Letter from law professor, Stephen Mikochik urging Delaware Governor Meyer to veto assisted suicide bill HB 140, “The Ron
Silverio/Heather Block End of Life Options Law.”
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| Stephen Mikochik |
Dear Gov. Meyer:
I
am a professor emeritus of Constitutional Law at Temple Law School in
Philadelphia and a senior lecturer in Jurisprudence at Ave Maria Law School in
Naples, Florida. I have reviewed numerous state proposals to legalize physician-assisted
suicide. House Bill 140 would authorize that practice in Delaware.
I
urge you not to sign H.B. 140. The bill threatens vulnerable patients, is not
needed to mitigate pain at the end of life and creates a right that all
competent persons who wish to end their lives for whatever reason will demand.
The
U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that physician-assisted suicide is not a fundamental right
guaranteed by the Federal Constitution;
and nowhere has the Supreme Court of Delaware held it protected under the State
Constitution. Therefore, the question of whether to legalize assisted suicide
is one of policy in Delaware; and the balance clearly weighs in favor of
rejecting it.
On
the one hand, a chief reason for rejecting assisted suicide is the protection
of vulnerable patients from abuse. As the U.S. Supreme Court explained:
We have recognized … the real risk of subtle coercion and undue influence in end-of-life situations. … The risk of harm is greatest for the many individuals in our society whose autonomy and well-being are already compromised by poverty, lack of access to good medical care, advanced age, or membership in a stigmatized social group. … The State’s interest here goes beyond protecting the vulnerable from coercion; it extends to protecting disabled and terminally ill people from prejudice, negative and inaccurate stereotypes, and societal indifference. The State’s assisted-suicide ban reflects and reinforces its policy that the lives of terminally ill, disabled, and elderly people must be no less valued than the lives of the young and healthy and that a seriously disabled person’s suicidal impulses should be interpreted and treated the same way as anyone else’s.[2]
As shown in the attached
letter to Sen. Sokola, H.B. 140 provides only phantom safeguards for vulnerable
patients.
It is argued on the other hand that assisted suicide is needed to
mitigate physical pain at the end of life. Most terminal patients, however, die
peacefully; palliative care can control the pain of those who do not; and sedation
is available if that care proves ineffective. Irremediable pain is not a major concern
terminal patients express for seeking assisted suicide and is not a qualifying
condition in H.B. 140 or nearly all other assisted suicide measures. Thus, it is
not a factor that should tip the balance in favor of legalization.
It is further argued that H.B. 140 is needed to mitigate distress at
the end of life. As
the U.S. Supreme Court observed, however, many patients who request assistance
in suicide withdraw that request when their depression is treated. Depression,
of course, affects others who have no terminal condition; but that only
strengthens their claim for access to assistance in suicide since they may face
distress, not for months, but for a
life-time.
Finally, it is argued that
assisted suicide protects the dignity of terminal patients by respecting their
choice. Yet, the threat to dignity is death itself; choosing death by poison
over death by cancer is a feeble capitulation to that threat. To recast that choice
as the right to act on one’s deepest beliefs on the meaning of life would make
“the right to suicide and the right to assistance in
suicide … the prerogative of at least every sane adult[:]”
The depressed twenty-one year old, the romantically-devastated twenty-eight
year old, the alcoholic forty- year old who choose suicide are also
expressing their views … [on] existence, meaning, the universe, and life; they
are also asserting their personal liberty.
The State may act gradually to avoid the free-fall that Canada has
faced; it may make exceptions for those whose family obligations would fall
upon it if they died; but, once suicide is legalized for terminal patients, expansion
is inevitable: How could the State distinguish among persons’ beliefs about the
meaning of their lives?
You alone can sign H.B. 140 into law. You thus have the awful power
to choose between life and death. I urge you not to sign it, and choose life.
Respectfully
submitted,
Stephen
L. Mikochik
