ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996 TAG: 9603150022
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEITH A. FOURNIER
ON MARCH 6, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Washington state ban on doctor-assisted suicide. The court declared that "competent, terminally ill patents" have a constitutional right to choose "the time and manner" of their own deaths.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt, writing for the court, based this constitutional "right" on two recent Supreme Court cases. The first was Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, which defined the right of liberty under the 14th Amendment to include a woman's right to abort her unborn child. The second was Cruzan vs. Missouri Department of Health, which included the right to refuse artificial life-support.
Reinhardt found it an easy and logical step to move from the constitutional right of a woman to choose an abortion, to that same right in a terminally ill person to choose the time and manner of his or her own death. He similarly found no difference in a person's right to terminate life support and the same right to hasten one's own death. Frighteningly enough, I agree with him.
The "culture of death," though without morality, is not without a perverse logic. A judge's obligation, Reinhardt admonishes, is to look at the issue at hand in the big picture. In this "big picture" approach, it is only "logical" to assume that the right to kill an unborn baby is no different from the right to kill a terminally ill person, if you assume one basic principle: Life without value is not human life. It is the state that defines human dignity and value. The 9th Circuit court can legitimatize both abortion and assisted suicide because unborn babies and the terminally ill are not human lives. If they admitted that these were human lives, then the assisted-suicide decision would have gone another way, because the 14th Amendment also protects life.
This decision is reflective of the right-to-die philosophy promulgated after World War II. In 1973, we saw the products of such philosophy - the baby boomers - legalize the killing of their children. Now they would legalize the killing of their parents for, in the words of Judge Reinhardt, they "do not always have the patience to deal with the elderly, some of whom can be both difficult and troublesome."
Unwanted pregnancies inconvenienced our lives, so we eliminated the problem. Now it is the elderly who inconvenience us. This is truly reflective of the plastic, throw-away society that we have become.
This perverse logic leads to an even more sinister end. If life without value is terminable because it is not human life and if the state defines "value," are any of our lives safe from those who deem our lives valueless?
I know this sounds like a postmodern nightmare and that at present, such an idea is inconceivable. But read Judge Reinhardt's response to the concern that the terminally ill may be pressured into taking steps to hasten their demise: "While we do not minimize the concern, the temptation to exert undue pressure is ordinarily tempered to a substantial degree in the case of the terminally ill by the knowledge that the person will die shortly in any event."
This sounds disgustingly similar to the justifications given for the private abortions and experimentation performed on Auschwitz prisoners: "What difference did two or three people make - people who were in the hands of the Gestapo and so already dead anyhow?'' There's nothing postmodern and fantastic about this "logical" end. It's historic and factual.
If assistance in dying is upheld as a constitutional right, on what legal grounds could it be denied to all others who want help ending their lives? Commentator John Leo notes that the "logic" of such a decision "seems to establish the right of everyone, young or old, terminal or not."
Indeed, he adds, "Such a right would also translate into an obligation on the part of others to kill or help kill." Perhaps one day doctors could be prosecuted or sued for violating the rights of people they refused to kill. Imagine doctors purchasing malpractice insurance that covers "denial of death" suits. That day may not be far away.
This legal vctory for "the culture of death" shows that the movement toward the widespread legalization of euthanasia has begun.
A little-known science fiction movie entitled "Soylent Green" pictured a world where the elderly were coerced to end their lives in sanitized suicide centers. The surprise ending was that their bodies were used to create the food, Soylent Green. Couched in compassion, the court may have unleashed a new reign of terror with worse consequences for civilization itself.
Keith A. Fournier executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, based in Virginia Beach, is author of "In Defense of Life."
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: MATT MAHURIN/Los Angeles Timesby CNB