NRL News
202.626.8824
dadandrusk@aol.com

Calling physician-assisted suicide “assisted dying” is deadly semantics

Jan 20, 2015

 

By Dave Andrusko

Dr. Kevin Yuill with his book 'Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalization'

Dr. Kevin Yuill with his book ‘Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalization’

Many, including NRLC’s own Burke Balch, director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics, have emphasized that a major reason anti-euthanasia forces have been largely able to thwart advocates of “physician-assisted suicide” is that the coalition of the unwilling is comprised of people who may agree on nothing else but the critical importance of stopping pro-euthanasia forces.

We have quoted Dr. Kevin Yuill  more than once [see, for example, nrlc.cc/1CMbeK]. He is Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Sunderland in England, and author of “Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalization.”

In his most recent column in The Daily Telegraph, Yuill quotes from the World Health Organization which said back in 2000 “Suicide should not be depicted as a method of coping with personal problems …Instead, the emphasis should be on mourning the person’s death.”

Yuill goes on to cite one commentator who said that people are “genuinely scared” to talk about suicide—that “Suicide is, and always has been, a massive taboo in our society.”

But in “We cannot have ‘zero suicides’ if we allow euthanasia,” Yuill reminds us how some of the very same people who rightly consider suicide a worldwide tragedy (800,000 each year) blindly make the case for the “right” to assisted suicide.

Yuill’s third paragraph captures the paradox:

Yet the campaign against suicide throws up questions about assisted dying, which was debated in the House of Lords last week. Here we find another example of the “massive taboo” that people are scared to talk about. That is: isn’t assisted dying really suicide? How can we wage a war against suicide for some whilst encouraging it as a legitimate choice for others? Though the Lords voted down an amendment to Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying bill that would have changed the term to “assisted suicide”, and though Dignity in Dying insists otherwise, it is difficult to argue that what is being proposed is not essentially suicide. Ingesting poison in a room with the intent to die does not magically become “assisted dying” if the poison is prescribed. Over the border in Scotland, the similar proposed legislation was called – less euphemistically – the “Assisted Suicide” bill.

Yuill is not exactly plowing new ground when he explains that “Most of the reasons put forward for allowing assisted death can be reasons for any suicide.” But just because he cites the usual arguments for assisted suicide—autonomy, ending suffering, the “enjoyment of life’s activities”—does not make the truth any less revealing.

Likewise with the issue of pain. Pain and suffering were the opening wedge to pry open laws against assisted suicide. But pro-euthanasia forces never for a second were interested in limiting the “right” to these categories—let alone confine it to the “terminally ill.”

When it comes to the state of Oregon–as Yuill and NRLC’s Jennifer Popik have noted–pain is way down the list of reasons people cite for wanting assisted suicide.

Yuill says it all in his last paragraph:

If assisted dying is suicide, then the effect of the Falconer Bill is very clear. It will treble suicides amongst the terminally. Extrapolating from the example of Oregon, Dignity in Dying estimate that 1,000 people per year will opt for ingesting poison if the Falconer Bill passes. But they estimate that there are currently about 330 suicides by terminally-ill people in Britain. Right now suicide is legal in Britain; with encouragement and assistance – who knows? – we might get the rate even higher.

Categories: Assisted Suicide