their informed consent to it. Now, none of those requirements
necessarily applies, in some cases not even in theory and, in others,
not in practice.
For instance, parents of severely disabled babies can request euthanasia
for them, 12 to 16-year-olds can obtain euthanasia with parental consent
and those over 16 can give their own consent. More than 500 deaths a year,
where the adult was incompetent or consent not obtained, result from euthanasia.
And late middle-aged men (a group at increased risk for suicide) may be
using it as a substitute for suicide.
Indeed, one of the people responsible for shepherding through the legislation
legalizing euthanasia in the Netherlands
recently admitted publicly that doing so had been a serious mistake, because,
he said, once legalized, euthanasia cannot be controlled. In other words,
justifications for it expand greatly, even to the extent that simply a
personal preference to be dead will suffice.
Legalizing euthanasia causes death and dying to lose the moral context
within which they must be viewed. Maintaining
that moral context is crucial in light of an aging population and scarce
and increasingly expensive health-care resources, which will present us
with increasingly difficult ethical decisions.
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