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< | The Right to State-Assisted Suicide | >
> | The Interest in Dying | | | -- By EthanSinger - 26 Feb 2021 | |
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< | The Right | >
> | The Right to Die | | | | |
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< | The harshest form of punishment in the United States doubles as an exclusive right that some will literally kill for: the right to state-assisted suicide. | >
> | “Is there a right to die?” asks Chief Justice Rehnquist in Washington v. Glucksberg. According to the courts 9-0 decision, there is not. According to the Supreme Court of Canada, there is. Like the right to anything that implicates other interests and rights, there will likely never be a resounding answer to the question. | | | | |
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< | Daniel Colwell is one example. Suicidal, but afraid to kill himself, he killed two people in a parking lot so that he would receive the death penalty. At trial, he told the jurors that he would break out of prison and torture their loved ones if he was not sentenced to death. | >
> | Regardless of whether there is a right to die however, there is an undeniable interest that some people have in dying or receiving assistance in dying (i.e. the three gravely ill patients in Glucksberg and their doctors challenging Washington’s law that made assistance in suicide illegal). In the United States, right or not, many are enabled to carry out their interest either on their own accord or with assistance of others. The problem is that those whose interest in dying is arguably the strongest, and would offend the least amount of competing interests, are also those who are the least enabled and have the hardest time in seeing their interests through. | | | | |
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< | Stories like Colwell's, where someone kills others solely for the right to state-assisted suicide, are rare. However, once one is convicted and facing life in prison, utilizing the right to state-assisted suicide is not rare at all. | | | | |
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< | Timothy McVeigh, the man who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing, decided against appealing his sentence of death, explaining that he would rather be put to death than spend the rest of his life in prison. He is not alone is his thinking. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, at least 149 defendants have exercised their right to state-assisted suicide, declining to appeal their death sentences in order to eliminate any chance that they would instead by sentenced to life. In many cases these defendants refused the right to counsel, asked for the death penalty before sentencing, or wrote to judges requesting death to ensure that their right would not be taken away from them. These volunteers make up about 10% of all executions. | >
> | Those Who are Not Enabled | | | | |
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< | The problem with this right is that it’s only extended to people that commit the worst of crimes. From 2000 to 2014, a total of 4,508 inmates committed suicide. 2,118 of these inmates were convicted for nonviolent offenses. These inmates only had the option of committing suicide themselves, often painfully, and at the risk of failure and subjection to suicide watch. In contrast, the 149 defendants convicted for committing the worst crimes imaginable not only had the state assist them in suicide with a painless lethal injection, but they also had a state-sponsored last meal of their choice. For McVeigh’s meal, he chose to eat two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream. | >
> | Via Glucksberg, a terminally ill person does not have a right to receive assistance from a doctor in dying, and states can make it illegal for terminally ill people to receive such assistance. Specifically, Glucksberg upheld a Washington law that provided that “a person is guilty of promoting a suicide attempt when he knowingly causes or aids another person to attempt suicide” and ruled that this law did not violate any fundamental right. Washington has since changed this law to allow physician-assisted death for the terminally ill, but this assistance is still illegal in 40 states. | | | | |
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> | Consider John Rehm, who was a resident of Maryland when he asked doctors for assistance in hastening his death. He had Parkinson’s, for which there is no known cure. As his conditions worsened and John realized the inevitable end was approaching, he decided that he did not want to go on living the way he was living. The frail John could not feed himself or go to the bathroom without assistance, nor could he stand. Medicine existed that would grant John’s wish and expedite his personally painful road to death, but since it was illegal in Maryland to provide assistance in one’s death, doctors refused to help. Instead, his doctors told John that if he wanted to accelerate his death, his only option was to refuse all food and water. This is legal because it falls under the right to refuse medical assistance via Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of HealthCruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, a case decided 7 years before the Supreme Court in Glucksberg distinguished Cruzan as not providing a right to die. John took the doctors advice and died 10 days later. | | | | |
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< | Extending the Right | | | | |
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< | If people convicted of some of the worst crimes imaginable are able to request state-assisted suicide, should people convicted of less atrocious crimes also have this option? Why should someone who murdered have the right to state-assisted suicide if they would rather die than spend their life in prison, while someone who trafficked drugs not have this right if they would rather die than spend their life in prison? | >
> | Those Who are Enabled | | | | |
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< | If state-assisted suicide is thought of merely as a right however, then this question could be extended to anyone. If a prisoner can request the right to state-assisted suicide, why shouldn’t anyone who is feeling suicidal have this right? | >
> | If instead of living in Maryland, John was a resident of nearby Vermont or District of Columbia, instead of forcing death by starving for 10 days, John could have died in the way he preferred. As a resident of those locations, John could have legally been prescribed medicine to hasten his death. This is because even though Glucksberg recognized that states have an “unqualified interest in the preservation of human life,” states can still make it legal for terminally ill people to receive assistance in dying. Therefore, in the United States, the enablement of a terminally ill person’s interest in dying, which can equate to an interest in their and their family’s autonomy, dignity, pain and suffering, and more, is subject to where they live. | | | | |
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< | The instinctual answer to this question lies in the notion that assisting in suicide is something that feels morally wrong compared to the alternative of trying to help someone not feel suicidal. In the United States, the law's interest in preventing state-assisted suicide goes beyond this reasoning that there may be better days ahead. | >
