Iowa’s need for the right to die
On March 5, Washington state will begin allowing terminally ill patients to request life-ending medication from their doctors. Iowa should follow suit.
End-of-life decisions are fraught with some of the most complicated issues that anyone has to confront. Thus, any discussion of changing the laws that govern this area is likely to create controversy. But all of the deeply personal pain and grief that surround death is actually the best reason to allow people to make these choices for themselves.
Arguments against legalizing assisted suicide tend to focus on one of two objections. The first is religious in nature. Many people of faith believe it is morally wrong to take one’s own life or help another to do so under any circumstances. The second objection is also a moral argument but centers on the possibility for abuse in a medical system that allows doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to their patients. People who oppose legalizing assisted suicide on such grounds question whether some vulnerable patients might end up being pressured into ending their lives even though they don’t really want to. Some go as far as to assert that allowing assisted suicide would set in motion a slide down a slippery slope, eventually resulting in less respect for the value of human life in society at large.
Purely religious policy arguments are inherently problematic. Though those who subscribe to any particular belief system should be free to live their lives as they see fit, they shouldn’t be allowed to dictate that everyone else abide by the same rules. Because the citizens of states such as Washington and Iowa represent a wide variety of value systems, the legal systems that govern them need to reflect this reality. Appeals to doctrines based on the Christian Bible or any other holy text are only convincing to those who already believe in the authority of those books. The First Amendment of the Constitution clearly forbids any establishment of a state religion, but that’s exactly what making laws justified solely on religious doctrines does. Regardless of how strongly they feel about the matter, people who oppose assisted suicide because they believe it runs counter to their chosen deity’s will simply have to come up with arguments that will appeal to others who do not share their conception of a higher power.
The concern about the terminally ill feeling inappropriate pressure to end their lives is more difficult to counter. However, these worries are in reality more about process than principle. Virtually no one would object to a tightly regulated and closely monitored system being created to ensure that legalizing assisted suicide does not lead to involuntary euthanasia, which is murder. The laws in Washington and Oregon, which has allowed physician-assisted suicide since 1997, provide for such protections. Oregon currently requires and Washington will require strict compliance with detailed monitoring standards that ensure only those who truly want to die will be prescribed fatal medication.
There will always be opposition to physician-assisted suicide. But the best solution is for people who don’t think it’s a good idea to simply not do it. Forcing terminally ill individuals to live month after month either in excruciating pain or under heavy sedation is wrong. Failing to recognize this indicates that a person is more concerned with enforcing his or her personal beliefs in society than with the well-being of others.
The ability to maintain control over one’s own body is at the very core of individual liberty. Insisting that the alleged demands of any sectarian deity ought to override a person’s choice to end his or her own suffering is dangerously disrespectful to the value of personal autonomy. And asserting that the existence of any possibility of wrongdoing under the auspices of legalized assisted suicide justifies a complete ban is also unreasonably extreme. Because the decision to die is undeniably one of the most difficult and personal choices anyone could ever make, people must be allowed to make it for themselves.
