The moral debate of death with dignity and euthanasia

Euthanasia is panned as being morally wrong and is illegal because of this, but while the definition fits the specific and narrow circumstance of induced irreversible comas, the core idea of euthanasia is active in other methods. Death With Dignity, while far more involved and requiring of the active participant, is essentially euthanasia that takes advantage of legal loopholes and an elongated process that allows for reversal. As such, the following treats it in the same context to take advantage of a recent example.

In the United States there are three states that have laws permitting their mentally competent, terminally ill residents to voluntarily request a medication that hastens the process of death, or in other words allows for painless suicide. While there are other options for “end-of-life” programs, not including euthanasia, the most common choice, the one Brittany Maynard took late last year, is this “lethal medication” on the markets in Oregon, Washington, and Vermont. This decision is undoubtedly a hard one, but should anyone have the choice to make it?

Maynard, diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor only a year after being married, envisioned her life in hospice, slowly dying with her husband at her side. Her hopes to have children and a long lasting marriage were shattered with a prognosis of six months life expectancy. She was prescribed full brain radiation treatment, a process that carries severe side effects not dissimilar to those of chemotherapy treatments. Maynard, aware of the Death With Dignity laws in Oregon, was faced with two options; prolong her suffering with radiation treatments that could only promise six more months, or up-root from California to Oregon to take a less physically and emotionally painful course.

For those who have seen someone in hospice care or long term care in any hospital, it is easy to empathize with the fears of Maynard and other terminally ill patients. It’s frightening to envision a future that revolves around a disease and it’s treatment. Any hospital stay is uncomfortable and difficult, but one that is extended and can only end in mortality is even harder to grapple with. However, some find the idea of suicide or “death with dignity” to be even harder to understand or sympathize with. How can someone end a half-century of potential before it even happens? How does Death With Dignity affect the loved ones of terminally ill patients? Where is the line drawn and how is this any different than euthanasia, a practice that has been illegal in all 50 states in the union for a very long time? The controversies are numerous and the questions many, but it seems no one really has the right to answer them.

One of Maynard’s most significant comments was as follows, “I would not tell anyone else that he or she should choose Death With Dignity. My question is: Who has the right to tell me that I don’t deserve this choice? That I deserve to suffer for weeks or months in tremendous amounts of physical and emotional pain? Why should anyone have the right to make that choice for me?” Maynards point that no one has the right to her life is one that is at the very core of the arguments surrounding this story. If a government were to restrict someone’s rights to their life and their body, they would be stepping to the same level of nations which are almost universally recognized as unjust.

The basis of the discussion around Death With Dignity laws and Brittany Maynard’s example is one that is that of each and everyone’s individual morals. There are protocols that prevent people from making an irrational decision including a fifteen day waiting period before you can even take the medication. Additionally there is a restriction on how much medication  can be purchased at any one time to prevent overdosing, and that is the most prominent concern I see. With euthanasia, the results are far too quick and irreversible to directly compare to Death with Dignity, and for this reason the comparison is skewed. This is perhaps exactly why these laws are on the books and could be the very reason that the moral debate surrounding Death With Dignity is slightly different than that of euthanasia.

I am among those who believe it is wrong to kill yourself, but view that as the choice of the individual as an intrinsic freedom. Is it wrong to end your own life? Yes. The issue seems to fall under categorial morals to me. The specific act of killing oneself, regardless of intentions or motives, is wrong in my book. However, is it my responsibility or right to force people not to? No, it is not. Clearly, part of the argument, the minority, falls under consequential morality and questions people’s write to kill themselves based on their motives. Death With Dignity is only legal in three states for a reason; there is too much moral grey area for a mass of people to commit to any one extreme black or white.