Euthanasia Essay - The Truth About Assisted Suicide :: Euthanasia Physician Assisted Suicide

The Truth About Assisted Suicide      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This essay recognizes that it is hard to tell the truth about assisted suicide. Or rather, it's hard to get people to listen. Folks generally are about as eager to delve into the issue of assisted suicide as they are to work out the details of their own funeral. It's a delicate and unnerving subject, involving the ultimate issues of life: the reality of human mortality; fears about illness, disability, and old age; and the loss of loved ones to the dark, dank grave. Nonetheless, this essay intends to tell all these things, since they relate to euthanasia/assisted suicide.    Simply getting people to pay close attention to assisted suicide - to grapple with its threat - is often a challenging task. This is even true of people who are religious or prolife, whose faith informs them that death isn't the end but the beginning. I understand the emotional dynamic at work. Life is difficult and worrisome enough without visiting the painful realm of assisted suicide. It is difficult even for deeply religious people, to listen, to heed, and to care enough to become involved. But avoidance of the assisted-suicide issue is a luxury that those who believe in the infinite value of all human life can no longer afford, because battles over assisted suicide are being waged - and more battles planned throughout the country.    Tragically, one major battle has already been lost: Oregon legalized assisted suicide in 1994 and the law went into effect in September 1997. Today in the U.S. a small number of physicians participate actively in their patients' suicide, and it is absolutely legal. On the bright side, since 1997, when Oregon's voters refused to repeal the state's assisted-suicide law, a broad-based national coalition of diverse groups has formed to oppose the death agenda. Disability-rights activists, advocates for the poor, professional associations in medicine and law, and hospice organizations - all of which tend' to be liberal and secular - have joined with religious people and traditional prolife activists to oppose medicalized killing.      And this collaboration has borne fruit: Since 1994 five states (Maryland, Rhode Island, Louisiana, Iowa, and Michigan) have passed laws explicitly making assisted suicide a crime, while Virginia outlawed it as a civil wrong, subjecting anyone who assists in a suicide to civil litigation. In November 1998, Michigan's voters rejected an initiative to legalize suicide by an overwhelming 71 to 29 percent.