Under the banners of compassion and autonomy, some are calling for legal recognition of a "right to suicide" and societal acceptance of "physician-assisted suicide." Suicide proponents evoke the image of someone facing unendurable suffering who calmly and rationally decides death is better than life. They argue that society should respect and defer to the freedom of choice such people exercise in asking to be killed.

American Values believes that all people have immeasurable value because they have been created in the image and likeness of God. We reject the premise that any innocent life is unworthy of protection. Rather than directing our great intellectual capabilities to devising ways of taking life, no matter how “merciful,” we can do better for those who may suffer from terminal illnesses. Modern medical science has made such tremendous strides in recent decades that it boggles the mind why some would assume there is no better alternative for the living than premature death.

Both the American Medical Association (AMA) and the World Medical Association (WMA) oppose euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. The World Medical Association position paper states: "Physician-assisted suicide, like euthanasia, is unethical and must be condemned by the medical profession. Where the assistance of the physician is intentionally and deliberately directed at enabling an individual to end his or her own life, the physician acts unethically."

Our secular and materialistic culture has devalued life to such an extent that many sick and elderly people would rather choose premature death than to become a “burden” to their loved ones or society. Studies in Oregon, the only state in this nation where assisted suicide is legal, are bleak. Increasingly, those who opt to die, an astonishing 63% in 2000, indicate that one of their main reasons for doing so is anxiety about becoming a financial drain on their children.

And while we have so far managed to restrict the notion of euthanasia to a voluntary program for the elderly, utilitarian views of life are being debated anew in our higher institutions of learning.
Dr. Peter Singer of Princeton University has actually been so bold as to suggest that it is ethical for parents to kill a disabled infant. The child, according to Singer, is not a person – he or she has no awareness of her own being and worth – and society would be better off if the parents just had another healthy baby and didn’t waste their resources caring for a disabled one. To some, quality of life supersedes the sanctity of life.

There is much to be learned from the history of Hitler’s Germany. German medical universities were ecstatic supporters of the euthanasia program. One professor stated, “Thanks to the programme [the Nazi euthanasia program], a rapid anatomical and histological clarification can be achieved.” The corpses of the condemned children were valuable research material for the medical and scientific communities of Nazi Germany. Once addicted to this new source of “material,” the doctors and scientists employed in these institutions of higher learning suddenly became silent on the ethical questions involved in procurement.

It was in the winter of 1938 when Herr Knauer petitioned the Fuehrer for permission to euthanize his deformed child. One year later, in September of 1939, Hitler issued the following orders to his chief medical officials, in language startlingly familiar to what we hear from the modern day advocates of euthanasia: “Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Brandt are charged with responsibility to extend the powers of specific doctors in such a way that, after the most careful assessment of their conditions, those suffering from illnesses deemed to be incurable may be granted a mercy death.” Hitler the compassionate! Within months, a new Reich committee was formed whereby all reports of births involving deformities were vetted by three pediatricians who placed a “+” or “-“ on the report indicating whether the child would live or die. In one nine month period, one doctor alone handled 15,000 forms. None of the condemned children were ever examined – they were merely paperwork to be processed.

Of course, it didn’t end with just those suffering from incurable diseases. Once German doctors started down the slippery slope of murdering the incurable, it wasn’t a far stretch to the disabled and from there to the Jews. Once the value of one innocent life is compromised, for any reason, “fine-sounding” arguments suddenly begin appearing for why other lives are unworthy of respect and protection.
And for those who take the time to examine the arguments of modern day euthanasia advocates, their claims go far beyond helping the terminally ill “die with dignity.” Opinions are being advanced in some “progressive” European nations that euthanasia may be acceptable for psychiatric patients who are otherwise physically healthy. Suicide is no longer an unhealthy and regrettable effect of depression, but an acceptable option.

Those who advocate euthanasia have capitalized on people's confusion, ambivalence, and even fear about the use of modern life-prolonging technologies. Further, borrowing language from the abortion debate, they insist that the "right to choose" must prevail over all other considerations. Being able to choose the time and manner of one's death, without regard to what is chosen, is presented as the ultimate freedom. A decision to take one's life or to allow a physician to kill a suffering patient, however, is very different from a decision to refuse extraordinary or disproportionately burdensome treatment. It is murder.

Euthanasia violates American convictions about human rights and equality. The Declaration of Independence proclaims our inalienable rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." If our right to life itself is diminished in value, our other rights will have no meaning. To destroy the boundary between healing and killing would mark a radical departure from longstanding legal and medical traditions of our country, posing a threat of unforeseeable magnitude to vulnerable members of our society. Those who represent the interests of elderly citizens, persons with disabilities, and persons with AIDS or other terminal illnesses, are justifiably alarmed when some hasten to confer on them the "freedom" to be killed. Euthanasia, roughly translated from the Greek means “good death.” It is our belief that those who espouse euthanasia in reality favor an imposed death—not a good death.

1. World Medical Association, Statement on Physician-Assisted Suicide, http://www.wma.net/e/policy/17-pp_e.html.