Does Marriage Deter People From Physician-Assisted Suicide?

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In 2016 Colorado voted to legalize physician-assisted suicide. The law lets doctors prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill people who want to end their lives.

We have written in the past about studies and reports on assisted suicide in Canada and California. In most cases, people who opt to take their own lives are educated, affluent individuals accustomed to making their own decisions. But another trend is emerging: In some states, most of the people who seek physician-assisted suicide are not married.

According to reports out of Colorado, of the 56 people prescribed suicide drugs last year, 31 — about 55% — were not married.

The Oregon Health Authority reports that about 53% of the people who have taken their own lives since the state legalized physician-assisted suicide in 1998 were not married.

And Washington State reports that in 2016, 57% of those who sought assisted suicide also were not married at the time of death.

This raises a serious question: What roles do marriage or loneliness play in decisions about physician-assisted suicide?

A 2004 study published in the British Medical Journal found,

In general, widowed, single, and divorced elderly people have a higher risk of suicide, with marriage seeming to be protective. Bereavement is also associated with attempted and completed suicide in elderly people—men seem especially vulnerable after the loss of a spouse, with a relative risk three times that of married men.

Although the study noted some exceptions, married adults appeared less likely to commit suicide, overall.

So what does this mean for physician-assisted suicide?

Proponents generally claim physician-assisted suicide helps terminally ill people end their excruciating pain and suffering.

In practice, however, pain and suffering don’t seem to be the reasons people opt for assisted suicide.

A study conducted in Oregon in 1999 concluded, “the decision to request and use a prescription for lethal medications . . . was associated with views on autonomy and control, not with fear of intractable pain or concern about financial loss.” I would add that based on other reports and studies, loneliness also seems to be a factor.

Right now bills legalizing assisted suicide are before lawmakers in Connecticut and Hawaii. If more states legalize physician-assisted suicide, that debate could eventually come to Arkansas as well.

People need to understand what actually drives the demand for assisted suicide. Christians also need to understand why there is nothing compassionate about helping a person take his or her own life.

As we have said time and time again, being pro-life is about much more than opposing abortion. We do not eliminate suffering by eliminating people who are suffering. We must respect the sanctity of human life at the end of life as well as at the beginning.

Photo Credit: By Jeff Belmonte from Cuiabá, Brazil (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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In Europe, Euthanasia is Driving Doctors and Nurses to Quit

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Author, attorney, and ethicist Wesley J. Smith recently penned a column outlining a serious problem in European countries like Belgium: Doctors and nurses are quitting because of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Smith writes,

You become a doctor or nurse to be a healer palliator of people in serious pain and distress. You have a special place in your heart for the dying, and so you enter the specialized field of palliative care and hospice medicine.

But then, your country decides you should also become killers of the patients you want to succor. If you refuse, you face public criticism, the prospect of being sued, and perhaps one day, professional censure.

What do you do? If you are an ethical professional, rather than be complicit in homicide, you leave the field.

Doctors who specialize in end of life care and pain management — such as palliative care doctors in hospices and long term care facilities — are being forced to choose between their convictions and their careers.

One Belgian doctor said, “palliative care units are . . . at risk of becoming ‘houses of euthanasia’, which is the opposite of what they were meant to be.”

This is a disturbing trend. Palliative care offers terminally-ill people relief from pain and the opportunity to spend quality time with family as they near the end of life. These doctors and nurses provide vital services to people who are dying and to their families. Unlike euthanasia and assisted suicide, palliative care offers actual relief from suffering — without poisoning or killing any patients.

As we have said time and time again, being pro-life is about much more than opposing abortion. We do not eliminate suffering by eliminating people who are suffering. We must respect the sanctity of human life at the end of life as well as at the beginning.

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American College of Physicians Opposes Assisted Suicide

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Recently the American College of Physicians released a position statement opposing assisted suicide.

The statement reads in part,

As a proponent of patient-centered care, the American College of Physicians (ACP) is attentive to all voices, including those who speak of the desire to control when and how life will end. However, the ACP believes that the ethical arguments against legalizing physician-assisted suicide remain the most compelling. . . . [T]he ACP does not support legalization of physician-assisted suicide.

This is really good news. It highlights the fact that assisted suicide is not an ethical medical practice.

The demand for assisted suicide seems to be driven largely by concerns about autonomy in the face of death. Researchers in Canada — where assisted suicide is legal — found that people inquired about assisted-suicide not because of excruciating pain, but because they are dissatisfied with their lives in the wake of their illness.

A study conducted in Oregon in 1999 concluded, “the decision to request and use a prescription for lethal medications . . . was associated with views on autonomy and control, not with fear of intractable pain or concern about financial loss.”

Human life is sacred, and no sickness gives us an excuse to end someone’s life prematurely. We do not eliminate suffering by eliminating people who suffer, plain and simple.

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