Rep. Lois Court didn’t kill her own bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide. That would have been an act of legislative suicide. Rather, it was killed in committee by a majority of opponents. Her bill may be dead for now but the debate lives on.
Whose life is it, anyway? That’s really the fundamental question. Many of those who opposed the bill did so on religious grounds. They believe your life belongs to God, that it’s merely on loan to you in this world en route to eternity. Suicide is deemed a sin in Catholic doctrine. Other, but not all, non-Catholic Christians agree, offering Biblical references condemning suicide as an act of “self-murder.”
As a matter of public policy, debating this on religious grounds isn’t relevant or persuasive to those who aren’t religious or who don’t hold a religious objection to suicide. If you believe you own your life, while there obviously wasn’t anything you could have done to begin it, there can be no more legitimate personal decision than deciding how to end it if you judge it has lost all quality. One can respect the religious beliefs of those opposed to suicide who would not end their own earthly lives that way. But why should that empower them to impose their religious beliefs on others?
A letter-to-the-editor by a critic of Court’s bill pointed to her father’s agony during months of suffering from a terminal illness, which she cited as an important lesson in learning “patience through the difficulties of life.” By that reckoning ─(I can’t call it reasoning) ─a few months of torture at the hands of ISIS butchers would make for an even better lesson as you looked forward to a merciful beheading at the end.
Although rarely enforced, there was a time in this country when state laws treated suicide as a felony. If successful, punishment would be redundant. And imposing the death penalty for a botched suicide attempt would seem contradictory as well as ironic.
Court’s “Death with Dignity” bill would not have imposed any ethical dilemma on doctors. Only docs who were sympathetic to this option would participate. And the bill contained a number of safeguards.
One opponent argued that the bill was unnecessary since you can already kill yourself without a doctor’s help. But for those confined to a hospital bed with a debilitating condition, that may not be doable. And if you’re home and ambulatory, it still poses some unattractive and “undignified” choices about how to go about it. A gun? Too messy. Hanging? Too painful. Jumping from the roof? Afraid of heights. An overdose of pills could fail and just make your suffering worse. An effective and painless prescription from a willing physician seems much more civilized.
Wouldn’t most of us, when our time comes, prefer to die peacefully in our sleep like our uncle Harry, not yelling and screaming like the people on the bus he was driving?
It’s true that some people not suffering from a terminal condition attempt suicide because they’re clinically depressed. Under this bill, no doctor would assist them. Bad things happen in life that cause rational people with no mental illness to be depressed for good reason. Very few commit suicide. But that’s the ultimate personal choice. German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel comes to mind. He had incurred Hitler’s wrath and faced certain death for treason. To save his family, under duress he took poison pills.
How about this? Otherwise in good health, suppose you permanently lost your sight and your hearing. Would it be irrational to choose to end your life? Food for thought.
Freelance columnist Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 1-3 p.m. on 850-KOA.
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