Six Things You Need to Know about Physician-Assisted Suicide
by Nancy Valko, Public Discourse:
It has been twenty years since Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law took effect after a public referendum. Since then, four other states have legalized physician-assisted suicide.
Polls seem to show strong public support for physician-assisted suicide. They ask questions like this one from a 2017 Gallup poll: “When a person has a disease that cannot be cured and is living in severe pain, do you think doctors should or should not be allowed by law to assist the patient to commit suicide if the patient requests it?”
Unfortunately, most people have only a vague idea about what such laws actually say and do. Here are six things you must know before you decide whether to support or oppose physician-assisted suicide.
1. Pain or any other suffering is not a requirement for a person seeking assisted suicide; “a disease that cannot be cured” can include manageable conditions like diabetes as well as terminal illnesses like cancer.
None of the US laws are restricted to patients experiencing pain, which can be addressed in ways that do not deliberately kill the patient. In 2016, for example, almost half of patients using assisted suicide in Oregon cited their reason for seeking death as “Burden on family, friends/caregivers” while just 35 percent cited “Inadequate pain control or concern about it.”
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