Society’s Search for a Legal and Ethical Basis of Physician-Assisted Suicide
Rebecca C. Morgan, and D. Dixon Sutherland, Society’s Search for a Legal and Ethical Basis of Physician-Assisted Suicide (June 2008). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1141216
A review of the way physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is being addressed in the United States reveal three models, each functioning out of distinctive concepts of autonomy: (1) litigation, which utilizes philosophical autonomy; (2) legislation, which utilizes political autonomy; and (3) act of conscience by a physician, which utilizes consumer autonomy. Each model raises a correspondingly distinct set of ethical questions and challenges centered around their point of reference - the judicial system, voters, or the doctor-patient relationship. The challenge for religion is to address PAS in solidarity with sufferers, physicians, and the community, rather than retreating into iconoclastic dogmas.
One Comment
Opposition to assisted suicide is typically presented today as what the author charcterizes as “iconoclastic dogmas,” and as resting solely upon Catholic and conservative Judeo-Christian dogma in particular, thus as something the Suprme Court shold hold cannot be legislated. The opposition to physi8cian-assited suicide in Western civilization is traced back to the Greek Hippocratic Oath, long before Christianity, and almost universally accepted during most of American history, etc.
It is not “iconoclastic dogma[ism],” but empirical investigation and scientific research, that has provided compelling evidence that a large percentage of assisted suicides, both those permitted, and those forbidden, by existing temporal law, involve people for whom, in the words of leading deperssion experts Aaron T. Beck, Burns, etc., the physical suffering could be alleviated, if not eliminated, that many of these decisions must be considered irrational, and that “Therapy, not suicide, is indicated.” Experts including Eric Berne and Steiner have demonstrated that many suicide attempts nad suicides are committed from a Child ego state to which the person is regressed and triggered by emotional trauma, etc.
In my personal and legal professional life, I have known a significant number of people [including me] who have thankfully recovered from suicidal depression, suicide attempts, and attempts that were prevented or stopped, with or without their express request at the time.