“Freedom,” “Choice,” and Physician-Assisted Suicide
by Gerard T Mundy, Public Discourse:
The supporters of physician-assisted suicide are indefatigable in their quest to legalize the practice in the United States, and they are co-opting the conception of freedom, as understood by the prevailing political thought during the American founding, to support their cause.
In the United States this year, the legalization of physician-assisted suicide has advanced with rapidity. Two states—New Jersey and Maine—legalized physician-assisted suicide in 2019, and the practice officially went into effect in Hawaii after legislation was passed there last year.
Physician-assisted suicide is now legal in nine states and the District of Columbia (the number of states includes Montana, where legislation has not been passed but where the state’s highest court found no statutory illegality in a physician prescribing a suicide cocktail). Further, the incremental slippery slope effect revealed itself again this year in Oregon, the first state to have legalized assisted suicide. At the end of July, the Oregon governor signed into law legislation that removes waiting periods for assisted suicide. Individuals who, according to the testimony of one physician, are likely to die before fifteen-day and two-day waiting periods, can now receive immediate physician-assisted suicide.
As the malignant practice of physician-assisted suicide spreads, both in terms of acceptance into law and in the predominant secular social ideology of the time, it is crucial to diagnose the thinking underlying, and propelling, the movement. It is critical that Americans understand the philosophical underpinnings of this movement against life. For in order to halt the advance of assisted suicide legalization, Americans must know how the country has arrived at the point where pharmacies in ten United States jurisdictions are today dispensing suicide cocktails aimed at killing citizens of their state or district.
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