The Value of a Human Life Essay Example for Free

The Value of a Human Life Essay We look at the words of one of the framers of our constitution, and we apply it to the concept of assisted suicide. This subject was one of the hottest issues of the late 20th century, but why was this issue so crucial? Why did it seem to have law writers and judges fumbling to grab for their red tape? There seems to be a more deep seated opinion on why the land that gives us the right to freedom of speech, expression, natural, and civil rights, can restrict the one right we should inherently have. The question I pose for you today isn’t to look at the morality of suicide, but rather look, and ask yourself, why don’t we have the right to die? This paper will be broken down into two sections, one will be the law, precedent, acts, etc. and the other will be the philosophy governing our actions as a collective body and why the ideals that the sound percentage of this united states are unrepresented. The Law There are many cases of assisted suicide, and legislation overseeing it, but the few examples I will give will show the stance that America has taken on the subject of assisted suicide. Jack Kevorkian was the front runner for euthanasia, advocate for a pro-choice death, and leader of one of the most controversial hot button issues of the late 1980s to 1990s. He fought for the legalization of assisted suicide in terminal patients and was known for saying â€Å"dying is not a crime†. He’s an important figure in this movement because he couldn’t be convicted until he was aired on 60 minutes as personally injecting the patient with the drug, instead of having them commit the suicide themselves. The importance of this distinction is that when Jack himself did not inject the patient, he was not found accountable, showing the importance of the word â€Å"assisted† in assisted suicide. [2] Secondly, the Terry Schiavo case was another landmark case pertaining to the death of a terminal patient. Theresa Marie Schindler (Terri) had entered a vegetative state and was comatose and on life support. Her husband had the power to order her feeding tubes removed, ultimately sentencing her to death, however, many people intervened and wouldn’t let her pass away, rather they kept her on feeding tubes for 15 years until she finally was taken off life support and passed 13 days after. During her life, the very controversial â€Å"Terri’s Law† was written up and gave the power to Florida’s Governor to put Terri back on life support. An interesting point in this legislation is that President George W. Bush flew to Washington just to sign this bill into action. â€Å"It should be noticed that this is the same George W. Bush who, as Governor of Texas, signed into state law the power of hospitals to remove a patient (in identical situations as Terris) from life support a critical factor being the familys ability to pay the hospital bills even if such removal was against the familys objections. †[3] This brings a completely different angle into the element of a patient’s death. From the parameters of this case it proves that the government will not intervene into the death of one of its constituents, unless of course that person is not financially able to keep living. I’ll explain this further, in the second section. Another fact to outline our government’s stand on suicide is the Washington v. Glucksberg case. In this case the Supreme Court agreed unanimously that the Due Process Clause of the Constitution did not protect the right to assistance in committing suicide. There was a previous case, Moore v.  East Cleveland, which decided that liberty interests cannot be protected if they aren’t deeply rooted in the nation’s history. Rehnquist wrote that it â€Å"furthered various compelling state interests, such as the preservation of human life and protecting the mentally ill and disabled from medical malpractice†. The Court also thought that protecting physician assisted suicide would create a â€Å"slippery slope† towards involuntary euthanasia. [4] Some things that must be discussed in this regard are as follows. The Due Process Clause protects the right to choice over abortion, which can be compared semi-closely in this case. 5] Why should those who are unborn have no say over their own demise, but yet someone who is suffering and wants to die with dignity cannot have the blessing and assistance of their physician? Furthermore, the slippery slope argument is not a logically proven one, it’s simply using something with shock effect and making it seem less distant than it really is, putting fear in those who notice nothing wrong with the argument. R. G. Frey, DPhil says it best in his book titled â€Å"The Fear of a Slippery Slope,† Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide: For and Against. Especially with regard to taking life, slippery slope arguments have long been a feature of the ethical landscape, used to question the moral permissibility of all kinds of acts The situation is not unlike that of a doomsday cult that predicts time and again the end of the world, only for fol lowers to discover the next day that things are pretty much as they were We need the evidence that shows that horrible slope consequences are likely to occur. The mere possibility that such consequences might occur, as noted earlier, does not constitute such evidence. [6] There’s no other way it can be put, the use of a slippery slope has no bearing