In Europe, Euthanasia is Driving Doctors and Nurses to Quit

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.

American College of Physicians Opposes Assisted Suicide

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.

Canada’s Obsession With Euthanasia

Recently, our friends at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview have published commentaries on assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada.

Last year Canada legalized so-called “medical assistance in dying.” However, many Canadian doctors have been reluctant to help patients end their lives.

Last August, John Stonestreet highlighted a proposal to pay Canadian doctors a premium to prescribe deadly drugs. The goal seems to be to offer a financial incentive to doctors who assist with patients’ suicides.

Yesterday, Eric Metaxas cited efforts to make assisted suicide and euthanasia more accessible for the mentally ill. As Metaxas points out, these newest arguments in favor of expanding assisted suicide in Canada center less around compassion for those who suffer and more around improving society. He writes,

In Canada’s case, [assisted suicide is] being championed by people who claim to be working for a better future. Whatever the setting, compassion is the last thing we should call it.

Christians are often criticized for using the “slippery slope” argument when it comes to assisted suicide — the argument that what starts out as assisted suicide for a few terminally-ill people ends with euthanasia.

In this case, Canada doesn’t simply seem to be on a slippery slope; they’re plummeting down it.

Photo Credit: By Gustavo Vilela Alkmin (Máquina fotográfica de colega) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.