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There are inarguably some for whom a Roe-style affirmation of a suicide liberty would seem a blessing. They are described eloquently in books by Quill (who is also party to the Second Circuit case) and right-to-die crusader Betty Rollin and in Judge Reinhardt's opinion. He tells of a 34-year-old lymphoma patient in excruciating pain who jumped from a Seattle bridge when denied his physician's help to die, and of an 84-year-old who, to spare his family criminal charges, went alone into his basement and blew out his brains with a shotgun.
Since the high court took the cases, however, scores of organizations have filed amicus briefs, many cautioning against letting tales of individual anguish obscure important principles. Conservative religious groups, ranging from Southern Baptists to Orthodox Jews to Muslims, stress that life is God's alone to give and take. (In fact, several liberal denominations that took the opposing "choice" side in the abortion wars have decided to sit this case out.) Some doctors' groups stress that would-be suicides would reconsider if American medicine used drugs more liberally for pain management.
But the most compelling arguments warn that approving assisted suicide would set off an inexorable, countrywide slide toward euthanasia--and the transformation of the bedside angel of medical mercy into an agent of corporation-encouraged death. New York Attorney General Dennis Vacco, who will defend his state's law before the court, will argue the difference, "logically, legally and historically," between withdrawal of treatment and active suicide assistance. If the latter shifts from a crime to a liberty, he says, "we have the prospect of managed-care organizations saying it's cheaper to pay for assisted suicide than to pay for treatment or life-sustaining devices." Fifty-three groups of health professionals have signed an American Medical Association brief supporting the suicide bans. Some of them cite a government report from the Netherlands, where assisted suicide is commonplace but heavily regulated, listing 1,000 cases in 1990 in which lives were terminated without a specific request (how many of those involved ethically troubling circumstances was unspecified).
Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor who, along with Seattle attorney Kathryn Tucker, will argue against the bans before the court, replies, "I am worried about abuse [of assisted suicide]. I don't want people to be pressured, and I don't want the right to become a duty. But I'm convinced the worst thing we can do, if we're worried about that danger and the slippery slopes, is to act like ostriches and ignore the way we withdraw feeding tubes or apply terminal sedation." Polls indicate that a fifth of all doctors and nurses have actively helped end a patient's life; there is no knowing how many families take the matter into their own hands with greater or lesser efficacy. "The only way to shrink the lawless zone and to reduce the ghoulish lone rangers with their death machines," Tribe maintains, "is to go our way." Retreating from Reinhardt's sweeping affirmation, Tribe says he will seek to establish a "limited constitutional principle" supporting regulated practice.