This piece was published in the Dayton Daily News on March 21, 1997.

By Byron C. Hall, Jr.

With modern techniques of pain control and the compassionate care available in settings like Hospice, there is no need to consider assisted suicide. The sad case of physicist Percy W. Bridgman described by Thomas A. Bowden in the February 20, 1997 Other Voices piece is an anachronism.

Mr. Bowden wants the Supreme Court to rule in favor the legalization of assisted suicide. The heart of his argument is that one's life is one's own - he or she owns himself or herself - and one can do with it what one wants. Has he followed the logical consequences of his position? If you own an automobile, you are free to sell it or to give it away when you grow tired of it. If you are tired of being free, do you have the right to give yourself into slavery? No, it is self-contradictory.

If you own yourself, is the condition of being in pain with a terminal illness necessary to request assisted suicide? Don't you have the right to request it at any time and under any circumstances? Doesn't the depressed teenager have that right?

Mr. Bowden asks to whom does the individual belong: God, the state, or himself? He states: "The Declaration of Independence claimed, for the first time in the history of nations, that each person exists as an end in himself." Mr. Bowden has a mistaken idea of what an end in itself is. To my knowledge, it was Immanuel Kant who originated the concept. Morally, one can never be merely a means to an end, like an automobile. As an end in himself, no one owns a human individual: not God, not the state, and not even the individual himself.

Kant argues against suicide in his Lectures on Ethics. Suicide is strictly incompatible with respect for one's humanity: treating oneself as only a means to the end of avoiding pain or distress. Suicide is self-contradictory in that the power of free will is used for its own destruction. Suicide degrades human worth to that of beasts or lower. Suicide is contrary to the highest duty a human being has toward himself or herself: respecting oneself as a person.

One aspect that libertarians like Mr. Bowden often overlook is the social context of life: the individual is not an "island to himself." Suicide, assisted or not, has a dramatic effect upon family and friends. On the other hand, even though it is stressful, a period of terminal illness often brings family members together who have been estranged, and it allows the expression of "thank you" and "good bye."

The Netherlands is the only country in which courts have permitted physician assisted suicide. Judges have set up guidelines to protect patients. These guidelines are to be honored before a doctor can kill a patient. They include repeated requests by a rational person to die, uncontrollable pain, witnesses, and two doctors who agree the criteria have been met. In practice, few of these guidelines are even considered, and physicians are making the decisions on their own. More than half of the patients killed do not request it. There is so much concern about involuntary euthanasia among Dutch citizens with disabilities that many of them are carrying a wallet-sized card issued by the Dutch Patients' Association stating that it is "intended to prevent involuntary euthanasia in case of admission of the signer to the hospital."

Assisted suicide is not a moral right. If it were legalized, it would put many at risk: people with disabilities, mental retardation, mental illness, and frailty due to advanced age. Some of them would feel the pressure of not becoming a "burden" to their family. Finally, the lesson of physician assisted suicide in the Netherlands is how quickly the decision moves from a patient's request to a surrogate's request to a physician's personal decision. Let us hope the Supreme Court rules against the legalization of assisted suicide.

Copyright © Byron C. Hall, Jr.