Baxter and Assisted Suicide: A Nuanced Conclusion

Last January in discussing the Baxter case in Montana I argued that nuance is utterly absent from the debate about assisted suicide. Indeed, I find the entire tenor of most discussions about assisted suicide deeply depressing. I have come to the dismal conclusion it is not possible to sway people--that is views with regard to assisted suicide are too entrenched to ever substantially change. The result is we get two camps or schools of thought--those for and those against assisted suicide. I am opposed to legalizing assisted suicide as I believe it sets a dangerous president for at risk populations: elderly, disabled and terminally ill. Instead I wish we could develop a vibrant and widely accepted hospice movement throughout American society. Death is not the enemy, rather it is part of life. It is an experience we will all come to at some point. Of course this is easy for me to write as I am not facing imminent death and as such this is an abstract discussion. But why I wonder do so many push for laws that I think are not necessary, even dangerous? This is where that absent nuanced debate is needed and remarkably I came cross a fascinating quote that has kept me thinking for the past few days. Here I refer to John Robinson, an associate professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. In "Baxter and the Return of Physician Assisted Suicide published in the Hastings Center Report he wrote:

We should encourage states to see that the state neutrality toward suicide built into the Baxter decision is both illusory and dangerous. If we accept that death is, at some lvel, terrifying, and that the institutional extinction of human life is, at some level, even more terrifying, then we should not seek to facilitate suicide by insulating doctors who assist it from criminal or civil liability. We should seek instead to create in our communities values, practices, and institutions that will assure each of us the sort of care--familial, social, and medical--that will make the resort to assistance in suicide unnecessary. And we should go one step further, encouraging the state, through its public policy, to reduce to a minimum the conditions that make suicide, with or without a doctor's assistance, appear to be a a choice worthy of consideration".

When I read these words I thought of the mother daughter suicide that took place in White Plains, New York. To me that was a social and familial tragedy that could and should have been prevented. I hold American society responsible for that failure and by extension its people, including me. Just as I argue we need a social revolution to change the perception of disability we need a similar revolution when it comes to assisted suicide.