The Right To Die

Dr. Jack Kevorkian's unfortunate recent death has unsurprisingly reinvigorated discussions about end-of-life decisions. This seems an appropriate legacy for a man who knowingly sacrificed years of his life to prison to stimulate discussion about an issue he cared about deeply. As a paragon of dedication to the cause of intellectualism, Kevorkian's work merits thoughtful reflection (and hopefully discussion) here.

In the wake of his passing, Ross Douthat wrote an article praising American society for jailing Kevorkian. "It should make us proud of our country that he would... find himself in prison, where murderers belong." Douthat's position is not uncommon - many people find Kevorkian's work abhorrent. The question is why.

Douthat offers a reframing of the debate about doctor assisted suicide. He claims that free will rather than humanitarianism is the linchpin of the argument. Douthat suggests that "even when death is inevitable and inevitably painful, it is not considered merciful to prescribe an overdose to a cancer victim against her will, or to gently smother a sleeping Alzheimer's patient." I think this is a dangerous statement from Douthat; he conflates ignorance with opposition. In the two examples provided here, the patients have not been consulted. They are ignorant to the fact that someone has thought of ending their lives. This represents a third distinct category from those who have expressed a desire to die and those who have expressed a desire to live. I believe this class of people, especially those who cannot express such desires, merits further consideration. Nevertheless the focus of this piece is on those who express the desire to die.

Douthat seems to think that his reframing of the debate sufficiently demonstrates his point, that doctor assisted suicide is bad. The "not hypothetical slippery slope" envisioned by Douthat is one that would allow MS patients and quadriplegics and manic depressives and "devastated widowers" to affirm a right to die. Why yes, Ross, it would. It seems tremendously silly to think that we have a right to life enshrined int he Declaration of Independence, but we don't have a right to death. In fact, Douthat is suggesting that we don't have a right to life at all; it is an obligation.

Imagine if some of our other rights operated like this. There would be no plea deals in the judicial system - we would be obliged to trial by jury. We would all own firearms. We would have an obligation to freely assemble and to express our views. We would be obligated to petition the government. Evidently, Douthat's argument is that an individual life is not one's own. Life is apparently so valuable that the government can prohibit the choice to end one's own. This raises an interesting scenario in that the government will kill people who don't want to die while prohibiting those who do want to die from taking their own lives.

The ending of one's own life is a serious decision - not one to be taken lightly, and so there could be procedures in place to ensure that people were not doing so indiscriminately. There could be a psychological evaluation required to ensure the patient was not suffering from some treatable mental illness. There could be a waiting period to ensure that the patient had sufficient time to think through this option and all its alternatives.

We live in a society in which the most basic individual right is denied. Is it because taking one's own life is unnatural? Well, so are transplants, surgeries, and medicine. We will extend your life, we will take it for you if you commit heinous crimes, but if you want to end it yourself, you're out of luck. The only thing more ironic would be if the penalty for attempted suicide were death.