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Is Death a Constitutional Right?: The Virtue of Choice
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11445 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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4 / 1994 |
2,192 Words |
| Author
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Jack Lessenberry
Jack Lessenberry, a former national editor of the Detroit
News, has covered Dr. Jack Kevorkian's crusade to legalize
physician-assisted suicide for the New York Times. |
No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law than the right of every individual to possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others . . . the right to one's person may be said to be a right of complete immunity: to be let alone.
That is from the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in a case called Union Pacific Railway Co. v. Botsford. And no, that wasn't the Warren Court, or even the Warren-Burger Court: This was more than a century ago, in 1891, long before anyone thought the Court might become a job shop for social legislation hammered out on the bench.
Read those words again: The right to be let alone.
That is what the physician-assisted suicide issue and the man who has pioneered and personalized it, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, are really all about: freedom. This is not about the "right to die." (Like it or not, we are all going to die anyway.)
What this is all about is personal autonomy. About denying that the state has any right to compel innocent, competent adults to needlessly suffer. How can anyone who wants less government interference in his life not also demand the right to be free of state interference in the most intimate and personal decision of all?
And how can the state in a free society prevent a physician from using his training and expertise to evaluate each case and--where medically appropriate--to provide a soft landing out of this world for anyone who voluntarily seeks it because his "life" has turned into an agonizing and unrelievable hell?
That's why everyone--especially everyone who calls himself a conservative--should be solidly in favor of legalizing physician-assisted suicide.
What if you think taking your life for any reason is always wrong, on religious or other moral grounds? That's absolutely fine--and a decision, incidentally, that would be totally accepted and respected by Dr. Kevorkian.
But that does not give you the right to prevent another competent adult from deciding what final choice to make about his own life and body.
That's the real issue here. What I want
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