In 2008, the states of Washington and Montana legalized assisted suicide, joining Oregon which legalized the practice in 1994. This legalization of assisted suicide in America demands a truthful look at the logical outcome when this form of killing is accepted. The logical outcome—as we see in Switzerland—is not just assisted suicide of the terminally ill, but assisted suicide of the healthy.
Ludwig Minelli—founder of the Swiss assisted suicide clinic, Dignitas—recently revealed plans to help a healthy Canadian woman die along side her terminally-ill husband. Minelli told England’s BBC radio “suicide is a marvelous, marvelous possibility given to a human being in order to escape a situation which is unbearable.” He also has no hesitation in killing psychiatric patients suffering from depression or mental illness. In Minelli’s opinion, anyone who has the “mental capacity” should be permitted to commit suicide, even healthy patients.
Switzerland has the most liberal assisted suicide laws in the world—in part as a result of Minelli’s continuing challenges to even the modest boundaries of the Swiss assisted suicide law. Switzerland legalized assisted suicide in 1918 and is the only jurisdiction that allows nonresidents to kill themselves. In November 2006, the Swiss Supreme Court expanded the law by declaring a constitutional right to assisted suicide for psychiatric patients and other mentally ill individuals.
For Minelli, the next step in the right to assisted suicide is for the healthy to be permitted to kill themselves. For him, this is a “marvelous opportunity” to further his agenda and extend the permissiveness of assisted suicide in Switzerland and for those willing to travel there. He announced his intentions to assist the Canadian couple with full expectation that the case ultimately will end up in courts where he can push for further expansion of the right to assisted suicide.
Minelli is not a doctor, but a human rights lawyer. He, along with other advocates for assisted suicide, rely on two ideological principles: 1) Individual Autonym— principally, that it is the “ultimate civil liberty” to control the time, manner and place of our own death; and 2) Killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering.
Assisted-suicide advocates argue that laws can create safeguards to prevent abuses and protect the most vulnerable. They have managed to convince many Americans, who naively rely on these assertions and believe assisted suicide will be only for the old, the sick, and the dying. But in reality, Minelli and Switzerland’s laws reveal the true debate. It shows America that the end goal of assisted suicide advocates is to make it available to all—even those who may not really want to die, but are depressed over a difficult time in their lives.
Thus, initially limiting assisted suicide to the terminally ill is only the first in a line of incremental steps for society to accept killing as an alternative to human suffering. The next is the killing of those with other illnesses and psychiatric patients, then the healthy. If not informed and wise, America will quickly find herself a nation ridden with euthanasia—where her most vulnerable, in need of protection and help, are simply put to death.
