Only a quarter of voters identify as "strongly" in favor of assisted suicide.
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| Gordon Friesen |
President: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
In this post, I am commenting on a recent opinion poll claiming that:
"(American) voters broadly support medical aid in dying: including 60% of Democrats, 65% of Independents, and 58% of Republicans".Happily, I believe, the situation is much more complex.
In reality, assisted suicide is one of those things, like the death penalty, where strong opinions and majorities are easily formed around extreme hypothetical cases. But the more that people dig into the details of real implementation, the less support remains. This explains why lawmakers have so often frustrated the apparent will of the people as regards capital punishment, and why, even where that option does exist, its application is fraught with great expense and long delays, effectively limiting its use to a very few cases.
As noted above, assisted suicide support is in the same category, which clearly indicates that our strategy must be one of educating voters. For the more they know the less likely they will be to support legalization. And just as importantly, where legalization is achieved, implementation may be restricted, in this way, to a rare number of cases, just as the use of electric chair, lethal injection, and firing squad are now limited for criminal offenders.
That being said, it is instructive to more closely examine the nature of the "broad support" observed.
The poll cited usefully divides positive replies into two categories, "strongly" and "somewhat" in favor, and so also with the negative camp"strongly" and "somewhat" opposed.
Naturally, those in the "strong" groups will have the most political engagement.
On this basis, we see that only a quarter of voters identify as "strongly" in favor. In fact, there is only one proposition that actually generates majority support, and that is the possibility of assisted suicide for the terminally ill. In all other categories (severe disability, mental health, non-terminal chronic) there are more people opposed than in support.
Furthermore, again as with the death penalty, things become much more subtle when we speak of actual process. Only 17% believe that assisted suicide might be proposed as an option before "all other options have been offered". This is in comparison with 56% who believe that consideration of assisted suicide might only come after that of all other possibilities, or indeed, not at all 21%.
Very tellingly, also, the supposed bi-partisan consensus also breaks down in the comparison of "strong" to " somewhat". For whereas there are half again as many Democrats who are strongly in favor (as compared to those strongly opposed) that proportion is nearly an equal split among Republicans, even though the total of "strong" and "somewhat" is virtually the same in both parties (60% Democrat, 58% Republican).
This last fact explains what we already know: that it is much easier to prevent legalization in Red States, than in their Blue equivalents.
That said, however, I would like to stress, once again, how much these numbers change with accurate knowledge. For even in blue states, it has been possible to push off legalization from year to year, for decades, and in the cases where those battles have been lost, it has been with the smallest of margins.
The man behind the current
Quite apart from what a poll shows, it is always interesting to analyze the intention with which it has been produced.
The author of this poll, Data For Progress (DFP) describes itself as a progressive think tank which exists to produce strategic insight, inform policy making, and equip movements with the tools they need to advance their vision.
In common English, this means that they are using the poll as a tool for trying out different messaging, to see what works. Definition, of course, is everything.
In this poll, each question begins with a short descriptive definition: "Medical Aid in Dying — sometimes called "physician-assisted suicide" — is a practice in which a doctor helps someone end their life peacefully with a prescription medication, typically to avoid prolonged suffering."
The most important observation we might make here, is that "Death with Dignity" and "End of Life Option" are now yesterday's news. The assisted death lobby is now all in on "Medical Aid In Dying", more properly called medical homicide. This is the language of physician identification, suggestion and prescription, not the language of patient request.
At the same time, it is ironic to note that in informing their respondents of what MAID is (for it may well be the first time that typical citizens have heard that phrase), they use the generally understood term "assisted suicide", even though medical homicide advocates now claim that MAID has nothing to do with suicide.
That said, there is at least one bald faced lie in that description (beyond the very questionable claim that death will be "peaceful") and that is the assumption that such deaths are performed to prevent "prolonged suffering". They are not. At least not as people understand those words. From all studies, we now know that pain is not at all the principal reason for which people consent to MAID.
But aside from seeking maximum adhesion in the first line question of support / don't-support, the poll also serves, in more detail to see what policy makers can get away with.
The main example I noticed of this, is in the following question:
Do you think doctors should be allowed to offer each of the following individuals to end their life through Medical Aid in Dying? (terminally ill, disabled, mentally ill, chronic illness, simply wish to die)What is interesting here, is the replacement of the more usual form "should (doctors) be allowed to provide..." with the new gambit "should doctors be allowed to offer...")
This very aggressively ties in with the transition from an idea of assisted suicide as something that must be spontaneously requested by the patient, to a medical treatment that is proactively proposed by the doctor.
These are not innocent word choices. This is the work of people who would obviously wish to maximize the standardized practice of medical homicide, and are seeking, through their poll structure, to figure out just how aggressive they might get --on the road to a truly systematic program of managed death-- in manipulating the opinions of a largely uninformed public.
Our job, of course, is to provide fuller information and context, to render that job as difficult as we can.
Gordon Friesen, Montreal
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