Editorial The right to die
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
COMMONWEAL Court-assisted suicide Hhere is "a constitutionally recognized 'right to die/" So ruled the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on March 6 in Care in Dying v. Washington. The...
...Where will this all lead...
...In a matter over which there are deep-seated, indeed fundamental, disagreements, the court has taken upon itself the authority to legislate for the nine states in its jurisdiction...
...If Judge Reinhardt's argument stands on appeal to the Supreme Court, the decision will be as flagrant an example of judicial legislating as Roe...
...This liberty interest includes the right to kill oneself with the assistance of physicians, pharmacists, medical-care workers, friends, or family members...
...But the nuances of these ethical and medical distinctions represent a steady, thoughtful effort by physicians, ethicists, and legal scholars to respect the dignity and wishes of a dying person while maintaining a barrier against direct killing...
...The court argues that the social consequences of its decision are minimal...
...So too, the claim that predictable social pressures on the old, infirm, disabled will end with the direct killing of those deemed unworthy to live...
...Evidence from the Netherlands that physician-assisted suicide for the competent and consenting dying patient has led to the killing of non-consenting and incompetent persons is waved away...
...and rejects the argument of "double effect" as having no "constitutional or ethical purposes" (the argument of double effect is invoked, for example, in the use of morphine to control pain in doses that can also depress the respiratory system, which may hasten the death of a dying person...
...declares the line between acts of commission and omission "a distinction without a difference...
...The decision, written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, upholds a lower court's ruling that a Washington law prohibiting physician-assisted suicide was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause as developed in abortion decisions from Roe v. Wade to Planned Parenthood v. Casey...
...not only that, but, as with abortion, it finds a right not previously discerned in the Constitution while cavalierly dismissing long-standing moral, legal, medical, and religious opposition to suicide as well as opposition to the involvement of physicians or others in facilitating it...
...It dismisses any difference between ordinary and extraordinary care...
...No doubt, advances in health care and medical technology can create dilemmas at the end of life about appropriate care for the dying...
...The opinion, breathtaking in the expansiveness of its claims and the tendentiousness of its argument, might just as well have found a constitutional right to kill...
...The court collapses all distinctions among refusing medical treatment, allowing to die, and its newly found right to assistance in dying...
...In his conclusion, Judge Reinhardt expresses the pious "hope that whatever debate may accompany the future exploration of the issues we have touched on today will be conducted in an objective, rational, and constructive manner that will increase, not diminish, respect for the Constitution...
...With the example set by this court, how could it be otherwise...
...Now, Judge Reinhardt writes that "a competent, terminally ill adult, having lived nearly the full measure of his life, has a strong liberty interest in choosing a dignified and humane death...
Vol. 123 • March 1996 • No. 6
