sometimes there's no proof. you just know.

Hi anon! Here’s the gist:

The goodness or worthiness of a human life is not dependent on the abilities of the person. It is also not dependent on how easy or pleasant their life is. It is inherent.

Suffering is an evil, but it does not reduce the person to less than a person. A person in pain is still a person. 

Neediness and vulnerability is not an evil. To be dependent on others for help and care is not undignified. We are all of us dependent on one another.

Death “on one’s own terms” is not a desirable or admirable category, and is merely dressing up the ordinary category of suicide. Taking one’s own life is not better than having death “happen” to you. We wouldn’t feel comfortable with a happy, loved, young person suddenly freely deciding that it was time for them to die; we only invent this category for lives that we feel are unworthy.

Assisted suicide assumes that when a person a) no longer has all the abilities they used to (including mental capacity), b) is in pain, and/or c) finds themselves in need of a lot of help, either in the sense of nursing care or in the sense of “becoming a burden” on their family, that it is more compassionate and dignified to help this person end their life. This is an affront to the inherent worth of human life, and it also makes a mockery of compassion. Compassion literally means “to suffer with”. Rather than doing away with a person so we no longer have to face their suffering, compassion accompanies them, does its best to alleviate their hurt, and mourns with them the hurt that remains. Hospice or palliative care is infinitely more compassionate than assisted suicide. 

That’s more or less the inherent argument against assisted suicide. There are also slippery slope-type dangers which are reasons to oppose it. Once assisted suicide is legalized for those in a state of physical pain and dependence at the end of their lives, it becomes ever more difficult to explain why suicide isn’t also the answer for mentally ill people who are suffering mental anguish, or disabled people who are in physical pain and/or dependent on others, and then assisted suicide expands and becomes ever more and more predatory. Our culture worships autonomy and usefulness, which has always had the effect of making the lives of mentally ill/disabled/elderly people seem to be worth less. Assisted suicide is the ultimate reinforcement of that attitude, finally claiming that it is actually true that these people would be better off dead and society would be better off without them.

This should horrify us. What is the difference between a mentally ill person who has made the choice that their suffering is too great and their quality of life so poor they would like to exercise their right to die, and a mentally ill person who succumbs to their suicidal ideation and steps into traffic? Only a doctor’s note. And who are doctors to decide when life is no longer worth living?? How are they to know that circumstances will never improve? How are they to know what impact a person’s life has on all those around them? And how naive would we have to be to imagine that these decisions would be made from a position of neutrality? Medical facilities and insurance companies would be less and less incentivized to actually care for vulnerable groups, when they can much more easily and cheaply funnel them towards self-destruction.

The possibility of assisted suicide, once it is introduced, is not just going to be picked by individuals with a lot of options exercising their autonomy with perfect understanding and consent. It’s an option which as soon as it’s on the table exercises a kind of pressure: aren’t you afraid of pain? You don’t want to be a financial burden on your family, do you? What good is your life if all you can do is lie in a bed? Won’t your loved ones come to resent all the help you need? If insurance doesn’t cover care and it does covered assisted suicide isn’t it selfish for you to go on living? Its very possibility is corrosive of civilized society, breaking down the connections we have to one another and leaving us all alone and afraid. It holds our worst fears over our heads—what if I’m only really worthwhile because of what I can do, what if helping me is a burden, what if my pain is too big for people to love me in it. I think these fears are wrong about human nature and human friendship. But a culture which has legal assisted suicide is a culture which does its best to make those fears into a reality.

Now, there still is nuance. Purposefully ending one’s own life is morally impermissible, but that does not mean that we are obliged to prolong life infinitely using any means necessary. If there is a surgery which will slightly prolong your life but drastically decrease your quality of life, you do not have to have the surgery. If you’ve been on dialysis for years and the toll it’s taking on your body is starting to pile up, you can cease dialysis. You can have a DNR. You can receive morphine in the days leading up to your death, even in quantities which would hasten (but not cause) your death, if that is what is required to keep you comfortable. If death is on its way to you, it’s okay to stand and face it and allow it to come.