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Promoting a Culture of Abandonment

By Teresa R. Wagner

Teresa Wagner is a legal analyst specializing in human rights and right-to-life issues at Family Research Council, a Washington-based organization with the following mission statement: "The Family Research Council champions marriage and family as the foundation of civilization, the seedbed of virtue, and the wellspring of society. We shape public debate and formulate public policy that values human life and upholds the institutions of marriage and the family. Believing that God is the author of life, liberty, and the family, we promote the Judeo-Christian worldview as the basis for a just, free, and stable society.”

1 The death toll in Oregon will really begin to rise now. Attorney General Janet Reno has decided that a federal law regulating drug usage (the Controlled Substances Act) somehow does not apply to the use of lethal drugs in Oregon, the only state in the country to legalize assisted suicide. The evidence will begin pouring in on how deadly assisted suicide can be, not just for the individuals subject to it, of course, but for the culture that countenances it.

2 There are frightening and compelling policy reasons to oppose assisted suicide. Foremost is the risk of abuse. Proponents of assisted suicide always insist that the practice will be carefully limited: It will be available, they claim, only for those who request it and only for those who are dying anyway (the terminally ill).

3 Such limitations are virtually impossible. People will inevitably be killed without knowing or consenting to it. Several state courts have already ruled as a matter of state constitution^ law that any rights given to competent patients (those who can request death) must also be given to incompetent ones (those who cannot). Third parties make treatment decisions for this latter group. Now legal, assisted suicide will be just another treatment option for surrogate decision makers to select, even if the patient has made no indication of wanting to die.

4 What's more, the cost crunch in medicine virtually guarantees that hospitals and doctors will eventually pressure, a" then coerce, patients to avail themselves of this easy and cheap =-tentative,

5 Similarly, the confinement of this right to the terminally ill is impossible. As many groups opposing assisted suicide have noted, the term itself is hardly clear The Oregon law defines terminal disease as that which will produce death within six months. Is that with or without medical treatment? Many individuals will die in much less than six months without very simple medical treatment (insulin injections, for example).They could be deemed terminal under this law and qualify for this new right to death.

6 More importantly the rationale for providing this new right almost demands its extension beyond limits. After all, if we are trying to relieve pain and suffering, the non-terminal patient, who faces years of discomfort, has a more compelling claim to relief than the terminal patient, whose hardship is supposed to be short-lived. Courts will quickly recognize this and dispense with any terminal requirement.

7 So much for limits.

8 The tragedy, of course, is that we have the ability right now to relieve the suffering of those in even the most excruciating pain. Anesthesiologists and others in pain centers around the country claim that we can provide adequate palliation 99 percent of the time.

9 Unfortunately, certain obstacles prevent patients from getting the pain relief they need: Many in medicine fear, mistakenly, that patients will become addicted to analgesic medications; overzealous regulatory agencies penalize doctors who prescribe the large doses needed (or they penalize the pharmacies that stock them); and medical professionals generally are not trained adequately in pain and symptom management.

10 The more important reasons to oppose assisted suicide, however, are moral: We must decide what type of people we are and how we will care for the weak and sick among us, for it is only to these dependents, not to all individuals, that we are offering this new right. Is this because we respect their autonomy (allegedly the basis of the right to die) more than our own? Or do we unconsciously (or consciously) believe their lives are of less worth and therefore less entitled to make demands of care (not to mention money) on us?

11 Make no mistake: Despite incessant clamor about rights, ours is actually a culture of abandonment. The acceptance of assisted suicide and euthanasia in this culture is almost inevitable. Abortion, of course, was the foundation. It taught (and still teaches) society to abandon mothers, and mothers to abandon their children. Divorce (husbands and wives leaving or abandoning each other) sends the same message. The commitment to care for others, both those who have been given to us and those we have selected, no longer exists. We simply do not tolerate those we do not want.

12 What to do about the advance of this culture? Replace it with a culture of care, a culture of commitment.

13 This is obviously no easy task for it is neither easy to administer care nor easy to receive it (Indeed, the elderly cite the fear of dependence most often when indicating why they might support assisted suicide.) But it is precisely within this context of care, of giving and receiving, that we enjoy the dignity particular to human beings. Otherwise we would simply shoot the terminal patient as we do the dying horse.

14 The assisted suicide question is really the battle between these two cultures. We can follow the way of Jack Kevorkian or of Mother Teresa. The life of Mother Teresa was a witness to nothing if not to commitment and care. She was simply there to care for the sick and the old, to assure them of their worth. Jack Kevorkian and our culture of abandonment, epitomized by assisted suicide and all the abuses to follow, surely will not.

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Wagner, T. (2012). Promoting a Culture of Abandonment. In S. McDonald and W. Salomone (Eds.) The Writer’s Response. (4th edition, pp. 245-247). Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.