on the actual case in front of the judges and should have never been allowed as reasoning for striking down the act. Another commonly cited document in this case is the Hippocratic Oath, the rule of law for doctors and alike as well as a document swearing in medical practitioners into the field. The cited phrase that those opposed to assisted suicide use is â€Å"I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone†. It seems that people are being too narrow-minded about the term, â€Å"harm†. As Philip Nitschke, Founder of Exit International, a pro-euthanasia group says, â€Å"The much-quoted reference to do no harm is also in need of explanation. Does not doing harm mean that we should prolong a life that the patient sees as a painful burden? Surely, the harm in this instance is done when we prolong the life, and doing no harm means that we should help the patient die. Killing the patienttechnically, yes. Is it a good thingsometimes, yes. Is it consistent with good medical end-of-life care: absolutely yes. [8] Another interesting quote in the Hippocratic Oath is the phrase, â€Å"I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion. †[9] This shows some contradictions in the Oath that the opposition has held so dear. The abortion line has since been removed, as well as the statement about a lethal drug, but in the updated version it also has no statement about â€Å"never do[ing] harm†. Some anti-euthanasia persons use an outdated version of the oath to make their points, but have neglected that there are also other statements in that old version that are no longer applicable to this day and age. [10] The last and final bit of information is the Death with Dignity Act, established in Oregon and Washington. It has been voted in by the citizens of each individual state by majority, challenged by the state legislature and rejected by voters, and even challenged by the Bush Administration and upheld in the Supreme Court by Gonzales v.  Oregon. The act establishes safe and enforceable guidelines to go through before the patient takes the life-ending medication. The guidelines include and enforce a waiting period, must be reviewed by two physicians, the patient must be free of a impairing mental illness, must be witnessed by two people, one of which isn’t family, and the request is voluntary and can be backed out of at any time. [11]/[12] This is the act we need established in the entire United States; one that gives patients the right to die with dignity. The point of this research is to show the clearly biased views of the American government; next, I’ll be demonstrating examples and reasoning for why we should be allowed the freedom to choose. Philosophy First, it must be said that to purely discuss the task at hand we must remove all prejudice about religion and morality. Those things can be used in one’s own personal value that they put upon this subject, but in front of us is the law, and it must be known that all religious aspects must be removed from government. Now, what we’re facing is the legalization and promotion of assisted suicide. Suicide is a non-punishable crime, so to speak. It’s not that they can convict a corpse, but in the attempt of a suicide attempt one can be taken into a mental institution to be assessed and treated. The first question posed is how can a crime that can’t be punished be illegal? How can we outlaw something that no government, law, or individual can persecute another for? Back in the earlier years of this country suicide used to be treated with a common law, governing all forms of the same type of suicide. However, the common law must always be updated in this ever changing society. Back when the precedent was decided there was no need so assisted suicide because the people with the illnesses would simply pass away, but today where there’s life support and other means of keeping sick patients alive, now we must choose where to draw the line in that individual’s suffering. There are different tiers of being â€Å"alive†. The fact that someone is breathing doesn’t mean that they’re alive. One may say that their life is running, playing with family, writing books, or painting pictures. This life is taken away from them when they’re sentenced to a hospital bed with tubes keeping them alive and no way to interact with others. They don’t want to ever let themselves get to the point where their family has to see them like that, and it’s an honorable, selfless thing to do. Human beings have certain unenumerated rights, sometimes known as natural rights, those not to â€Å"be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people†. Upon looking into the words of this phrase in the Ninth Amendment, we see that this amendment is plainly stating a sense of equality. If we apply this to the case of assisted suicide, the vast majority of Americans have the natural right that is life. If we were to break down the spirit of the word life, let it be seen that, as formerly stated, life has different acceptable meaning depending upon circumstances. The law cannot be taken at face value in this case and must be interpreted accordingly. Life, for one may mean freedom, and in this case the only freedom a terminally ill patient has is in death. The patient needs freedom, freedom from the constraints of suffering, freedom to move on to a better place than they are in now, whether that be a religious place, reincarnation, or a hole in the ground. As stated earlier