Anyway, one of the good folks at Lean Left posted some email exchanges from last year between himself and a friend who died of cancer this past October. He - the poster - asked people to honor the friend's request in that exchange and have a discussion about the right to die. I made a few comments; the only changes here are the addition of the links to info about the Zygmaniak case and correction of typos.
As Ted [the friend] noted, the legal and ethical issue often isn’t the right to suicide, it’s the right to assisted suicide. I say the answer to that doesn’t relate to “if” but to “under what conditions.” This is my take on the ethical (not the legal) side:My "tangential involvement" is that I was slightly acquainted with the defense attorney in the case and in an unrelated discussion (about Vietnam and draft resistance) shortly before the shooting I had said that I thought people were becoming more sympathetic to the idea that "life must be worth living to be life" or words to that effect.
Does a mentally-competent person have to right to take their own life? Yes.
Given that, if unable to carry it out themselves in a way to minimize suffering, does that person have the right to ask another for help? Yes.
Given both of those and assuming their own conscience allows it, does that second party have the right to help? Yes.
Given all of those, does that second party have the right to refuse to help? Yes.
The sticker, of course, is the “mentally-competent” part. For example, I was brought up Catholic and I remember being taught at one point that the Church no longer regarded suicide as a sin on the grounds that life was such a previous gift of God that no sane person would willingly surrender it. But that becomes a catch-22 because it means that attempting suicide is proof that you aren’t mentally competent to make the decision to attempt suicide.
Which is why I included that last point above: If that second party believes the suicidal person is not thinking clearly or is acting out of a bout of clinical depression or similar cause, I’d say not only can they refuse, but they are morally and ethically obligated to do so.
This has been a conviction of mine of long-standing. I was tangentially involved in the case of Lester Zygmaniak, who in 1973 performed a mercy killing of his brother George. It could reasonably be called an assisted suicide because George had repeatedly asked Lester to kill him.
George had been in a motorcycle accident that left him in a great deal of pain and, doctors said, permanently and irreversibly paralyzed from the neck down. He repeatedly asked his doctors why they wouldn’t just let him die and begged Lester to put him out of his misery.
Ultimately, Lester smuggled a shotgun into the hospital, asked George one more time if he was sure this is what he wanted, and on getting an affirmative response, shot George in the head, killing him instantly. (Sidebar: Note that “minimizing suffering” does not necessarily mean the use of medications.) He then waited in the room until the police came. He was charged with first degree murder.
At his trial, his lawyer pleaded temporary insanity, a defense that rarely works. But the jury took just two and a-half hours to both acquit Lester and to find his sanity had returned, thus freeing him. I said at the time - and I still think - that I didn’t for a minute believe the jury actually believed the temporary insanity claim; rather that, given the circumstances, they took the attitude “no damn way we’re sending that boy to jail for who knows how many years.”
Precisely because the issue of assisted suicide is fraught with matters of conscience and judgment, it’s an area where people surely can disagree and agree to disagree - but for that very reason I think it’s an issue where we need to be extremely cautious in setting legal limits that would criminalize actions undertaken willingly and in good conscience by all directly involved.
In response to my comment, the poster said he "mostly liked" my framework, but would like some additional person involved who was not directly involved/related to the person wishing to die. "I can see how that could become cumbersome in some cases," he said, but added that he was concerned about possible abuse.
I understand your desire for the involvement of a disinterested party, I do[, I replied]. It’s the reluctance to make assisted suicide seem too easy to get and do, an outcome I doubt anyone would favor. (And I’ll note that by “second party” I didn’t mean it necessarily was one individual; perhaps “outside party or parties” in place of “second party” would have been better.)After giving it a good deal of thought about whether I wanted to or not, I added one more comment to give an emotional as well as a philosophical context to my beliefs:
But again in terms of the ethics involved and not the legalities, I wonder, who would that third person be? How would you locate them? Consider the case of George Zygmaniak. What uninvolved third party could he have approached and how would they have been involved? And should a disinterested party have a say in the ethical aspects of what may well be the most intensely personal decision any of us could ever make?
In terms of the legalities, on the other hand, I could see a provision in a law about assisted suicide that would require an examination by some appropriate professional to determine that the person who wishes to end their life is mentally competent to understand the nature and consequences of their decision. But again, that is about competence, not ethics.
At the same time, I think the potential for abuse is rather small since even with an assisted suicide law, never mind without one, the possibility of being tried for murder if questions arise is quite real. Again referring to the Zygmaniak case, if the jury hadn’t been convinced that what Lester did was actually an act of mercy that was desired by George, Lester would very likely have been convicted of first degree murder.
A footnote to this: I think folks here know that I’m not much of one for going into personal experiences. I’ll offer a heckuva lotta personal opinions but not a lot of “this is what happened in my life.” But I’ll do it in this case because I have a somewhat personal connection to this issue, not direct, but the connection is there.I always thought that the people who work suicide prevention hot lines should be people who've been there, i.e., people who at some point might have been on the other side of that line. It's a cliché but it's true that generally, it is a terrible idea to tell someone considering suicide "You've got your whole life ahead of you!" since that's exactly the problem. But what you can say, and what thinking to myself I believe got me through on one occasion, is "Just hang on until tomorrow and see how you feel then." True, they may not feel any different.
Part of that is the fact that I’m subject to what I call dark spells, some of which have been long enough and dark enough that I understand the temptation to suicide as well as the need to try to wait it out to see if some light returns. You know the saying “so low I have to reach up to touch bottom?” Know that there are worse places, places where it seems there is no bottom and the sinking will never end.
The other has to do with the death of my mother, which was in 1986. She was at that point a brittle diabetic with end-stage renal disease. She had been in and out of the hospital several times over the preceding months and each time there was the possibility it would be her last. On this occasion, on top of everything else, she had a trach tube (so she couldn’t speak). We’d gotten her a little pad so she could write things out - but she suffered a string of TIAs (transient ischemic attacks, sometimes called mini-strokes) that left her hands unable to write the words her brain was screaming at them.
One day, I was standing at her bedside. One of her doctors and my father were across the room, talking. My mother looked at me and mouthed what I believe - but do not know - were the words “pull the plug.” I shook my head no. Wide-eyed with distress, she very clearly mouthed “Why?” I said “I can’t.” Not with my father and the doctor - both of who would try to physically prevent me - in the same room. Upset and unhappy, she turned her head away from me.
I intended to return later that day, when we would be alone, and ask her if she did say what I thought she said and if she meant what she appeared to mean. If the answer was yes, I would have done it. There is no question about that.
She slipped into a coma later that afternoon, before I could get back. She died two days later.
It was and remains one of the biggest regrets of my life that my mother may have died believing that I, who alone of all the people in her life would have been willing to fulfill that final request (as she surely knew), failed her.
So yeah, I have considered the ethics and emotions of both suicide and assisted suicide - from both sides of the situation.
Then again, maybe they will.
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