The Value of Human Life:
Assisted Suicide and Public Policy
The Legalization of Assisted Suicide:
1. Changes a universal moral stance against the taking of innocent human life.
2. Creates a climate in which one person legally killing another becomes an option.
3. Creates an environment in which the value of human life is diminished when suicide becomes legal and is presented as a moral option.
4. Promotes the belief that when a person becomes a “burden,” killing oneself should be considered.
5. Promotes taking the life of another as an alternative to providing compassionate care.
6. Opens the door to the mentality that individuals who are considered “burdens” on society can be eliminated.
7. Alters the role of public policy to protect the common good by allowing the enactment of law for the few.
8. Creates the illusion that adequate safeguards can be enacted to protect the poor, the depressed, the sick, the elderly, the handicapped.
9. Challenges the trust relationship between patients and physicians when they are permitted to actively take the lives of their patients.
10. Challenges the integrity of health care professionals in their relationship with their patients.
11. Suggests that the answer to pain or loneliness, or poor quality of life, is to kill oneself.
12. Pushes the right of self determination to its ultimate: the right to be killed by another.
