Legalizing Assisted Suicide: Is Being Dead Really Better?

Legalizing assisted suicide makes it lawful for one person to help kill another. Some argue there are social reasons for allowing assisted suicide. A lethal dose of drugs, for example, costs about $35 to $50, which is much cheaper than most medical care. But the legal rationale for saying it's okay to let people help kill others is this: assisted suicide "alleviates suffering." Does it?

That simple question, in reality, is quite profound. Even though "Death with Dignity"-type laws are based on the idea that legalizing assisted suicide alleviates suffering, the fact is that no one knows if that is true.

Assisted suicide does kill people

Assisted suicide definitely helps kill people. Certainly, a lifeless body appears to be free of pain and suffering. Still, no one knows what happened to the person at the moment of death. We just don't know what being dead is like. But we can imagine.

What is it like to be dead?

We can imagine, for example, that death is very nice. Beautiful and peaceful. Bright and worry-free. Or even just blissful, undisturbed "nothingness."

Or, why not, we can imagine that being dead is awful. Frightening, full of menacing, screaming creatures, and wracked with excruciating, unending torture.

Either way, we are just imagining. We still don't know the answer to the fundamental question: does being dead end all suffering? It might. It might not. For all we know, being dead might even make things much, much worse. Talk about feeling stupid!

Should the law be based on what some people think death is?

People believe many different things about what it is like to be dead. One person may be thoroughly convinced that if he commits suicide, he will be free of his pain and suffering. Another may be thoroughly convinced he will receive exultation and an eternal reward.

A third person may believe that his energy will be reincarnated as a bird, or that he will become "pure joy." Still another person may earnestly believe that nothing much will change: he'll meet up with his friends who went before him and they'll start right back up with their Thursday night poker game.

When it legalizes assisted suicide, the law, like the people in each of these examples, chooses what it wants to "believe" death is like. To uphold these statutes, the law chooses to believe that death "alleviates suffering." Therefore, the law says, it's okay to allow people to help kill others because the killing is accomplishing something good for the dead person.

Potentially a very large bet

Of course, the law usually requires a very good reason to make it legal for one person to kill another. Yet, at some point, giving legal authority to people to "alleviate suffering" by helping to bring death starts to look like a very large bet.

This is because "Death With Dignity"-type laws are not about suicide. People commit suicide for all kinds of reasons. But legal analysis requires a separate set of reasons for saying it's okay for people to facilitate suicide. Granting people legal authority to help kill others is a big deal. Clearly, this serious grant of authority is not based on facts about what it's like to be dead.

The idea that death ends suffering is not based on facts. It's based on faith. Should the law on assisted suicide be based on faith?

The assumption that being dead is better

No one knows whether it's better being dead. Certainly the person helping to kill someone---and the law saying it's okay to do that---has no way of knowing if death will bring that person merciful relief. These are all matters for faith. Yet the argument for legalizing assisted suicide is that it alleviates the suffering of the dead person. As a legal matter, shouldn't there be some evidence that it really does?

Postscript:

A man walks up to window at the Department of We Really Care. He waits patiently in the long line. When it's his turn to speak with the agent behind the window, he asks for a form to apply for Long-term Sick Benefits. He then has the following conversation with the agent:

Agent: Are you sick?

Man: Yes.

Agent: Are you disabled?

Man: Yes.

Agent: In pain?

Man: Yes.

Agent: Wish you were in a better place?

Man: Uh, yeah.

Agent: Line six.

Man: What's line six?

Agent: The line for the spacecraft that's going to take you to the Cinebium galaxy.

Man: The Cinebium galaxy. Why would I want to go there?

Agent: Because it's a better place.

Man: It is? How do you know that? Has anyone ever actually talked to someone who's been to Cinebium? Do we even know anything about Cinebium except some vague glimpses we've gotten through telescopes?

Agent: It's a better place.

Man: Again, you know that exactly HOW?

Agent: It's not here. Next.

*** More on this subject: Death, Dying, the Afterlife: Has the Idea of What It's like to Be Dead Become an Urban Legend?