If I Should Die Before I Wake, I Pray The Lord My Soul To Take

The terrible deaths made possible by modern medical advances necessitate a change in thinking about the ethics of assisted suicide. These days, despite my conservative nature and my firm support for him on most matters, I seem to be disagreeing with President Bush on several fronts: the Terry Schiavo case, illegal immigration, the pouring of money down the drain in New Orleans, and now, assisted suicide. Over 15 years ago, as I watched my mother’s health and body deteriorate and the likelihood of a very painful death process looming, I turned to the Hemlock Society and purchased the book, “Final Exit” by Derek Humphry. The book was a waste of time, giving no usable advice, and my conversations with her doctor and with my own doctor led nowhere. I concluded that in Rhode Island I could not even discuss the subject of giving her a way out if she were in excruciating pain and dying.

Nowadays, doctors assure me that they have the means to provide a pain-free existence to a person whose body is wasting away from cancer or from some other wasting disease. I think this is generally true, but I think also that there are many situations where either the doctors would be unwilling to provide the drugs in the amounts needed, fearing malpractice lawsuits from the family, where the person’s existence is so degrading that just stopping the pain is not enough, or where the drugs just don’t work. The flip side to the wonders of modern medicine is the prospect of a horrible, lingering death, and we do not even have the blessing of “the old man’s friend” anymore. Last year I got a vaccination that protects me from pneumonia for the rest of my life.

In 1994, the state of Oregon, the only state to do so, voted in favor of the Death With Dignity Act, and three years later they voted against repeal. The Oregon law allows terminally ill patients of sound mind who are likely to die within six months to receive lethal doses of pills after conferring with two doctors. A prescription for lethal drugs is then written by the doctor, and the patients administer the drugs themselves. Despite fears that ill people would flock to Oregon for assisted suicide, in the law's first seven years, only 208 people followed through to the end. When John Ashcroft became attorney general in 2001, he issued an edict that doctors who prescribe drugs that are used to commit suicide can be prosecuted under the federal Controlled Substances Act. The state of Oregon and a group of terminally ill patients challenged this Ashcroft directive and won. The case has now reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Court began hearing arguments in the case on Oct. 5. Supporters of the assisted suicide law say a favorable high court ruling could lead other states to follow Oregon's lead. It is the first major case that new Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative jurist just named by President George W. Bush, has heard since his confirmation late last week.

The Bush administration argues - unsuccessfully so far, in two lower court decisions, - that federal drug-control laws bar doctors from prescribing lethal doses. This case really involves two important issues: the right of terminally ill people to end their lives, and the allocation of power between the federal government and the states.

George Eighmey, executive director of Compassion in Dying of Oregon, a group that advises assisted suicide patients in Oregon, said the law offers terminally ill patients a humane way to end their suffering.

"The law is working well, in the sense that the few individuals who do use it are individuals who are strongly independent; well-educated, financially secure and family-oriented," Eighmey said. "These are people who wish to exit on their own terms."

Opponents include some doctors and religious organizations.
"Assisted suicide is a reversal of the proper role of a doctor as a healer, comforter and consoler to an improper role of the physician causing a patient's death," said Dr. Kenneth Stevens of Physicians for Compassionate Care, a leading opposition group.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has filed briefs in the Supreme Court case, contends that Oregon "is sending a very negative message to sick, elderly and vulnerable patients that their lives are not worth protecting and their suicides are not worth preventing," spokesman Richard Doerflinger said.

M. Charles Bakst, in the Providence Journal on 10/04/05, wrote, “Eli Stutsman, a Portland lawyer who helped write the law, told me this year, ‘The patient decides, and they're making decisions about themselves, and then only in very limited circumstances. There's no allowance in the Oregon law for anybody to make the decision for the patients, and in fact, it's a crime to coerce a patient. It just doesn't happen.’"

There are many activities that are none of the business of the federal government, and traditionally states have had the exclusive right to rule on moral and ethical issues. The Terry Schiavo case showed the wisdom of this philosophy. The federal government should just stay out of the relationship between doctor and patient. I hope no-one I know and love ever needs to have this choice. I hope I never need it, and I would regard each day I could spend with loved ones and friends as precious, no matter what. However, although I don’t think I could do it, I want assisted suicide to be available when that time comes. I also don’t ever again want to read about elderly couples in such dire straights that one kills the other and then themselves with a gun.