Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide

Editor’s Note 2: In a recent public debate at The Center with Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s attorney and spokesperson, Geoffrey Fieger, (pictured left) Dr. Pellegrino (right) presented the arguments below to emphasize that opposition to physician-assisted suicide does not depend on exclusively Christian arguments. As he demonstrated at the debate, each contention, while controversial, can be well-supported. [While space here does not permit inclusion of the full text of his arguments, audio and video tapes of this debate are available from The Center.] There are also compelling reasons why Christians in particular should oppose this practice—reasons that Dr. Pellegrino develops in the upcoming Center book Dignity and Dying.

1. Assisted suicide is not a protected constitutional right in American jurisprudence.
2. Even if assisted suicide were made legal or the Constitution were changed, it would still be morally wrong.
3. Assisted suicide is not necessary.
4. Suicide is not an autonomous choice.
5. Autonomy and self-determination that end in giving the physician the power to administer death are illusory.
6. Assisted suicide is not a truly compassionate act.
7. The “slippery slope” is no fairy tale.
8. Assisted suicide is not a dignified death.
9. Assisted suicide is not a private matter.
10. Assisting in suicide is in direct contravention of what medicine is all about.

Sickness and suffering do not rob humans of their dignity. Humans have dignity simply because they are human. They cannot lose it because they are not absolutely in control of everything that happens to them or because they are weak, disfigured, or in pain. The loss of dignity that dying or desperately ill persons feel is not the actual loss of dignity as human beings. It is, rather, the changed way those around them react to their plight: people’s pity, withdrawal, and sometimes poorly veiled distaste. We dignify a death by the way we confront it, no matter how wasted, weak, or wan we may be.