Euthanasia: the path to “dignity”???
Often we like the concept of being front-runners, out in front of the pack, on the cutting edge. Washington and Oregon have earned this distinction by virtue of laws permitting assisted suicide. There are now no legal penalties for physicians who prescribe lethal doses of drugs for the purposes of suicide. A Montana judge has ruled that physician-assisted suicide is legal in that state as well. The decision affirms that “Montana constitutional rights of individual privacy and human dignity” grant someone with terminal illness the right to “die with dignity”. When former Attorney General John Ashcroft challenged the Oregon law, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, "He is not authorized to make a rule declaring illegitimate a medical standard for care and treatment of patients that is specifically authorized under state law."
I won’t pretend to hold an unbiased opinion in this matter. Rather, I speak from the perspective of a nurse with 35+ years of experience. During many of these years, I have worked with patients facing terminal illness. And I disagree with Justice Kennedy's suggestion that deliberately taking human life is a “medical standard for care and treatment of patients”. Furthermore, I take issue with the Montana court when it implies that an option for suicide must be offered so that those with terminal illness have the right to “die with dignity”.
I have had the privilege of working with people throughout the spectrum of life: in obstetrics and newborn nursery, with the elderly, and everywhere in between. I have been by the bedside of people coming to grips with the terminal nature of their illness. I have prayed with them, sung to them, and held their hands as they died. There was no shortage of dignity at the bedside of the dying, and to suggest that the path to “dignity” involves killing another human being is just plain wrong.
With regards to this debate, we are faced with many instances where we use euphemisms or deceptive language to disguise the true meaning of our words. So we call it “physician-assisted suicide” or a “medical standard for care and treatment of patients” for a doctor to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs. We call it “dying with dignity” to give in to despair by taking one’s own life. Oregon physicians are legally required to list the cause of death as the terminal illness, not “suicide”. And the organization which is at the forefront of the movement to legalize assisted suicide is called “Compassion & Choices”.
Remember the Hippocratic Oath? This oath has been a hallmark of the physician’s code of ethics since the 4th century. In part, it read “I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone. I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.” But the oath has now been rewritten. There are a couple of versions, but the bottom line is this: doctors no longer pledge such an oath. Rather than promising to “never do harm”, to avoid giving a lethal drug, and not to perform an abortion, the oath now says, “Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.” The full text of this watered-down modern version of the Hippocratic Oath may be found at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/doctors/oath_modern.html.
So now we have an ethical code that has been integral to the practice of medicine since the 4th century B.C. being replaced by “Compassion and Choices.”
Just how “compassionate is it?
Consider the case of Barbara Wagner, an Oregon woman with late-stage cancer. The Oregon Health Plan (their Medicaid program) refused to pay for her physician’s prescription for a novel cancer therapy, instead offering to pay for assisted suicide. To quote Rita Marker, who directs the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, “Once you transform the crime of assisted suicide into a medical treatment, then you set up a situation where those who are paying health care costs are for more likely to approve the least expensive treatment than they are to authorize treatment for something else the patient wants or needs.”
What a shame.
What a terrible, terrible shame.
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