Physician Assisted Suicide
Many voters throughout the United States are taking the measure to legalize physician assisted suicide to the polls. If it is legalized, the United States will have legalized a much quicker, more humane method(as opposed to terminal sedation) of ending the suffering of terminally ill patients. The only legal process of this sort in the United States is terminal sedation, a method that can oftentimes add to a patient's problems. Although Oregon is the only state to have successfully passed such a bill for the legalization of physician assisted suicide, the pressure to confront this issue is growing along with the movement for legalization. Opponents of the Oregon bill, mostly Christian conservative groups, are planning to appeal this case to the Supreme Court in hopes of a reversal of the Oregon Supreme Court's decision. Though the emotional battle of physician assisted suicide is the prerogative of voters on both sides of the issue, the fundamental question that will have to be answered by the Courts is whether or not the liberty observed by the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment contains a right to perform suicide, which itself includes a right to assistance in doing so. This clause states, "No State shall make
In order to constitutionally create a previously unspecified "right" the Supreme Court must conclude that such a "right " is either deeply rooted into the nation's history and tradition, or is fundamental to sustaining the liberty provided in the Constitution. The court should also have a very specific description of what is to be entailed within this "right". The difficulty in arguing for assisted suicide is that since the justification for assisted suicide is not historical or necessary for ordered liberty, the state must only prove that assisted suicide is within the perimeters of exercising what is best for the nation as a whole. The Supreme Court has earlier stated that, "This requirement is unquestionably me here," citing as concerns: preserving human life; preventing suicide; protecting the integrity and the ethics of the medical profession; protecting vulnerable groups from abuse, neglect, and mistakes; and preventing a start "down the path to voluntary and perhaps even involuntary euthanasia." (Annas, 1100) The possibility of legalization is, however, still quite probable, especially as one uses the Dutch government as an example, where physician assisted suicide is illegal but not prosecutable if executed under certain specified legal guidelines. Another such case was that of Quill v. Vacco, which in the opinion of the second circuit of appeals, stated that New York's regulations against physician assisted suicide were unconstitutional when applied to terminally ill patients who are not sustained by life-support systems, because the laws do not accommodate these patients with balanced protection. In this case the court drew strong distinctions between what could and could not be considered when addressing the issue of physician assisted suicide. The court officially stated that patients connected to life-support systems can withdraw treatment and bring about their deaths, however, patients who are not connected to life-support systems are unable to exercise the same legal right to hasten their own death. The Quill case represents a preliminary example of the courts handling of terminal sedation. As it stands now, patients have the right to be sedated for the relief of pain, but once sedated, they would lose the right to have nutrition and hydration withheld or withdrawn. Now that the courts have essentially left open a back door for the perpetuation of terminal sedation, many have abandoned the movement for legalized assisted suicide. However the distinctions between the two cases are more symbolic than factual, and the hazards posed by terminal sedation far outweigh those which would be posed by physician assisted suicide. The hazards and indignities imposed by terminal sedation are still fundamentally unnecessary when one looks to assisted suicide for comparison. Terminal sedation serves fewer of the purposes of a "right to die" law than assisted suicide or euthanasia. And although terminal sedation ensures a painless death, it forces patients to accept a dying process that is prolonged when compared with what it would be in the instance of assisted suicide or euthanasia. Terminal sedation requires that patients linger in a condition that may profoundly compromise their dignity as well as destroy the memory they would choose to leave behind. Terminal sedation also prevents patients from maintaining control over when and how they will die. Essentially terminal sedation is not giving solution to these Suicide," The New England Journal of Medicine. 337, 1997, 1236. Terminal sedation is the introduction of a barbiturate-induced coma, followed by the withdrawal
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Approximate Word count = 2444
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)
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