Physician Assisted Suicide
Physician-assisted suicide occurs when a physician facilitates a patient's death by providing the necessary means and information to enable the patient to perform a life-ending act.
Euthanasia
Physician-assisted suicide is distinct from active euthanasia where the physician himself directly acts to cause death.
Pulse Life Advocates is firmly against physician assisted suicide and euthanasia because of our belief in the sanctity of human life at all stages. Only God has the moral power over life and death.
Euthanasia refers to deliberately ending someone’s life, usually to relieve suffering. Doctors sometimes perform euthanasia when requested by people who have a terminal illness and are in a lot of pain.
Assisted suicide vs. euthanasia
Assisted suicide is sometimes called physician-assisted suicide (PAS). PAS means a doctor knowingly helps someone end their life. In assisted suicide doctors will usually provide people with a drug they can take to end their life. For example, they may prescribe a lethal dose of opioids. It’s up to the person to decide whether they take the drug and when to take it.
With euthanasia, a doctor is allowed to end the person’s life by painless means. For example, they may use an injection of a lethal drug.
Voluntary euthanasia vs. nonvoluntary euthanasia
Voluntary euthanasia is when a person makes a conscious decision to seek help ending their own life. The person must give their full consent and demonstrate that they fully understand what will happen.
Non-voluntary euthanasia involves someone else, usually a close family member, making the decision to end someone’s life. This generally occurs when someone is completely unconscious or permanently incapacitated.
Nonvoluntary euthanasia usually involves withdrawing life support from someone who’s showing no signs of brain activity.
Catholic teaching, and Pulse, condemns physician-assisted suicide because it, like murder, involves taking an innocent human life:
Suicide is always as morally objectionable as murder. The Church's tradition has always rejected it as a gravely evil choice: To concur with the intention of another person to commit suicide and to help in carrying it out through so-called "assisted suicide" means to cooperate in, and at times to be the actual perpetrator of, an injustice which can never be excused, even if it is requested. In a remarkably relevant passage Saint Augustine writes that "it is never licit to kill another: even if he should wish it, indeed if he request it because, hanging between life and death, he begs for help in freeing the soul struggling against the bonds of the body and longing to be released; nor is it licit even when a sick person is no longer able to live (The Gospel of Life, no. 66).
Pope St John Paul II (1920-2005) wrote in The Splendor of Truth that:
“there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object.” These acts include “Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide….”
Advocates argue it is necessary to prevent undue pain and suffering. This is no longer true. Advances in pain management now make it possible to control pain effectively in dying patients.
The Catholic Church and Euthanasia
The Church, in its 2000-year history, has always defended human life from conception to natural death, with particular attention to the more fragile stages of existence. The rejection of both euthanasia and “over-zealous” treatment constitute an affirmation of the rights of persons: an incurable condition does not mean a refusal of care.
Links
Institute for Patients Rights:instituteforpatientsrights.
States that allow Physician Assisted Suicide
- Delaware
- Oregon
- Washington
- California
- Colorado
- Hawaii
- New Jersey
- Maine
- Vermont
- Montana
- New Mexico
- District of Columbia