Physicians Cannot Serve Both Death and Life
by Gerard T Mundy, Public Discourse:
A physician cannot truly and wholeheartedly work toward bringing his patient to health if he can choose at any time to give up that pursuit and suggest rather that the patient choose death instead.
In the United States, physician-assisted suicide is legal in six states and Washington, DC. Washington implemented the practice just this past summer, but the spending bill passed by the House in September would block the District from spending money on the law. Activist judges in the state of California have allowed assisted suicide to continue despite efforts to halt the practice. In a surprising decision for such a politically progressive state, New York’s highest court ruled in September that individuals have no state constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide. The New York ruling follows the 1997 Washington v. Glucksberg Supreme Court decision that found that the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause did not, as the plaintiffs argued, provide a right to assisted suicide.
Despite the decision in New York, the advocates of assisted suicide are sure to continue their assault on human life in the name of autonomy. The fight against the legalization of assisted suicide must continue, but one cannot and must not rely on court decisions and legislative victories, for these successes are based on ephemeral sentiments and are subject to swift change. Proper positive law, or man-made law, as Thomas Aquinas argued, always must reflect what is required by natural law and higher laws.
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