The Slippery Slope

 

What next now that Gov. Brown has signed law legalizing doctor-prescribed death?

By Dave Andrusko
We provided three posts late yesterday about the terrible decision by California Gov. Jerry Brown to sign an assisting suicide bill. We have a number more today. Gov. Brown’s decision is so monumental, so fraught with immediate and long-term dangers that we will continue to run criticisms in the days to come.
I will not comment on areas that others more knowledgeable and articulate than I am have already discussed. Instead I will bring together just some of the most shrewd insights.
First, the impact on the vulnerable:
Prof. O. Carter Snead:

In signing a bill legalizing assisted suicide in the nation’s most populous state, California Governor Jerry Brown said, “In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death.”

What he should have been reflecting on instead were the poor, the disabled, the marginalized, and the elderly who are now exposed to grave and lethal new risks of fraud, abuse, mistake, and coercion.

Diane Coleman, President and CEO of the disability right group Not Dead Yet :

The Governor’s stated reasons are based on fallacies and his action must be denounced. When held up alongside the factually based and well considered reasons that disability rights organizations oppose legalization of assisted suicide – mistaken prognoses, insurance denials, family coercion and abuse, among others – his failure to veto the bill amounts to a breach of his duty to protect all Californians, not just the privileged few who can count on high quality health care and the support of a loving family.

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Irvine:

Among the many problems with this reasoning is this: Governor Brown is among the socially and economically privileged Californians who are least likely to be adversely impacted by this legislation—with access to the best healthcare and plenty of financial resources. But he has a responsibility not only for the impact of the legislation on him, or on those like him, but on all Californians. Those others who are economically and socially marginalized, who do not have access to even decent medical care, will be vulnerable to pressures to accept this cheap and expedient “option” for dealing with difficult, complex, and frequently expensive situations at the end of life. We have to look at the impact of this law not only for ourselves or for those close to us. We need to look at how it will impact the common good, on how it will affect healthcare institutions and the entire practice of medicine for patients at the end of life.

Then there is the “agony” of Jerry Brown, as portrayed in many stories, including one that ran yesterday in the Los Angeles Times. Writes Rebecca Hamilton:

It paints a word picture of a politician on the rack, a “former Jesuit seminary student” who was riven by a heart-wrenching moral conundrum. I could almost hear the violins playing and see the sunset … except for the raw truth of what this politician/martyr had done.

“I have considered the theological and religious perspectives that any deliberate shortening of one’s life is sinful,” he said.

Nice phrase that; “deliberate shortening of a life.” Not only did this politician ply all his political arts to evoke sympathy for himself as he did the unthinkable, he created a new euphemism for the doing of it while he was at it.

The “legacy,” as relates to Jerry Brown

Long after Governor Brown has finally retired for the last time and ridden off into the political sunset, people will continue to die because of what he did today. If past is prelude, this law, as bad as it is, will become the opening volley in the war on life by use of euthanasia in California. As bad as it is, future politicians will line up to the death wagon and amend it to make it worse.

How legalizing assisted suicide increases the overall suicide rate. First, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty:

Only just today, a study by Jones and Paton in the Southern Medical Journal demonstrates that the permissive assisted suicide laws in Washington and Oregon have led in those states to at least a 6% rise in overall suicide rates. While this study was not published in time to impact the debates in California, hopefully other states will take into account this and other studies that demonstrate the negative impacts on public health from such legislation.

Suicide is among the health-related behaviors that tend to spread from person to person through social networks, up to three degrees of separation. We know also that publicized cases lead to clusters of copycat cases. A Swiss study in 2003, for example, indicated evidence for suicide contagion following media reports of doctor-assisted suicide.

Furthermore, the law itself is a teacher. These laws communicate the message that under especially difficult circumstances, some lives are not worth living. This message will be heard by not only those with a terminal illness but also any person struggling with the temptation to end his or her own life.”

And Wesley Smith, referring to the same study:
I have long suspected that pushing suicide in some situations, would increase suicides in others.
For example, Oregon has the second highest suicide rate in the country–and that doesn’t include its assisted suicides. Between 1999-2010, the suicide rate among men and women aged 34-65 spiked nearly 50% in Oregon, compared to 28% nationally.
I believe that assisted suicide advocacy pushes suicide generally because it communicates the message that self-termination is an acceptable way to end one’s suffering.
Now, a study published the Southern Medical Journal supports my hypothesis, finding a statistically significant suicide increase in states that have legalized assisted suicide.

Just a quick concluding thought. There’s been a great deal written in recent years about the “contagion” impact of suicide–how too many people take their own lives in “copycat” fashion when suicide is “normalized” or presented as a “solution” to problems.
That refers to individuals, but the effect of the same underlying theme–that suicide is a “courageous” act that “ends” problems–applies to cultures. The physician-assisted suicide contagion has spread over parts of Europe, Canada, and, alas, made its way into the United States.


Does that mean that we will just accept that greater acceptance is inevitable? It was thought to be inevitable in England, but was recently rebuffed in the House of Commons.
Granted, the impact of California is potentially enormous, but the coalition that defeated the measure in California (until proponents used underhanded tricks to get it revisited yet again) has been successful in other states, as we have documented in great detail in NRL News Today.
The absurdly named Compassion & Choices’ thirst for even more carnage will not be satiated by a stroke of Gov. Brown’s pen. The formerly (and correctly) named Hemlock Society will crave even more.

It is up to you and me to mourn today but then take up our stations tomorrow.
Compassion & Choices won’t stop.
Neither will we.

Source: NRLC News