Reflecting on the legalization of assisted suicide in New York.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Today (August 5) is the day that New York state implements their assisted suicide law. 

This is a day of great sadness as we recognize the reality of the decision to legalize assisted suicide and we reflect on the fact that many lives will be ended by this decision.

Assisted suicide laws give doctors (in some states, (also) physician assistants and nurses) the right in law to be directly involved with causing the death of their patients and they provide total legal coverage for the medical staff who are willing to participate, even when the death that they facilitated was questionable.

Assisted suicide is sold to the culture as a form of freedom, choice and autonomy whereas the assisted suicide law actually gives doctors, the right in law, to agree that a persons life is not worth living and to prescribe lethal poison that will kill that person.

There is a misunderstanding about the nature of the assisted suicide act. Assisted suicide is sold as a self-killing, whereas the law is concerned about the rules that the doctor must follow in order to prescribe the lethal poison. Assisted suicide deaths are not always quick, peaceful and painless.

Further to that, there will be "legally" inappropriate deaths. A key problem with identifying deaths that are considered "outside" the parameters of the law is that one of the key witnesses is dead and the other key witness approved the death.

Assisted suicide changes the nature of medical treatment and care. One reason is that killing when sold as a treatment for medical conditions, normalizes killing and justifies it as a "medical option." Another reason is that some physicians will make assisted suicide a central part of their medical practice. These physicians will sometimes become cavalier with assisted suicide leading to a practical expansion of the law.

I oppose killing people. This is not just a statement but rather an understanding of our common human experience. Human persons are not just physical beings but rather we have an intertwined psychological and emotional nature. Offering death, at a person's lowest time, is not about autonomy but rather abandonment. Abandoning a person to death.

Cultural safety requires it's citizens and especially it's medical care-givers to be committed to caring and never killing. 

Giving doctors the right in law to kill creates a social inequality that becomes a threat to the lives of many in their time of need.