“He is not gone as long as someone remembers his name.”

“Where he is, is immaterial” - Craig Ewart's wife soon after his departure.

“He is not gone as long as someone remembers his name,” Craig Ewarts (1947-2006)voiceover intones in the final moment of the documentary The Suicide Tourist. Moments earlier, we watched him pass away as a result of his decision to drink a fatal dose of medications and to turn off his breathing apparatus.

In one of Frontline’s most controversial documentaries to day, they allow Craig Ewarts and his wife and children to tell the story of Craig’s decision to end his life. Diagnosed with ALS and given only a short time to live, the subject of the documentary takes us through the decision making process – and the process itself – so that viewers can make up their own minds.

One senses as they watch the looming shadow of the crisis that the aging of the babyboomers in the United States presents. You can watch the hour long journey HERE at Frontline. Or you can read The Philosopher’s Breif, a document presented to the United States Supreme Court in favor of granting American citizens the right to doctor assisted suicide.

It is clear from the brief that the arguments that have in the past been used to defend a woman’s right to chose to terminate a pregnancy are being further applied philosophically in the case of a person’s right to end their lives. Note the number of times that the authors of this moral and legal argument rely on the wording of the Casey decision (A case involving a State’s right to prohibit abortion).

“Our Constitution forbids government to impose such convictions on its citizens. Petitioners [i.e., the state authorities of Washington and New York] and the amici who support them offer two contradictory arguments. Some deny that the patient-plaintiffs have any constitutionally protected liberty interest in hastening their own deaths. But that liberty interest flows directly from this Court’s previous decisions. It flows from the right of people to make their own decisions about matters “involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy.” Planned Parenthoodv. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 851 (1992).

. . . Certain decisions are momentous in their impact on the character of a person’s life—decisions about religious faith, political and moral allegiance, marriage, procreation, and death, for example. Such deeply personal decisions pose controversial questions about how and why human life has value. In a free society, individuals must be allowed to make those decisions for themselves, out of their own faith, conscience, and convictions. This Court has insisted, in a variety of contexts and circumstances, that this great freedom is among those protected by the Due Process Clause as essential to a community of “ordered liberty.” Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325 (1937). In its recent decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 851 (1992), the Court offered a paradigmatic statement of that principle: > matters [] involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to a person’s dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. That declaration reflects an idea underlying many of our basic constitutional protections”

. . . In Casey, this Court, in holding that a state cannot constitutionally proscribe abortion in all cases, reiterated that the Constitution protects a sphere of autonomy in which individuals must be permitted to make certain decisions for themselves. The Court began its analysis by pointing out that “[a]t the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” 505 U.S. at 851. Choices flowing out of these conceptions, on matters “involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

. . . , the Court explained at length that the right flows from the constitutional protection accorded all individuals to “define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Casey, 505 U.S. at 851. The analysis in Casey compels the conclusion that the patient-plaintiffs have a liberty interest in this case that a state cannot burden with a blanket prohibition. Like a woman’s decision whether to have an abortion, a decision to die involves one’s very “destiny” and inevitably will be “shaped to a large extent on [one’s] own conception of [one’s] spiritual imperatives and [one’s] place in society.” Id. at 852. Just as a blanket prohibition on abortion would involve the improper imposition of one conception of the meaning and value of human existence on all individuals, so too would a blanket prohibition on assisted suicide. The liberty interest asserted here cannot be rejected without undermining the rationale of Casey. Indeed, the lower court opinions in the Washington case expressly recognized the parallel between the liberty interest in Casey and the interest asserted here.

. . . “[T]he reasoning in Casey [is] highly instructive and almost prescriptive…”. This Court should do the same.

. . . It may be legitimate for a state to deny an opportunity for assisted suicide when it acts in what it reasonably judges to be the best interests of the potential suicide, and when its judgment on that issue does not rest on contested judgments about “matters involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy.” Casey, 505 U.S. at 851.”

I would simply ask however, if the State grants the right of people to acquire help in dying, will it have the will and wherewithal to keep that right from being exploited? Misused? Mistakenly applied? I suspect that it might not.

Welcome to a debate in one of my future ethics classes.

Question for Comment: Do you wish to retain the right to decide the terms of your death should you ever have cause to end your journey earlier than nature or nature’s God may have had you live?

Comments

[mommalibrarian]

I believe we all have the right to end our lives now. What we do not have is the right to get the assistance of others without the risk that the state will prosecute them. I have personally know of two successful suicides in my circle of acquaintances; one by hanging and one by car crash. A newer method (at least to me) is death by policeman. That more than many other methods has the potential to saddle innocent people with feelings of guilt. I do not know whether I will watch the documentary but I am guessing those around Craig Ewart had time to reach some resolution of feelings and were free of the imposition that an unexpected suicide makes on family and acquaintances. Failure to attempt that resolution, forcing those not dead to suffer is to me a much greater moral lapse than suicide. Suicide can be a logical choice but only if you do not hurt others to achieve it.