Reality Check 101

            In the midst of the country’s focus on health care, a contradicting milestone has been passed.  The Montana Supreme Court rang in the New Year legalizing physician assisted suicide (PAS) by declaring that physicians could not be prosecuted under existing law for helping patients kill themselves.

            The decision was a four to three split with the majority leaning on a 1985 living will statute as “public policy”.  The court defined violations of that public policy only as violent breaches of the peace.  They also rested part of the ruling on what existingMontanalaw did not say – justification from silence.

            Make no mistake, taking one’s own life, no matter what the reason or the method, aided or unaided, is an ethical issue before it is anything else.  It does no good to wrestle with causes, legalities, or medical responsibilities if the act of suicide, in and of itself, is a moral problem.

            The most basic question becomes a question of authority over the “spark of life”.  It is the same issue of ownership and authority that the Apostle Paul illustrated when he challenged the Roman church to understand the authority of a potter over the destiny of his lump of clay, even to the point of excluding the pot’s self-will.  In the end, the one who makes life has the final say over the circumstances of its preservation or disposal.

            Theology and psychology have always agreed with Paul.  When individuals present themselves as self-destructive to any spiritual, psychological or medical professional, their status is altered post-haste from healthy to deeply in need of help, sometime to the point of involuntarily declaring them incompetent.  The tacit admission by others around the patient is that because each human does not self-generate each life, any attempt to destroy that life, even of one’s own free will, indicates something horribly wrong.

            Yet, suddenly (by historical standards), in the last eight years self-murder has been legalized by theNetherlands,Belgium,Luxemburg,Oregon,Washington and now Montana.  The victories in this powerful assault on mankind against itself have happened as Europe andAmericahave begun adopting deeply emotional, exquisitely crafted, second-tier justification of self-destruction. 

            Arguments in favor of PAS ultimately have no meaning because they ignore or distort the most fundamental question.  An individual’s supposed right of self-determination is always trumped by life itself when dealing in death.  One’s value does not rest on their present condition.  Individual liberty has never and cannot ever justify murder, even self-murder, because no man creates or therefore owns the life that fuels their existence.

            Compassion, as John Keown of GeorgetownUniversity points out, has meaning when it results in tangible benefit to sufferers and does not stand against other higher moral expectations.  Killing is, he points out, the ultimate abandonment, not the ultimate comfort.

            In a 2007 New Atlantis article, Eric Cohen asked a profoundly important question – What is a good death?  He did not get everything exactly right, but his challenge needs to be faced.

            How a person dies is as important as how they live.  But the “how” should not have to do with methods or maladies or exercise of rights.  In this day of magnificent medical achievements, death still reigns in our mortal bodies but it does not have to become a goal, for whatever reason.

            The good death is not born out of personal desperation, futility, or rebellion.  The highest goal is to beat death altogether in Christ’s life.  For those without that victory, their passing must still be a testimony to their life, not the manipulation of their death.