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"Physicians do not fulfill the role of 'killer' by prescribing drugs to hasten death any more than they do by disconnecting life-support systems," writes Judge Miner. This is pernicious nonsense. There is a great difference between, say, not resuscitating a stopped heart--allowing nature to take its course--and actively killing someone. In the first case the person is dead. In the second he only wishes to be dead. And in the case of life sustained by artificial hydration or ventilation, pulling the plug simply prevents an artificial prolongation of the dying process. Prescribing hemlock initiates it.
The distinction is not just practical. It is also psychological. Killing is hard to do. The whole purpose of this case is to make it easier. How? By giving doctors who actively assist in suicide the blessing of the law and society.
After all, why did we need this ruling in the first place? In New York State, where this case was brought, not a single physician has been penalized for aiding a suicide since 1919. For 77 years, one can assume, some doctors have been quietly helping patients die. Why then the need for a legal ruling to make that official, a ruling that erases a fundamental ethical line and opens medical practice to unconscionable abuse?
The need comes from the modern craving for "authenticity." If you are going to do it, do it openly, proudly, unashamedly. But as a society, do we not want this most fearful act--killing--to be done fearfully? If it must be done at all--and in the most extreme and pitiable circumstances it will--let it be done with trembling, in shadow, in whispered acknowledgment that some fundamental norm is being violated, even if for the most compassionate of reasons.
No more. These judges have now liberated us from the hypocrisy of the unenforced law. Damn them. Lack of enforcement is an expression of compassion, but the law is the last barrier to arrogance. And God knows that in this age of all-powerful medicine, arrogance is the greater danger. Every grandparent will soon know that too.