‘Death with Dignity’: compassion or dispatch?

By Cathy Keim

“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

The House Judiciary and Health and Government Operations committees held a joint hearing last Friday on HB1021, the Richard E. Israel and Roger “Pip” Moyer Death with Dignity Act. Yesterday the Senate Judicial Proceedings committee held a hearing on the cross-filed SB676.

The arguments that were offered at the House committee hearing on March 6, 2015, were exactly what were expected. The two sides are clearly divided here. The culture of death has no room for the culture of life. The desire to rule one’s own fate does not leave room for compassion or suffering, which are both elements of the human condition.

The siren call of death takes the guise of “fairness.” It is only “fair” that a person that is terminally ill should be able to end his suffering. Without a doubt, we all tremble at the thought of pain, dependency, loss of mental capacity and/or bodily functions. We all desire to be healthy and happy, but to equate the loss of our health with the right to die is a dire step.

Let’s run through some of the arguments that opponents of the bill put forth.

Maryland has outlawed the death penalty for anyone, no matter his or her crime. However, the same drugs that Maryland will not allow to be used to execute murderers are the drugs that will be prescribed for a person to die with dignity.

Physicians are not trained to kill their patients. It will inevitably change the doctor/patient relationship if the doctor is expected to offer death as an option.

People that are given a diagnosis of a terminal illness with six months to live will most likely respond by being depressed. They could kill themselves in a state of depression because there is no provision for a mental health professional to evaluate them in the current bill.

Physicians cannot tell with accuracy who has six months to live. Plenty of people live for years after they are told they have six months to live, but we will never know if they kill themselves out of despair. Amazingly, about 20% of the people that receive hospice care actually leave the hospice instead of dying.

Palliative care is available for patients in pain. We are not condemning our loved ones to endless, unrelenting pain.

Many of the most poignant cases that are presented as deserving a death with dignity are those afflicted with Alzheimer’s, ALS, or Parkinson’s. However, by the time they would want to die, they would not be able to self administer the drugs, so this bill would not “help” them anyway.

Handicapped people already feel pressured because they are using medical resources at a steeper rate than healthy people. This bill would increase the pressure on the handicapped to not use more than their fair share of medical care.

Do you see how the subtle pressure works? Especially once the government is in control of health care, there will be the pressure to manage care from an organizational, cost-effective perspective, not a personal case-by-case perspective.

An effective way to save on costs is to encourage the elderly, the handicapped, and the sickest patients to stop their suffering (and ours) by removing themselves. It does not even have to be said aloud, but the pressure will build on our weakest, most vulnerable citizens.

It is time now to stop and count the cost of this type of public policy. Our country was established with a Judeo-Christian foundation of which the keystone is that each individual is created in the image of God. This is the concept that gave birth to Western Civilization, which resulted in our Declaration of Independence proclaiming, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Already we are seeing breaches in the wall protecting our weaker brothers. Abortion claims the lives of many babies because they are deemed defective (the vast majority of Downs Syndrome babies are aborted). Sex-selection abortions claim many female babies even here in the United States. Abortions are performed for trivial problems that could be surgically corrected like a cleft palate or even more troubling for the convenience of the mother. The absolutely logical next step after abortion on demand is the removal of the handicapped and elderly.

We are seeing the complete inversion of our thinking. Compassion used to mean caring for those that needed help. Now compassion is making sure that you can have a lethal dose of drugs to end your life. We have moved from compassion to dispatch, but in an Orwellian turn of the phrase, we still call it compassion. Then to keep up the farce, this bill would require the doctor to lie on the death certificate and list as the cause of death whatever terminal illness the patient had rather than suicide by overdose.

This Death with Dignity bill is a lie from start to finish. The true dignity would come from all of us rejecting this manipulation of our emotions and comforting our family and friends when they need comfort, not helping to finish them off.

Once again, I am aware of the pain, emotional and physical, that is present as we watch a loved one or ourselves move towards death, but this is part of the human condition. We do not make ourselves more human by rushing life out the door. We cannot create life, so let us not be over eager to take it away.

3 thoughts on “‘Death with Dignity’: compassion or dispatch?”

  1. Cathy,

    A well-reasoned article. Thank you for being willing to stick your head up and declare the truth.

    While appealing to other’s sense of morality, decency, honor, etc. seems ill advised in an age of selfish moral relativism, it is essential that we do so. Even if, when all is said and done, we only manage to sound an unheeded warning. At least those who hear it will know that they once heard the truth and are without excuse.

    God help us all…

  2. If someone only has 3 months of life left, 3 months with nothing but pain and misery, you would tell them, “Despite the absolute certitude of your death and pain, you will have to live every moment, experience every pain, suffer in agony every day, until God decides when it’s over”.

    That’s not compassion. That’s vicious sadism. Ritualized cruelty.

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