Death with dignity humane

The struggle for nations to become humane, compassionate and truly civilized is a long, long one.
Take the abortion wars. The battle is still being fiercely fought 33 years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion in Roe v. Wade. Take evolution. Right-wingers and religious fanatics are still fighting over the fact of Darwinian evolution 80 years after the Scopes trial settled the matter.
Take gay and lesbian marriages. Just Canada, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands have legalized them. Take euthanasia. Just three countries legalize it: the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland. In America, assisted suicide is legal in just one state, Oregon.
So the recent decision by the Supreme Court to upheld Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act was cheering. It was also surprising because it was the kind of wise, bold and innovative law that the court reactionaries salivate to strike down.
Not that that reactionaries did not try. Justices Scalia and Thomas predictably dissented in the 6-3 vote. But most disturbing was that the new chief justice, John Roberts, joined them. The newest justice, Samuel Alito, makes four justices in favor of reaction.
Justice Kennedy is now the crucial swing vote. He is in the same position as the retiring Justice O’Connor. While a moderate conservative like Kennedy, O’Connor often prevented reactionaries from overturning Roe and turning back the clock on other progressive measures.
Kennedy’s vote was not crucial in the Oregon case. But his majority opinion dealt a stinging rebuke to former Attorney General John Ashcroft who attempted to block the law and threatened Oregon doctors. Kennedy declared: “The authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his expertise and incongrous with the statutory purposes.”
Kennedy noted that in another assisted-suicide case, Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), the court said that states were free to experiment with this “political and moral” issue. Which was the point that Justice Louis Brandeis stressed when he said: “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may…serve as a laboratory and try novel social and economic experiments.”
Oregon is a “courageous” state. Its “laboratory” should never be shut down by religious zealots who insist on imposing their beliefs on everyone else. Assisted suicide is a state matter. It is not for the intrusive thumb of federal officials like the zealot Ashcroft.
Sadly, America is a death-denying culture. Religious fanatics always harp on the sacredness of life. But life is not sacred when devastating illnesses make it worthless. Life is not sacred when a patient is living like a vegetable. Life is not sacred when it is sustained by machines. Life is not sacred if the brain is dead. Life is not sacred if living is agony. Life is not sacred if it is life without life.
The religious and moral objections to mercy deaths are nonsense. The real immorality is allowing patients to suffer unbearably when life can be ended mercifully.
Jack Kevorkian, death-with-dignity martyr who is rotting in a Michigan jail, is an American hero. He was arguing the law of the future, not as the law is now, but as it will be one day. As Kevorkian put it: “Any physician who is a real physician would care for nothing other than the welfare of the patient.”
And that caring means putting a brain-dead Terri Schiavo to sleep mercifully even if pandering pols like President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist grandstand over her grave.
The “slippery slope” argument is another absurdity. It is what lawyers call the parade of horribles, dredging up all the dire things that could happen if euthanasia becomes settled law.Why, next a state will sanction the killing of the old, the crippled, the homeless.
By prolonging a life that is no longer worth living, physicians are actually torturing patients. And they are also contributing to the expenditure of needless thousands of dollars to sustain a life that is “dead.”
Justice Brennan, dissenting in a 1990 Supreme Court decision upholding a Missouri statute denying a dignified death, rightly said: “The thought of an ignoble end, steeped in decay, is abhorrent. A quiet, proud death, bodily integrity intact, is a matter of extreme consequence.”
Assisted suicide is death with compassion, with dignity--and with love. It allows families, loved ones and friends to gather for one last time, creating a searing intimacy.
The right to die with dignity is a basic human right. America will not be truly civilized until all 50 states adopt the Oregon law.
Sparks Tribune, Feb. 2, 2006