The Life and Death Choice

Bush asks appeals court to kill Ore. assisted-suicide law

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Bush administration asked a federal appeals court Monday to strike down Oregon's assisted-suicide law as counter to U.S. drug law. Attorney General John Ashcroft is seeking to sanction and perhaps hold Oregon doctors criminally liable if they prescribe lethal doses of medication under the Oregon measure, the only such law in the nation.

The Oregon law, approved by voters in 1994 and 1997, allows the terminally ill to obtain a lethal dose of drugs if they have less than six months to live and are mentally competent to make the request. Patients must take the fatal dose by themselves.

I've long found the Bush administration's and John Ashcroft's objections to the Oregon assisted-suicide law rather ironic, since the Republican part is typically the one that favours states' rights and purports to want to keep federal interference at a minimum.  Yet, here is a law that was approved by the state's voters not only once, but twice, which would indicate a fair amount of support for the measure.

Here's the administration, however, trying to get the law struck down, and the Justice department wanting to penalize doctors who provide aid to terminally ill people who simply want to get it over with. I suppose part of why this bothers me - aside from it going against the usual and oft-state preference for letting the state's manage their own business - is that I have a hard time understand what there is to be gained from forcing people who are dying, have no realistic or reasonable chance of recovery, are of sound mind and want to be able to meet with death on their own terms.

The benefits of self-directed euthinasia are fairly obvious: the individual is empowered to deal with their life - and the end of it - on their own terms; the family is able to be with the individual, to say their goodbyes, to know that their loved one is at peace with death and to know that their passing was reasonably pain-free; lowered medical costs as no further long-term care is needed (something that can actually benefit others beyond just the family, as the less insurance companies have to pay for such long-term care, the less they have to raise insurance costs); and additional hospital beds and life-sustaining equipment made available for people who may only need it in the short-term and then return to their own lives.

To some, the inclusion of hospitalization and insurance costs as well as equipment usage may seem a bit callous, but they are valid issues to incude in reviewing the situation.  Granted, you would probably need quite a few people choosing assisted-suicide to have a noticable impact, but right now we have no way of really knowing how many people might choose that option if they really did have that option available to them.  To paraphrase the old saying - a thousand dollers here, a few thousand there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

There's another bit of irony here - not so much because of the government's position, but just looking at the issue of controlling insurance costs in general.  Recently, we've seen states going after tobacco companies because the use of their products is believed to cause health problems, and those problems cost insurance companies - along with the state-funded Medicaid programs - a lot of money to treat.  In just the last few months, we've seen people trying to challenge fast food companies over the damage their products do to individuals, and there is a great deal of talk that some states may also get involved in going after food companies, again, because of the increased costs of caring for people who have become ill from eating too much "bad" food.  Most states now have laws requiring the use of seat belts and new cars must have air bags build in, because the costs of long term care resulting from injuries sustaine in a car wreck add to the already heavy insurance and Medicaid costs.

Yet when people - any number of which may be dying because they were smokers, ate the wrong foods or were severely injured in a wreck - want to put an end to their lives, there are scores of people, groups and agencies (not to mention the Presidential administration and Justice department) who feel they should not be allowed to do so.  They take this stand in spite of the humanitarian reasons for allowing assisted suicide, and they take it in spite of the financial reasons for allowing it.

Most will say that they oppose it because they feel that all life is sacred.  And I can, to an extent, understand that.  The problem I have is that in the kind of cases where assisted suicide would be allowed, the life is nearly gone as it is.  What is gained by insisting someone live another six months or so in a body filled with pain, watching themselves wither away - knowing and seeing how difficult this is for their family, and wishing desparately they could escape?  That's not preserving life, in my opinion, that's more of a perversion of it.