Although groups like Compassion and Choices insist that assisted suicide is a civil right despite the 1997 US Supreme Court unanimously finding no constitutional right to assisted suicide,  this is a recipe for disaster.

Civil rights means equality under the law so equality in assisted suicide means that the “right” to assisted suicide logically cannot remain limited to just mentally competent adults with a prognosis of 6 months and able to give themselves lethal overdoses by mouth. What about the non-terminally ill person with paralysis who can’t take the lethal overdose by himself or herself? What about the person with Alzheimer’s who is no longer mentally competent to make the decision for medically assisted suicide? What about the lucid chronically mentally ill person who wants to end years of struggling?

It is inevitable that assisted suicide as a civil right must necessarily expand to anyone using any prescribed method for any situation deemed intolerable.

We have already seen this happen in European countries like Holland and Belgium as well as the current lethal injection assisted suicides in Canada and now even paired with organ donation.

ECONOMICS AND BURDENS

A recent Canadian study predicted that physician-assisted suicide could save Canada up to $139 million dollars each year.

The study’s author states that “Neither patients nor physicians should consider costs when making the very personal decision to request, or provide, this intervention” but the reality is that people, especially older individuals, do worry about being a financial and/or physical burden on their families and almost 50% of assisted suicide victims in the latest 2016 Oregon report cited “burden on family, friends/caregivers” as a concern.

I am not surprised. My own mother often told me that she never wanted to be a burden on her family even before she developed Alzheimer’s and terminal cancer. Mom thought she was just being a loving mother without realizing that such an attitude and statement can have lethal consequences even outside of assisted suicide.

For example, years ago when I worked in oncology, I cared for a delightful elderly woman with cancer whose doctors recommended another chemo treatment. My patient confided that she did want to try it but feared becoming more of a “burden” on her daughter’s family with whom she lived.

I told her that I had just spoken to her daughter the day before and the daughter told me how grateful she was for her mother’s presence and help. For example, the daughter said that since she and her husband both worked, they were relieved to have the mother there for their school-age children when classes ended. The daughter told me how the children loved climbing into bed with grandma and telling her about their day.

My elderly patient was almost reduced to tears by this revelation but then she laughed and admitted that sometimes she fell asleep when the children were talking to her.

I told my patient that whatever else she needed to consider before agreeing to the chemo, fear about being a “burden” should be eliminated.

CONCLUSION

People with disabilities are especially right to be concerned about the coercion of economics and perceived “burdens” of living when assisted suicide is legalized.

I learned this first hand when my daughter Karen was born with Down Syndrome and a severe heart defect. Even though I insisted that my daughter be treated the same as any other child with this condition, I was shocked by the responses of some fellow health care providers.

One doctor actually said that “People like you shouldn’t be saddled with a child like that”.  I was shocked and challenged him that, since my husband and I were medical professionals and especially able to care for a child with a heart problem and Down Syndrome, exactly who were these “right kind” of parents? Apparently none.

Later on, when Karen was secretly made a Do Not Resuscitate while hospitalized for pneumonia because I was supposedly “too emotionally involved with that retarded baby”,  I was shocked to how easily choice can indeed become an illusion when it comes to people with disabilities.

Unfortunately, it is a very small step from “I wouldn’t want to live (or have a child) like that” to “no one should have to live (or have a child) like that”.

Legalizing the demand for medical professionals to help end the lives of only certain people cannot be a true civil right or ultimately  even limited to “just” the mentally competent terminally ill.