Death with Dignity, or So They Say (Guest Post)

 
The glowing picture painted by advocates of assisted suicide is one where the person, being of sound mind, does not want to be a burden on others and chooses death with dignity, instead.  That’s not always the case.  An activist friend of mine recently returned from California where he had gone to visit his “brother and best friend” in the hospital who was suffering from another bout of a chronic disease. The visit began joyfully, with lots of joking and reminiscing.  Hours later, the brother had a stroke (his third) and was sedated.  The brother’s wife – who asserted the legal power to decide his treatment options – instructed that life-saving treatment underway be stopped and all food and water be withdrawn.  He was further sedated with continuous high-dose morphine to suppress the urge to breathe, thus hastening death.  How inconvenient he didn’t die right away. He hung on for more than a day after receiving ‘treatment’ and the ‘careful ministrations’ of his ‘loving’ wife, but he finally succumbed.

It turns out the wife was actually violating his written instructions, my friend discovered later.  Instead of following the brother’s wishes as set out in his healthcare directive, the wife put him down like a dog, my friend told me.  It was euthanasia flying under the banner of assisted suicide.  But who knows how long my friend’s brother might have lived if treatment for his maladies had continued.

Two unsavory motivations were present in the situation:  the wife had remarked that her husband was already dead to her and she was tired of dealing with his medical situation.  Nice payback for all the time and energy he had spent in earlier days caring for her sick mother.  The second motivation was financial:  the sooner his life ended, the more his wife stood to inherit.  But there wasn’t anything anybody felt they could do; she was his designated agent and none of the professionals involved stopped what they were doing long enough to actually look at the document she was waving around.

This is the dirty underside of assisted suicide and euthanasia, meticulously kept out of sight. It includes the fact that old people in the Netherlands are afraid to go to the hospital because they know they will be killed by their doctors, as Charles Krauthammer observed years ago.

“I felt like I was in a Nazi extermination camp,” my friend told me about his experience in California.  He left the hospital before the end, but will never forget how the wind, which had been howling during the killing, paused when his brother passed, then took up once more at the injustice.

What does all this have to do with rhetoric and argumentation?  Colorado became the sixth state to allow ‘medical aid in dying’ in November and D.C.’s recently-passed assisted suicide law is pending Congressional review.  My mother was the best political scientist I ever met. She said, “A society that does not respect life is in trouble.”   The point of this article is to arm you with the facts and highlight the many problems that have arisen from assisted suicide laws so you are better equipped to argue against such laws when the fight comes to your state.

As illustrated above, the first problem is that the law as written does not necessarily resemble the law as applied.  California’s End of Life Option Act, passed in 2015, allows physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients.  In the case described above, however, the patient did NOT request assisted suicide and was NOT terminally ill.  Lots of people live a long time after multiple strokes.  While the timing of when to implement the patient’s wishes can be delegated by power of attorney, the document in this case expressly stated that assisted suicide was NOT requested, at any time.  The document did NOT empower the agent to change the patient’s wishes.  California’s Natural Death Act allows the withdrawal of life support, but ONLY IF the patient previously consented to it.  In this case, the patient did NOT consent.  The patient’s wishes were trampled on by his wife and were completely ignored by the medical professionals involved.  Death with dignity?  Sounds more like murder, to me.  This case provides a powerful example of what can happen under these laws.  They are susceptible to horrible abuse. But how many criminal prosecutions of renegade agents and wrongful death suits against negligent professionals have you ever heard of?

Recent news stories point up still other problems with assisted suicide laws and euthanasia:

• California’s assisted suicide law prompts insurer to send ‘Barbara Wagner’ letter to chemo patient – ‘your treatment is denied, but we’ll pay for your suicide pill ($1.20).’  Legal Insurrection  [Note – Barbara Wagner was a woman in Oregon who received a similar letter in 2008, the first to get widespread publicity.)
• Assisted suicide laws spawn worry of social contagion and greater acceptability of unassisted suicide, though no statistical link has been shown so far.  Washington Times
• Canadian study of government money to be saved through euthanasia naively creates social pressure to die prematurely.  LifeNews.com
• Alcoholic in the Netherlands ends his life by assisted suicide under country’s loose ‘unbearable suffering’ standard. Even looser ‘my life is completed’ standard might be added to the law.  [Editor’s note – we’re a long way from ‘terminal illness’ and ‘unbearable pain’.]  Other problems with the subject overall include doctors’ mistakes in estimating time left to live for terminal patients, and involuntary euthanasia occurring when the person is physically or mentally unable to make the request on their own.  Daily Signal
  

In 2014, Belgium became the first and only country to allow children of any age to choose assisted suicide.  For now, the child must be terminally ill and in constant pain, but how long until these standards get loosened also?  The Left never quits and can be counted on to keep pushing the envelope.   But children are especially vulnerable to social pressure (e.g., cyber-bullying).  They may lack the imagination to see any other way out of their predicament, especially if older people around them are pressuring them to off themselves.  It hardly seems a fair fight.

A leading contender for the next Supreme Court nomination, Neil Gorsuch, wrote a book in 2006 entitled The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. The description says, “Gorsuch builds a nuanced, novel, and powerful moral and legal argument against legalization, one based on a principle that, surprisingly, has largely been overlooked in the debate—the idea that human life is intrinsically valuable and that intentional killing is always wrong.”  Moral absolutes, what a refreshing notion in a world fast succumbing to post-modern gibberish.

There is a group collecting stories of abuse of these laws: “The only way to uncover abuse of the euthanasia law is through family and friends who are willing to share their story. Several stories have already been uncovered. If you are willing to share information about the euthanasia death of a family member or friend please call Compassionate Community Care at: 1-855-675-8749.”

You can also report coercion, medical complications from the procedure, mistaken estimates of time to live, insurers who refuse to pay for life-sustaining treatment, and other problems in assisted suicide cases to the Patients Rights Action Fund.