Euthanasia: Assisted Suicide in Select Cases? by Stephanie Gray

     Last week I gave a presentation to teenagers on the topic of assisted suicide and euthanasia.  Afterwards, a student had a question for me: She said she was against euthanasia in the vast majority of cases, but said that, for a minority of cases, if someone is at the end of his life and his last dying wish is to have assistance with suicide rather than continue “waiting” for life to naturally end, shouldn’t we give it to him?

That question can be answered by asking a series of questions:

*If we refuse to assist with some deaths, but not others, we are making a value judgment about peoples’ lives—whether we realize it or not.  In other words, we are making the call that some lives are worth preserving and some aren’t.  Who are we to decide that?

*Moreover, who’s to determine which people would be close enough to death to get assistance with suicide?  Would natural death need to be hours, days, weeks, or months away?

*Even if we could get consensus on how close to death a patient ought to be to qualify, what if the estimated time is wrong?  My friend’s father was told he had days left to live.  Three years later, he is alive and living back at home. ….

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