Even in tough situations, assisted suicide isn’t the answer

I am writing in response to the recent letter by Marcia Wolter on physician-assisted suicide. It seems to me that her frustration was misdirected. To be in her situation watching her father suffer would have been terribly difficult, but the true cause of the problem was the nurse not agreeing to provide him with enough medication to get him out of pain, not a law barring a physician from euthanizing him. What Ms. Wolter may not realize is that the problem of physician-assisted suicide is becoming more urgent than we may think.

The statistics on euthanasia in our world have lately grown very disturbing. In countries that have legalized euthanasia, the number of cases that have resorted to this practice is sharply growing each year. For example, according to a report released by the Dutch media, the number of reported euthanasia deaths has increased by 13 percent from 2008 to 2009. This figure does not include the number of assisted suicide deaths and deaths without explicit request or consent.  A 2007 report showed that up to 10 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands were by sedation and dehydration. This snowball effect of euthanasia is not only displayed by the growing number of deaths but also by the alarming shift of circumstances surrounding the euthanasia.

A recent study in which an anthropologist interviewed physicians involved in assisted suicide found that often the “decision to go ahead with euthanasia was made by the physician.” Furthermore, lobbyists for legalizing euthanasia in counties such as the Netherlands are now calling to legalize euthanasia for people who are 70 years old and “tired of living.”

This practice seems especially appalling when you consider the idea that so many cases of euthanasia have been decided by the physician.

Physician-assisted suicide is a very misleading issue if one doesn’t check into the facts. What may seem to some as a compassionate way to help our loved ones die in peace is actually an out-of-control practice that will only lead to increasingly mortifying consequences. Ms. Wolter should actually desire that physicians provide the means to help a dying patient spend the end of his or her life with less pain, not take their life from them. Even if in her case her father wanted to die, to legalize such a practice is to legalize a physician’s right to take ultimate control over another’s life. As proven by statistics, allowing others to take on the role of God is a very slippery slope and one we do not want to venture down.