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Our nation’s capital votes for physician-assisted suicide

The City Council of the District of Columbia has passed a measure to allow physician-assisted suicide. It needs another vote and the mayor’s signature to become law. But Ryan T. Anderson has written an eloquent critique of the bill, emphasizing what euthanasia does to the medical profession and to the society that approves of it.

Ryan T. Anderson, DC City Council Votes to Allow Physician-Assisted Suicide, Daily Signal:

Earlier today, the D.C. City Council voted to allow physician-assisted suicide. But the debate isn’t over. The Washington Post reports that “the council must still hold a final vote on the bill, possibly as early as Nov. 15,” and that the mayor, Muriel Bowser, must decide if she’ll sign or veto the bill.

The mayor should veto the bill. Physician-assisted suicide will change us all, for the worse—as I explain in a Heritage Foundation report, “Always Care, Never Kill: How Physician-Assisted Suicide Endangers the Weak, Corrupts Medicine, Compromises the Family, and Violates Human Dignity and Equality.”

Too many people view physician-assisted suicide as a purely private matter between an autonomous adult who desires to die, and another autonomous adult who can provide medical assistance in death.

But no man is an island. Allowing doctors to prescribe deadly drugs to assist in the suicides of their patients is not simply a one-off interaction between two consenting adults. Changing the laws that govern how doctors operate will change the entire ecosystem of medicine. It’ll change how doctors relate to their patients and how much patients can trust their doctors.

Ultimately, it will change how society views the weak and the marginalized and affect our family relationships—how we view our elders and our duties toward them.No one is perpetually self-sufficient. We enter life entirely dependent on our parents, and many of us exit life dependent on our children. Along the way, through life’s ups and downs, we’ll rely on neighbors, friends, and family. A healthy society will help shoulder the burdens of life, recognize everyone’s intrinsic worth and dignity, and thus respect human equality.

But assisted suicide denies this. It says that some lives are unworthy of legal protection. That if you’re sick enough or disabled enough, you’re better off dead—and that doctors can give deadly drugs to you, but not to people with allegedly greater social value.

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