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From Roe to Final Exit, there really is a slippery slope.

Jack Kevorkian, M.D., a.k.a. "Dr. Death," pleads his case to legalize doctor-assisted suicide in front of a Sunday congregation at Saint Paul's Presbyterian Church in Livonia, Michigan. He is kicking off a ballot drive for a state constitutional amendment to secure this "right." The packed audience includes friends and relatives of most of the 20 people he has helped commit suicide since 1990 as well as the national executive director of the Hemlock Society, dedicated to suicide rights. The host pastor is an avid supporter.

Dr. Kevorkian implacably asserts what he sees as the bottom line: "the right not to have to suffer." "This is really a right that already exists, and we already have, but which we have to put in writing because of human irrationality. Every reasonable adult is going to have to realize that if he votes 'no' on this, he is throwing his right away."

Kevorkian's simple logic resembles the glare of a single unshaded light bulb hanging in a bare cell. The cell contains a solitary inmate in pain who wants to end it all. Once again, the complex texture of human life has been deceptively and insidiously reduced to the unthinking slogan, right to choose.

WHO GREASED THE SLIPPERY SLOPE?

Where have we heard this "reasoning" before? Derek Humphry, long-time activist for "suicide rights" and author of the recent bestseller Final Exit (a how-to manual), was asked in an interview why the euthanasia movement had picked up momentum in recent years. (Since 1990, two referenda that would have legalized euthanasia were defeated in California and Washington by slim margins. Currently, euthanasia initiatives are also under consideration in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Oregon.)

He responded that Roe v. Wade was the turning point. Even Derek Humphry, the high priest of suicide, notes the connection between the legal victory of abortion rights and the growing demand for suicide rights. For when the "right to choose" to kill unborn babies was enshrined in law, founded on the "right to privacy," the suicide-rights movement got new energy and legitimacy. A database search has turned up at least 34 termination-of-treatment cases that cite Roe v. Wade. The Circuit Court of Michigan in Michigan v. Kevorkian ruled that Michigan's statutory ban on assisted suicide was unconstitutionally overbroad because it interfered with the right to commit a "rational" suicide. The court relies heavily on Roe—which means there is a "slippery slope" leading from abortion rights to suicide rights.

"Slippery slope" is a moral argument used to oppose an action on the grounds that a principle is being conceded that has pernicious extensions and applications, perhaps not envisaged by its original proponents. Although the "slippery slope" argument can be misused, it is surely important to consider it: ideas and practices, after all, have logical consequences.

The experience of legalized abortion offers a striking case study of a slippery slope. Once the privacy principle was legally enshrined in Roe so as to allow the taking of innocent human life, it has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to brake the descent. A momentum has been established whereby the former presumption in favor of human life has given way to myriad forms of rationalizing and excusing the taking of life. Who would have dreamt in 1973 that by 1993 abortions would increase to 1.6 million annually? Very few of these abortions have to do with "hard" cases of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or threat to the mother's life. Most abortions are now motivated by lifestyle reasons. (See "Why Do Women Have Abortions?" in Family Planning Perspectives, July/August 1988.)

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August 15 1994, Vol. 38, No. 9