Death with Dignity

A 66-year old Washingtonian was the first to take her own life under Washington's newly passed Death with Dignity Act. Over the years, arguments have been made both for and against assisted suicide, and personally, I have found it challenging to argue with either side. Closer research reveals, however, that voluntary assisted suicide, as it has been available in Oregon since 1997 and the Netherlands since the 1980s, carries implicit risks for certain parts of the population and might create a slippery slope we will have a hard time clambering back up once we've started scooting toward the bottom.

Overtly, this measure is designed to address the needs and suffering of terminally ill patients. Patients who are expected to have less than six months to live can obtain lethal medication from a medical or osteopathic physician to end their own life. Experts insist that safeguards have been implemented, such as the required, independent assessment by at least two physicians, competence of the patient, mandatory oral requests spaced at least 15 days apart, and an additional request in writing. On paper, this looks like a reasonable and justifiable way to offer suffering people a choice about how and when to end their life.

Reality is what concerns me. Cancer treatments, palliative care, rehabilitation centers, medications, and in-home health care are expensive. Some patients are faced with waiting list to receive said services. Others build up immunity to the strong narcotics they are prescribed for their pain, and their level of discomfort thus increases, demanding stronger and more invasive treatment. Many rely on medical insurance or on relatives to cover the cost of all care provisions. We live in a day and age of bottom lines. At what point does it become more profitable for an insurance company to (subtly and indirectly, of course) support life-ending measures over life-prolonging treatment? At what point do the relatives of a terminally ill loved one wring their hands over unpaid medical bills, superimposed on their emotional pressure, and silently hope it will be over soon? At what point does the patient begin to feel like a burden and seek a faster, maybe even a fiscally more responsible way out?

In the disability community, additional concerns are making waves. People with disabilities often find themselves marginalized, overlooked, unappreciated, and labeled as a burden on society. Eugenics was taught at universities across the country, including WSU, until the early 1960s. Such teachings resulted in forced sterilizations of people with disabilities and lower IQs. If, not too long ago, we supported deliberately curbed propagation control of humans to ease the perceived burden they and their offspring constituted for society, should the implementation of the Death with Dignity Act not cause us to worry just a little?

Disability rights activists have proclaimed for decades that Death with Dignity can neither be appreciated nor embraced unless life has been lived with dignity. For many who barely subsist on the outskirts of society, who are making do with insufficient medical and social benefits, who are not given a chance to become participating members of society, and who face issues of accessibility, exclusion, and social isolation, life may not be worth living. But is that really the best our generation can do?

I am no stranger to the concept of depression and debilitating pain. Two of my close relatives have attempted suicide – one due to emotional challenges in her early twenties and one because of unbearable spinal pain in his eighties. Both felt they were a burden to the people surrounding them and to society. Luckily, neither succeeded. They received treatment for their underlying conditions, and while the causes may not have been eradicated, they were treated successfully enough to ensure continued quality of living. Had my relatives sought physician assistance for these suicide attempts, they may not have failed after all. It saddens me to think about how much life - and joy - they would have missed out on had their attempts at self-induced death been effective.

In the end, assisted suicide is a two-sided coin: a choice and relief for some, an escape and excuse for others. From an ethical standpoint, if one (just one!) person pursues Death with Dignity due to external pressures in their life, an inability to access resources, or because they feel like a burden, then this negates the entire premise of this act. Death with Dignity cannot be utilized as a societal patch to cover up what's missing for many – namely, a dignified life.

Lastly, some food for thought: Can we justify the regulation of such a personal choice with one-size-fits-all legal measures? Should the right to die be a private or a public affair?