When Killing Yourself Isn't Suicide
Rita Marker, the head of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and I have a piece in today's NRO about how euthanasia proponents engage in post modernistic abuse of lnaguage to further their ideological agenda. (Human cloning advocates use the same disengenuous tactic to further their agenda.) Here is an excerpt:
"In one sense, the opening of this new [lexicon] front in the assisted-suicide debate reveals that the movement, thought to be unstoppable when Oregon passed the nation's first assisted-suicide law, understands that it has failed to convince America that suicide should be part of medicine's armamentarium. In the more than ten years since the passage of the Oregon law, state after state has considered legalizing assisted suicide. Each time, there was early support for the measure. Yet, in each instance, when the official vote was taken, support had evaporated and the proposal went down in defeat. This left assisted-suicide proponents, particularly Compassion & Choices (C & C) (formerly the Hemlock Society), which spearheaded most of these legislative proposals, searching for some way to improve their position.
"So C & C commissioned research and polling. They found that people have a negative impression of the term 'assisted suicide,' but, if euphemistic slogans like 'death with dignity' or 'end of life choices' were used to describe the same action, response was relatively positive. Likewise, poll respondents were more apt to approve letting doctors 'end a patient’s life' than they were to approve giving doctors the right to 'assist the patient to commit suicide.' According to one polling firm, the apparent conflict was a 'consequence of mentioning, or not mentioning, the word ‘suicide.’"
As I always say, beware a movement that seeks to hide its agenda behind euphemisms. If for political reasons it can't be described plainly and accurately, it probably isn't worth doing.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:08 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
I agree deceptive terminology obscures the legal debate, which ought to be solely over whether a competent person, not subject to the criminal justice system, owns his life or whether the state has the power to compel him to continue living if he otherwise chooses. Of course, a free man has the right to suicide. The fact that his fellows might constrain that right, by passing laws, by physical restraint, or otherwise, merely reflects their power to do so in a particular time and place, not any moral standing -- and arguments to the contrary are crude sophistry. Note that I do not endorse or fetishize suicide, as Wes has rightly criticized certain supporters of right-to-die laws for doing. Suicide in the face of a surmountable challenge, particularly when one will deeply hurt the ones left behind, is cowardly -- but it's none of the government's business. Nor do I minimize the very real and deep problems of accurately measuring competence, assuring that pressure is not not used to encourage suicide, etc. But the bedrock principle must be a man's life is his own.
People do not have the right to commit suicide. They have the power, which is different. Joe, your libertarian prescription would be to abandon people in need of love and help from their community. And it vividly demonstrates that assisted suicide has nothing to do with terminal illness. If choice is the be all and end all, and if we "own" our own bodies, such restrictions make no sense.
Thanks for contributing to Secondhand Smoke.
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