Euthanasia and the Right to Die: A Legal and Ethical Debate

Introduction: The Euthanasia Controversy

The idea of willingly terminating an individual's life, even with that person's consent, remains one of the most controversial issues in today's debate over where the state's authority to intrude upon the individual body begins. As Ronald Dworkin notes in his article "Sex, Death, and the Courts," it is true that "millions of people think that doctors are murderers if they help patients, even those dying slowly in great pain, to kill themselves." Yet the American Medical Association has confirmed its longstanding opposition to euthanasia, "and most states have made assisting suicide a crime" (Dworkin, 1996). Individuals claim that the state has no right to intrude upon what they do in private. Yet euthanasia often requires a physician's assistance, and in legal cases involving hospitals, courts are forced to make some determination of what constitutes an individual's right and will over his or her own body. Does such a right also encompass death?

Euthanasia may be, according to some individuals' sense of morality, personally reprehensible. However, despite the discomfort the issue generates, it seems an inevitable — if painful — conclusion that one must legally allow for the practice, even while personally rejecting it in most circumstances. Dworkin's statement, made many years ago, suggested that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to tackle the issue would bring about "another social revolution" regarding legal notions of life and death. But the debate over how to legally substantiate euthanasia continues.

Furthermore, the American Medical Association's condemnation of the practice shows that legal and medical perspectives are frequently in conflict. Ultimately, the morality at stake must be determined not by judges sitting upon the bench or physicians in hospitals, but in the minds and hearts of the friends and family who make decisions for their loved ones during times of crisis.

Legal and Rights-Based Arguments For Euthanasia

In his brief on the concept of assisted suicide, Dworkin states that "the pleadings" recorded in the proceedings "described the agony in which the patient plaintiffs were dying," and condemned the state. Courts of appeals "agreed with the plaintiffs that the Constitution forbids the government from flatly prohibiting doctors to help end such desperate and pointless suffering" (Dworkin, "Philosopher's Brief," 1997). This statement is notable because even the cool language of philosophy is coded in moral notions of what constitutes a healthy and well-lived life.

Legal and Rights-Based Arguments Against Euthanasia

One is tempted to say that every individual ought to determine for him or herself whether life has purpose and meaning. However, to take this idea to its logical extreme would be to permit individuals such as the Dutch woman — suffering from a lifetime of depression — to obtain medical and legal assistance in ending her own life (Dworkin, "Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia," 1997). Dworkin also cites this case in his article "Assisted Suicide: What the Court Really Said," using the woman as an example of someone who would not be permitted to legally end her life under the current parameters of euthanasia law. Here lies the fear of the "slippery slope": that one allowed case will lead to others (Dworkin, "Philosopher's Brief," 1997).

Dworkin's definition of a life lived in pointless suffering thus encompasses those who are terminally ill in body, not in mind. The Dutch woman might well argue that her life was similarly pointless, though her suffering was of the soul rather than the body. She would say that she had the right to end her own life because she was the one living it.

Conclusion

The issue of euthanasia will continue to be debated in legal, medical, and moral circles because it ultimately asks what the purpose of life is — an essentially unanswerable question. Because of that unanswerable nature, one is compelled to allow euthanasia in medically dire cases, or when the expressed will of those whose lives have been compromised by brain injury makes continuation unconscionable, in order to prevent a life lived in pain or against a terminal individual's expressed wishes. In more ambiguous cases, however, the state must intervene to preserve life — as when a depressed but otherwise healthy individual wishes to commit suicide.

The dialogue between the individual's right to determine what constitutes a good life — before and after medical intervention — will continue far into the future. To unalterably preserve life in all circumstances, or to extend the right to terminate it without limit, is impossible. The state, the family, and the individual can only enter into an imperfect negotiation, with some accommodation on issues of pain and terminal care at the margins of the debate.

Works Cited

Dworkin, Ronald. "Sex, Death and The Courts." The New York Review of Books. August 8, 1996.

Dworkin, Ronald. "Assisted Suicide: The Philosopher's Brief." The New York Review of Books. March 27, 1997.

Dworkin, Ronald. "Assisted Suicide: What the Court Really Said." The New York Review of Books. Volume 44, Number 14. September 25, 1997.

Dworkin, Ronald. "Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: An Exchange." The New York Review of Books. Volume 44, Number 14. November 6, 1997.