Quieter Killings
More than 10 years after Oregon stoked fears when it became the first state in the nation to legalize physician-assisted suicide, Washington and Montana quietly followed suit in late 2008.
On Election Day, 58 percent of Washington voters approved a measure allowing terminally ill adults to obtain lethal prescriptions if they are deemed competent. Just two states away, a judge in Montana ruled in early December that physician-assisted suicides are legal in the state. That decision is likely to be appealed.
Oregon's move in 1997 stirred widespread concerns in the medical community of a domino effect in other states, said David Stevens, CEO of the Christian Medical Association. This time around, the decisions did not receive nearly as much publicity because of the presidential election and the debate over Proposition 8 in California.
"The proponents of this are delighted," Stevens said. "The crack in the dam has broadened, and the chance for the dam to burst open and go to the rest of the country is very good." In January, legislatures in Hawaii and New Hampshire introduced assisted-suicide bills.
Physician-assisted suicide is legal in some countries, including the Netherlands and Belgium. In late December, a Quebec man was found not guilty of helping his disabled uncle kill himself, opening the door to its legalization in the Canadian province.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that terminally ill patients have no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, but did nothing to prevent states from making it legal. The court affirmed in 2006 the constitutionality of Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, under which over 340 patients have died.
Catholics and evangelicals worked together to oppose Oregon's assisted-suicide law, but the coalition was not strong enough in 2008 to resist voter approval in Washington state. Although the percentage of evangelicals in northwestern states is similar to the percentage in the rest of the nation, the percentage of Catholics in northwestern states is very low, according to the recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
"[Religious conservatives] are very aware of themselves as a minority," Trinity
College political science professor Mark Silk said. "There's a certain libertarianism powerful in the West that is independent from religion but related."
Washington officials will put restrictions in place before the measure takes effect
March 4. In Oregon, the law applies to terminally ill patients who are likely to die within six months. The diagnosis must be confirmed by two physicians, and patients must possess the mental capacity to give informed consent and must administer the prescribed drugs.
Polls show that the country remains divided on the issue, the exact results depending on how survey questions are worded. A Pew Forum survey found that 44 percent of respondents favored making it legal for doctors to "assist terminally ill patients in committing suicide," while 51 percent favored making it legal for doctors to "give terminally ill patients the means to end their lives."
Calvin College biology professor Hessel Bouma said that although he was initially
concerned about Oregon's law, physician-assisted suicide has taken longer to reach other states than he expected. Measures similar to Oregon's law have been defeated in California, Hawaii, Michigan, and Vermont since 1997. Bouma said Christians should focus on developing hospice programs for terminally ill patients.
"It's incumbent for Christians, if they say that ending one's own life is unsatisfactory, to provide alternatives," Bouma said. "Is the conservative Christian community willing to step up, provide their own financial resources, and say, 'We're going to be the presence of Christ in the valley of the shadow of death?' "
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H. D. Schmidt
I might be looked at as uncivilized, and even a little barberic from the stone age etc., after you hear what I will put in a question: Since when has the God of heaven given approval to the Christian Community, especially in this land under God, and in essence looked upon by the world as the hub of Christianity, yes approval to the usage, if at all, of ever more contraceptions in the bedroom where a man and woman start to live together in holy matrimony? Yes, and as I see things, it has actually become the forerunner to the ever cheapening of human life, as God intented, to where now this nation is the mass grave of 50 or so million of unborn babies, and nobody is going to convince any truly Christian, that those murdered babies are solely, sons and daughters of the secular world! Is it not also the fact of life, presently pulpits are basically quiet while many a pulpit, actually fully supports America's evermore despicable gun/killing diplomacy, worldwide? Is God still smiling?
Majorie
I think it is crazy to try to "play God"- but, unfortunately, that's what we're coming to. We should just trust that God knows what's best. In God We Trust!
Rod
Promoting suicide is never right. At what point do we decide to draw the line. If we feel someone is incapable of making a full recovery, or must they already be at death's door? When does it become a convenience or economic factor? Patients who are in pain need to be made as comfortable as possible unless the medications would significantly shorten life and then only as the patient themselves agree. This is not something to be left up to anyone else to decide. We are not dogs or horses who should be "put down" to avoid suffering. What has happened to the Hypocratic Oath? Have our doctors lost their minds, or just their conscience? We all have great value and one's life should neither be prolonged or shortened arbitrarily. If there is a reasonable chance for recovery then whatever is necessary should be done to prolong life. If the patient refuses treatment, thier wishes should be respected, but it's never right to assist someone in committing suicide
Elizabeth
There is a big difference between giving someone medications to hasten death and withholding treatment that would merely prolong life when a person is terminally ill. As far as IVs and feeding tubes for terminally ill, I'm not sure. Perhaps that needs to be looked at case by case, with a lot of prayer. I have heard of people refusing to increase pain medications for terminally ill because it would "shorten" life (and I am not talking lethal doses that are for the purpose of causing death). Sometimes, the best option is to keep a person comfortable and allow them to go home to God. A cousin turned down treatment for a recurrence of cancer recently because it would only prolong life by a few months this time. I sat by my Dad's bed in a hospice last year, having agreed to turn down very high risk heart surgery that the specialist said he would have said no to if it had been his own father. Allowing death naturally and easing pain is not muder or suicide. Causing death is!
Ifeanyi
As a believer and surgeon, I would draw a line between stopping a course of medication which is clearly having no impact on mitigating disease progression in what is considered terminal ilness, and actively speeding up the process of death by lethal injection. The problem lies with using statistics to decide on individual cases. No physician can say with certainty that any particular patient will die in 6 months. we can only use statistics to show experience from other patients. Robert Koch's book on the right to live and the right to die remains relevant today.