Morality of Physician-Assisted Suicide Debated Nationwide

Today's impending decision on whether to legalize physician-assisted suicide in Oregon and this past weekend's conference at the Science Center on euthanasia have brought to light the national debate on the right to die.

Guest speakers and students who discussed and debated several views on euthanasia in the conference this weekend--hosted by The Hippocratic Society--were met with protesters chanting "We're Not Dead Yet."

Diane Coleman, spokesperson for the national organization Not Dead Yet--a group dedicated to protecting disabled persons' rights--said the group is against euthanasia because it implies that someone with disability should not live.

"If you're healthy, you get suicide prevention and if you're not, you get suicide assistance," she said.

Thomas Balch, director of the Department of Medical Ethics for the National Right to Life Committee, agreed that euthanasia discriminates against disabled persons.

"We have already seen many instances where people with disabilities are denied suicide counseling that is routinely given to suicidal non-disabled people," he said.

As the largest minority group in America with a one-third unemployment rate, Coleman said that people with disabilities are "oppressed" and "stigmatized."

"Intellectual discussion is going on while members of our minority group are being serial-killed by [Jack] Kevorkian and others and no one is doing anything about it," she said.

But Roy Torcaso, a senior citizen who said he has been active with the group Death with Dignity for many years, said he supports euthanasia because all individuals should have the right to choose how to deal with their suffering.

"It is only the person who is afflicted with some illness or terminal disease who should have the right to make a choice [of life or death] and he should have a choice without any limitation," said Torcaso, who is a former president of The Humanist Association of the Capital Area, Washington D.C.

Supporting his stance for euthanasia, Torcaso said that more than "70 percent of the American people agree with the right of terminally ill people to decide whether they want to live or die."

In addition, he said that he believes "that most objections to physician aid in dying are based upon religious injunctions."

He said that people who disapprove of calling in a doctor to get rid of pain "should not interfere in the affairs of those who hold other religious, or non-religious, views, and whose suffering is so intense that the grave has more appeal than a few more days, weeks or months of continual agony."

But Balch, who said he is agnostic, said that religion has nothing to do with his anti-euthanasia stance.

"It's clear that concerns about euthanasia cover an extreme depth of opinion, predominantly rooted in secular concerns," he said.

Torcaso also defended Kevorkian, saying that "he practically exudes compassion."

"I have the greatest admiration and respect for [Kevorkian]," he said. "He sees no value in suffering."

Torcaso said he believes "that no person has any right to tell a suffering person how much pain the afflicted one should or must endure."

Balch also stated that his organization is opposed to euthanasia because it is "convinced that the right to die will very soon become a duty to die, threatening the most vulnerable at the edges of our society."

Another argument Balch posed against euthanasia is the fear it instills in the elderly.

"In the atmosphere of managed health care and the impending retirement of the babyboomers, pressures are already strong to deny life-saving treatment to older people," he said.

Not Dead Yet members agreed that the elderly are another group susceptible to euthanasia propositions and pressures.

"Health care services are going to mean financial loss to the HMOs and that's going to be a dangerous thing," she said. "I know of seniors who have to choose between food and medication."

But Torcaso said that "the indignities of aging" override any positive side to continued living.

"The ravages of serious illness--incontinence, disability, lack of ability to eat or swallow--can rob a person of any desire to continue what the patient considers to be a life with no further value to him," he said.

Torcaso added that assisted suicide is not specifically prohibited by the Constitution and therefore should be legal.