there is a quandary in this argument when finance enters into play. We might ask ourselves why our government is so adamant on keeping us alive. Through legislation, passed by a man that became our president, it appears that a financially stable families can keep their loved ones alive even against the wishes of her husband who has the power of choice, while those not able to pay for life support must watch their loved one die as the feeding tube is removed against their will. The question of preservation of life is miniscule in this example. The real reasoning behind certain groups advocating for life is because of monetary gain, they force an individual who cannot communicate his wishes to continue living an unexamined life on his death bed, while the man who does have a say cannot choose his own path. This brings forward the one of the focal points of this paper; can and individual violate their own rights. The government is put in place to protect our individual rights and freedoms, and they use that title to protect our right to life by not letting us choose. Someone can violate the rights of another and be sent to jail in which their rights are revoked until their time is served, but are the consequences the same for one who attempts suicide? The answer is no, a human being may have the right to life, but that life cannot be violated by themselves. I can say this because of the inherent freedoms allowed by the Bill of Rights. In these, Americans are given freedoms to be their own person, to worship, and express themselves completely and fully within constraints of their own person. As long as the rights of other humans are not directly, or even indirectly, put at risk there is no fear of conviction. To explain further I must say that we cannot violate our own rights in the legal sense. If we are to take our own life, it is our right to, and one cannot be held accountable for their choices pertaining to themselves. This leads us to the discussion of positive and negative rights. Positive rights are those that permit or allow action, whereas negative rights are those who permit or allow inaction. For example, a person may want to be assisted in their suicide, and that should be their positive right to do so, but their physician, who may not morally agree with the procedure, has the negative right to refer the patient to a different doctor. This comes up most frequently in the case of abortion where the doctor may not want to go through with it for moral reasons, but the patient still has the right to have the procedure. This is important in the distinction because a person who does not agree with assisted suicide has the negative right not to have the procedure done on their death bed, and the fact that the wishes of other are not imposed on them is showing the freedom this country has not fully applied on both ends of the spectrum. They should have the right not to have the procedure done if they don’t want it, just as much as the person who wishes to have it should be allowed that right. Liberalist Thomas Szasz writes that, â€Å"If freedom is self-ownership—ownership over ones own life and body—then the right to end that life is the most basic of all. If others can force you to live, you do not own yourself and belong to them†. This is exactly what the framers of our constitution wanted us to believe in, self-ownership, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. What better way to prove that the individual purely owns himself than to be able to make his own decisions up until and including death. Conclusion In conclusion, the proof if right in our own Constitution, and in the precedent set in past court cases and actions of the government. The right to a physician assisted suicide should be a part of our freedoms just as much as abortion, freedom of religion, and freedom of expression. The Bill of Rights sets up certain unwritten rules that everyone should have equal access to, and it should be stated that the right to life can intrinsically be attributed to death as well. There are already states with legislation in order, but it will take an act of government to make it federally acceptable. The arguments against suicide either come from the slippery slope argument or from an argument from morality. As we can see, the slippery slope argument has no proof or rational acceptance, unless more proof from trial comes forth, and since there are already states which have enacted legislation on the subject, and no problems have arisen, we can justify the disregard for such an argument. The argument from morality also holds no grounds because morality is different in each individual being, and we cannot make another mistake in our practice of government such as letting the thoughts of the many outweigh the few who have a constitutional equality. It is stated that we all have our own freedoms, which cannot be violated either by ourselves or by our government. The protections that are placed upon us are inalienable by any means, and it is contradictory to say that we’re violating our own rights and should be held accountable by anyone except for ourselves. To finish, I hope I have shown enough research, and voided enough counter arguments, to show that and rational being must be able to accept the proposition of assisted suicide from the view of legal equality and representation. I’ll end with two quotes that speak volumes to the desires of these terminally-ill people.