> | Still, some of those who live in a state where physician-assisted death is illegal can still find a way to be administered medicine that will hasten their death. For instance, citizens of the United States have been known to travel to countries such as Switzerland and the Netherlands, countries where physician-assisted death is legal, to receive medicine that will hasten their death. This is expensive however, and requires a terminally ill person to be able to travel from the United States to Europe. For someone essentially bed-ridden like John, or for someone without much money, this can be difficult or impossible. Thus, of those who are terminally ill, those who are either the poorest or have arguably the lowest quality of life from a physical perspective (as they are not physically able to travel), are those who are the most disabled from accessing physician-assisted suicide. | | | | |
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< | When someone is suffering immensely from a terminal illness that will inevitably kill them within months, and there is no way to be conscious and without pain, the right to physician-assisted suicide is a right in just nine U.S. states and the District of Columbia. There are arguably no better days ahead in these scenarios, and while the patient and their family may beg the physician to end the suffering, in 41 states the patients must suffer until death in these scenarios. | | | | |
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< | The problem of the right to state-assisted suicide for those who have committed the worst of crimes is thus more complicated than just the lack of fairness of them having this right and others not having this right. While it feels wrong to deny this right to those that are less culpable when it is granted to those that are most culpable, it also feels wrong to extend this right to those that are less culpable because of the notion that is is wrong to assist people in committing suicide. | >
> | Extending the Enablement | | | | |
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> | Whether the court in Glucksberg is right about whether there is a fundamental right to die is not the point. The aftermath of Glucksberg and Cruzan shows that fundamental right to die or not, people can still have an interest in dying and will always be enabled in dying. Even where assisted-death is illegal, John and the many others who have enabled their deaths show that hastening death is always possible and legal. What matters then is not whether there is a right to die, but how people should be enabled in dying. | | | | |
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< | Eliminating the Right | >
> | While Glucksberg points out that some people may have an interest in dying one day and not the next, it is often the terminally ill, and the sickest of the terminally ill, that are the least enabled in choosing how they will die. And as Justice Stevens points out in his concurrence, many of the states that have laws banning physician assisted-death have “authorized the death penalty, and thereby concluded that the sanctity of human life does not require that it always be preserved.” In a society where states acknowledge that life should not always be preserved, and in a society where life will not always be preserved regardless of laws, exceptions to preserving life are clearly made. It is time to revisit how the exceptions are made. Those whose days before an impending death are all but certain to be unpleasant should have their options for hastening their death expanded to include more humane options, right to die or not. | | | | |
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< | One way to solve this problem is to eliminate the right to state-assisted suicide for convicts altogether. This would avoid the promotion of something that feels wrong (assistance in suicide), while also solving the problem of fairness as people who commit the most reprehensible acts would no longer have a right that others don’t.
This could be done by denying any requests for the death penalty when the death penalty is a potential sentence for a defendant. However, this is unlikely to work as defendants that wish for state-assisted suicide will still be able to access the right. They would just have to be sneakier about it. By refusing a lawyer, showing no remorse, and confessing to horrible acts, a defendant can ensure they will have the right to state-assisted suicide without directly requesting it.
The best way to eliminate the right to state-assisted for convicts is to eliminate the possibility of it all together. This means eliminating the death penalty. The timing is ripe for this, as for the first time in 34 years of polling by Gallup, a majority of Americans prefer life imprisonment without parole as a punishment for murder to the death penalty. Not just a slight majority, but 60%. Proponents of the death penalty may see the death penalty as a just form of punishment for those who commit horrendous crimes, but with a painless lethal injection and 10% using the punishment as a right to state-assisted suicide, it may be time to reconsider whether the punishment is even a punishment at all.
How does it make the discussion of doctor-assisted suicide any more productive to analogize it to execution, which is isn't? How will I think more clearly about the end of my father's or my mother's life, both of which involved their exercise of choice in dying, by considering them in terms established by Timothy McVeigh? ?
If there is a real reason for this analytical turn, it can't be based on a series of rhetorical questions. If there isn't a better reason than juxtaposition of extremes with family realities, the premise should go.
Nor is it clear why discussions of choice in dying should be seen as discussion about state-assisted or state-directed killing. Obviously there are many conditions under which palliative care gives way to conscious withdrawal of treatment that shades into passive encouragement of family compliance with dying relatives' wishes all of which neither puts the state (nor would contemplate putting the state) in the role of decision-maker or executioner.
Which is why there isn't any inconsistency between wanting for myself what my parents in different ways had, namely the right to choose when in the process of dissolution to die, and opposing completely the existence of capital punishment.
I think therefore that the best route to improvement is to write about the right to die, not the right to state-assisted suicide, and to leave the murderers out of it, unless there is additional good cause shown.
‘I knew my objective was a state-assisted suicide and when it happens it’s “in your face, motherfuckers.” You just did something you’re trying to say should be illegal for medical personnel.’ – Timothy McVeigh
Works Cited
Why aren't these just links in the text? You're writing for the web, so why not make your writing as easy as possible for people to read there?
https://www.walb.com/story/1083665/double-murderer-gets-his-wish/
https://web.archive.org/web/20100614074106/http://archives.cnn.com/2001/LAW/05/11/mcveigh.evidence.06/index.html
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/executions-overview/execution-volunteers
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/16/epstein-isnt-only-one-too-many-people-kill-themselves-jail/
https://www.cnn.com/2014/11/26/us/physician-assisted-suicide-fast-facts/index.html
https://news.gallup.com/poll/268514/americans-support-life-prison-death-penalty.aspx | | | |
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