Right To Die Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The right to die tends to be a controversial issue around the world. Proponents of the right to die generally support the right of the terminally ill to end their own lives through assisted suicides and believe that life should not be prolonged when there is no chance of recovery. Many patients and families now routinely choose hospice care as an alternative to indefinite periods on life support. The focus of such care is on making patients and families comfortable without sustaining life by artificial means. Critics reject the notion that the right to die exists, contending that assisting or hastening death in any fashion is outright murder.

In 1968 a group of American physicians defined death as the end of human life when the heart and lungs cease to operate.

The term brain dead has since been used to describe patients who suffered irreversible brain damage, including the cessation of involuntary functions like heartbeat, such that they could only be kept alive through artificial means. A reexamination of when death occurs had been necessitated by advancing medical technology that allowed physicians to prolong life through the aggressive use of antibiotics, respirators, feeding tubes, and organ transplants.

According to the American Hospital Association, death occurs in three out of every four cases when terminally ill patients have been removed from life support. With prior consent of the patient or by permission of families, doctors can harvest vital organs to be transplanted into various patients or used in training facilities. Each country deals with the right to die in its own way, and positions range from that taken by the Netherlands, which accepts the right to die with equanimity, to Japan where a refusal to accept the scientific concept of brain dead prevents doctors from harvesting organs for major transplants.

Switzerland And The Netherlands

Some countries lack specific bans on assisted suicide, but Switzerland was the first country to legalize the practice in the 1940s.This permissiveness came under scrutiny in 2009, as an increasing number of foreigners (especially British, French, and German citizens) came to Switzerland to end their lives, a practice known as suicide tourism. The practice of suicide tourism was also controversial in the United Kingdom, as lawmakers debated whether to prosecute family members or friends who aid those travelling abroad to end their lives, or whether to recognize the right to die in the United Kingdom. Divergence in laws concerning the right to die among countries of the European Union promises to perpetuate controversy. In 2002, the European Court of Human Rights rejected the argument of a British woman, Diane Pretty, that the British law against assisted suicide violated her fundamental rights. As of 2010, the European Court of Human Rights had yet to reconsider this ruling.

Also, in 2002, the Netherlands became the second country to legalize assisted suicide and now has more than two thousand people choose to end their lives each year. The practice is legal only when a patient with an incurable illness or who is in unbearable pain that cannot be alleviated by other methods freely and persistently asks for assistance in dying. The decision must be agreed to by at least two physicians (one of whom is independent), and a committee has to be set up to monitor the case. If these guidelines are not followed, physicians may be prosecuted for murder. Belgium followed the Netherlands in 2002, but other countries have been slow to follow their lead.

United States

The issue of assisted suicides has proved controversial in the United States, where the right to die is decided on a state-by-state basis and faces vigorous opposition in the prolife movement rooted in antiabortion activism among Christian conservatives. The right to die debate has been heated in the United States since 1976 when the parents of Karen Ann Quinlan, 22, who was declared brain dead after a drug overdose, asked and received permission to remove her from a respirator. The decision was challenged, and Quinlan lived several years in a vegetative state after the respirator was removed. The debate heated up again in 1990 when the Supreme Court entered the arena. In Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health (497 U.S. 261), the court held that competent individuals have a “liberty interest” based on the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to refuse medical treatment. Nevertheless, the justices decided that if no “clear and convincing evidence” of the right to die exists, the compelling interest of the state in sustaining life takes precedence.

This practice received international attention in the late 1980s and 1990s when Dr. Jack Kevorkian, dubbed “Dr. Death” by the media, helped more than one hundred terminally ill patients end their own lives (one case led to an eighty ear prison sentence for second-degree murder). Meanwhile, in 1997, Oregon became the first U.S. state to legalize assisted suicide, followed by neighboring Washington in 2006. In 2010, the Montana Supreme Court issued a ruling protecting doctors from prosecution for assisted suicide, but falling short of recognizing a constitutional right to die.

The most recent controversial right to die case in the United States involved Terri Schiavo of Florida, who went into a coma in 1990 at the age of twenty-six after experiencing cardiac arrest. Doctors determined that she existed only in a vegetative state, but she was kept alive through a feeding tube. In 2003, Schiavo’s husband Michael asked that her tube be removed, in keeping with what he believed would have been his wife’s wishes. Her parents challenged the decision, disputing her diagnosis backed by their own doctors, and set off a round of battles that involved the Florida governor and legislature and eventually President George W. Bush (the brother of Florida’s governor) and the U. S. Congress. On four separate occasions, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Despite the controversy, Schiavo’s tube was ultimately removed in 2005, and she died two weeks later. Autopsy reports revealed that it would have been medically impossible for Schiavo to recover. The Schiavo case is a good example of the connection between U.S. Christian conservative opposition to abortion and rejection of a right to die—her parents, Roman Catholics, received spiritual counsel from Fr. Frank Pavone, the leader of Priests for Life, an organization of Catholic clergy opposed to abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide.

Bibliography:

“Assisted Suicide: Debate around the World.” BBCNews.com (Europe), September 23, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8270516.stm.
Capron, Alexander, and Margaret Lock, eds. Deadly Disputes: Understanding Death in Europe, Japan, and North America. Berkeley: University of California, 1995.
Hoefler, James M. Managing Death. Boulder, Colo.:Westview, 1997.
Logue, Barbara J. Last Rights: Death Control and the Elderly in America. New York: Lexington, 1993.
Uhlmann, Michael M. Last Rights? Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia Debated. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998.
Woodman, Sue. Last Rights: The Struggle over the Right to Die. New York: Plenum Trade, 1998.

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