ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 8, 1996 TAG: 9603080068
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
A TERMINALLY ill but mentally competent person, facing agonizing, uncontrollable pain, wants to die to end the suffering that is all that remains of life. Should the law be accommodating?
Yes, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has ruled in overturning a Washington State law against physician-assisted suicides.
Our view is a little more complicated, but we basically agree.
Doctor Death, the publicity-seeking Jack Kevorkian, has made the fight to establish a legal right to die seem a ghoulish crusade. But the underlying principle is one of simple compassion for those who are dying in great pain, with no hope of relief, much less recovery.
Many people, especially those with strong religious convictions against suicide, choose to leave their fate in the hands of a higher power. That is, and always should be, their right. But some want desperately to avoid the prolonged pain, loss of dignity, and emotional, physical and financial strain on families that so often accompany a lingering death.
If it is the considered wish of a person in such circumstances to die without pain, in comfortable and familiar surroundings, in the presence of loved ones, at a time of his or her own choosing and by his or her own hand, the state should not insert itself in that very private decision.
Needless to say, that's not all there is to this issue. An individual must never be coerced, overtly or subtly, to make a decision to die. Establishing a right to die would require clear guidelines to set up safeguards against abuses. Such guidelines would be far preferable to the current practice, where assisted suicides do occur, usually secretly, at the discretion of doctors or loved ones who must rely solely on their own judgment and who put themselves at legal risk.
The American Medical Association opposes physician-assisted suicide, maintaining that it "would be the active killing of a patient." We agree that a scrupulous commitment to the well-being of each patient is essential in the practice of medicine. But there are times when that commitment might lead a doctor to honor a person's wishes and provide him or her with the means to hasten death.
Forcing someone who is determined to die to stay alive amounts, in some circumstances, to torture.
The court was careful to state specifically that its ruling does not give broad license for euthanasia. Despite the AMA's assertion about "active killing," the court drew a distinction between assisting in a suicide and mercy killing. It was not simply splitting legal hairs. The difference is important.
The appellate-court ruling, which applies in nine Western states, does not say it is OK to kill someone who is in pain. Rather, the majority in a split decision said the constitution does not permit broad state policies that intrude on a terminally ill person's right to choose "the time and manner of one's own death."
Washington State officials are likely to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. They should. Such a profound issue should be considered by the nation's highest court - but a right to die with dignity ought to be affirmed.
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