Editorial Fatal prescription
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
Fatal prescription The Oregon Legislature gave voters another chance to decide whether or not the state's Death with Dignity Act was a big mistake. Apparently Oregonians think not. On November 4,...
...How long before failed "suicide" attempts with prescription drugs will bring cries for the more "humane and compassionate" practice of lethal injections by physicians and nurses...
...In fact, the circuit court lifted the injunction even before the election, making physician-assisted suicide legal in Oregon on October 27...
...We must never make them feel unwanted or leave them uncared for...
...The strategy in Oregon appealed to patient autonomy and removed the physician from the appearance of direct killing, thereby avoiding the stigma of euthanasia...
...In restricting physician assistance to writing a prescription rather than giving a lethal injection to terminally ill persons, proponents of assisted suicide avoided one impediment that led voters in Washington and California to reject earlier attempts to legalize physician-assisted suicide...
...The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals eventually upheld the law, and this fall, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal, having ruled last spring in cases from Washington and New York that laws governing end-of-life decisions should rest with the states...
...we must set our own limits on medical practices and therapies that prolong both our pain and our dying...
...The analogy may be overused, but it is clearly pertinent here: Hitler's euthanasia programs could never have been carried out if medical-care givers had refused to cooperate...
...they remain among the most persuasive and cogent of arguments...
...Coalitions must come together to resist the idea that euthanasia is progress, that laws allowing it are inevitable, and that its practice is compassionate and humane...
...But what of our society and our culture...
...We must all pay attention to the plight, the fears, and anxieties of the old and the dying...
...At the same time, as we age, each of us must take responsibility for coming to terms with our own mortality...
...Having crafted a half-measure in Oregon, euthanasia proponents will soon be back at work...
...Readers will remember a series of essays Commonweal published preceding the referenda in Washington [August 9,1991], California [September 25,1992], and Oregon [August 19,1994] by Daniel Callahan, Carlos Gonzalez, Leon Kass, Alexander Capron, Albert Johnson, and Courtney Campbell...
...A lethal drug purchased at a drug store and taken by a patient at a time and place of his own choosing looked like a patient buying a gun and shooting himself-in short, Oregon's law was written to make the act appear more like suicide than euthanasia, thus obscuring the necessary involvement of others, especially physicians...
...Spiritual solace is not only the work of the churches, but of each of us...
...Physicians, nurses, and pharmacists-none of them are obliged to carry out a law that violates their ethical codes...
...How long before the law's claim to protect a patient's autonomy will give way to economic and social pressures on the old and the ailing poor to beg their physician for that fatal prescription...
...The euthanasia lobby will move on to expand this lethal franchise and it is unlikely that this time they will settle for less than direct killing by physicians...
...Among the first lines of defense against the spread of euthanasia is the medical-care community itself...
...proponents of the law received funds from George Soros, the international financier, for one example...
...Hospitals can forbid the practice in their domains, and health insurance and health-maintenance organizations can refuse to pay...
...Other opponents of the law included the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and an important insider, the Oregonian, the state's major newspaper...
...Oregon's law raises the most fundamental questions about the practice of medicine and about the capacity of our society to provide care, comfort, and spiritual solace to the old, the ailing, and the dying...
...And the DEA has threatened to revoke the licenses of physicians to prescribe some drugs if the physicians violate federal narcotics laws...
...Whatever appealed to Oregon voters in 1994 seemed to appeal even more in 1997: The margin of victory increased by 10 percentage points...
...On November 4, the electorate voted 60-40 to keep the law permitting physician-assisted suicide on the books...
...Some portion of that vote may have been triggered by the Oregon Catholic Conference's vigorous campaign to convince voters that the law should be repealed...
...That some Oregonians should object to such efforts by "outsiders" suggests that the character trait actually at work, apart from a visceral anti-Catholicism, may have been a naive insularity...
...Indeed the Catholic church was not the only "outsider" in the campaign...
...That is the culture of death...
...Opponents of the measure have promised to return to the courts, and the governor of Oregon, though supporting the law, has said that the legislature will need to tighten several of its provisions...
...The battle is not over...
...That Oregonians voted for the measure in 1994 and refused to rescind it now has been attributed to a libertarian streak in their characters, their pioneer origins, and an unchurched way-of-life...
...In the political battles ahead, we should take care to frame debates that will persuade and not coerce, convince and not threaten...
...Oregon can hardly be the first place in the United States to legalize physician-assisted suicide and not expect to become the focus of many contending forces...
...But it must also be said that the 1994 referendum was specially crafted to appeal to such voters...
...And rest it does with Oregon...
...How long before end-of-life decisions are transformed into quality-of-life calculations, and the call for ever more compassion, lethal injections for the severely disabled and infants born seriously deformed or retarded...
...The act, first approved in a 1994 statewide referendum, was initially blocked by court action...
...Nonetheless, some time very soon, a resident of Oregon who is diagnosed with a terminal illness and with less than six months to live will be able to ask a physician to prescribe a lethal dose of medication so that the patient can kill herself...
...Look back at them...
...this was a moral as well as a legal decision of vital concern to the whole country and not simply to its own citizens...
Vol. 124 • November 1997 • No. 20
