Over the past week or so a couple of articles have cruised past the ol' browser window having to do with the topic of "Death with Dignity" or "Doctor Assisted Suicide", depending on your extremist position. Much of it has to do with laws that are coming to the fore attempting to regulate if and when it is possible for a patient to choose to die on their own terms, as well as the recent national story of Brittany Maynard, who became the poster child for this issue when she decided to end her life before succumbing to terminal cancer. I wrote about this around the time that she made her choice and while I was admittedly thinking things through and not necessarily taking a definitive stance on the issue, I think that most of what I wrote still stands.
The thing that bugs me about debates like this is that choices in life are rarely black and white. There is rarely an exact right and wrong, specifically in matters that are beyond the scope of what is addressed in Scripture, if by exact we mean universally right and wrong. Choices like this require us to think through not just the choice itself but the implications of attempting to draw any universal conclusions.
The opponent of Death with Dignity (DWD from here on out, which I use not because I'm attempting to take a position, but because I think it's less inflammatory than Doctor Assisted Suicide) will argue that life, by it's very essence, is black and white. With that I agree. You cannot be both dead and alive at the same time; it is, by it's very definition, a black or white issue. But the question is not really as simple as life or death, no matter how much we'd like to be able to simplify it. If that were the case, and we could reduce any difficult decision to life or death, we'd find that most of the time we would be remarkably inconsistent. Reduce war to life or death. Reduce medical intervention to life or death. Reduce criminal punishment to life or death. Reduce birth to life or death. Even if we were to answer consistently on the side of life–not to lean that direction, mind you, but unequivocally, without fail, in a black or white manner to choose life over death–we would inevitably find some examples that do not fit so neatly into our categories. What if childbirth will lead to the death of the mother, for example? What if refusing to go to war means that some other innocents will die at the hand that we could have stopped? What if our aging parent received a fatal diagnosis, and they could either live for two months pain free and then die in their sleep, or extend their life for two years, albeit in substantial discomfort?
I'm not suggesting that there is a right and a wrong answer to any of those questions, but that is precisely the point. What I am suggesting is that if you choose one over the other without at least wrestling with the question, I do not think you are giving the question it's just due. You do not feel the weight of the decision. And if you do wrestle with them, as you should, then you must at least admit that the choice is not purely a "life or death" decision. One answer may not be the correct answer in every single case. It's easy to say that you would never go to war under any circumstances, until your family lives in the country being attacked.
Such is the case with DWD. There are implications to our choices that go beyond whatever our extreme position is. For example, should hospital resources, already in somewhat tight supply, not ever be taken into consideration? What is the difference between "pulling the plug" on a family member who may be breathing on their own, but unable to feed themselves, and giving a bit of medication to speed up the process? Aren't we choosing death in both cases? And of course many difficulties exists on the side of the pro-DWD crowd: at what point does DWD just becomes suicide, as the opponents rightly question? Surely there is a line. Surely there will be people who want to take the pill and end it all as soon as they are given a terminal diagnosis, even if they appear to be in full health. Is that justifiable?
Inasmuch as I think that the question must be wrestled with and the decision given it's just weight, I do think it's possible is that you may come to a conclusion that is always right for you. You may decide that you will never, under any circumstances, have a doctor give you medication that will end your life short of how it may have ended. I think that you can come to that decision personally, without having to say that it's true for every person in every circumstance. In fact, to have wrestled with the decision personally and come to a conclusion is commendable; I'd argue that if you have done that, you would be unlikely to mandate that same conclusion for everyone else.
This is ultimately to say nothing about whether a law that regulates the practice is good or right, nor, perhaps more importantly, what should go into any such law that was passed. What seems reasonable is that if DWD becomes a legal practice, it ought to be regulated, and probably very tightly.
To say at the end of the day, however, that one decision is right over the other in all cases is to assume a level of knowledge that you do not and will not ever have. That doesn't mean that laws shouldn't still be passed or rejected–one way or the other, we are always responsible for our decisions–but it does mean that in considering the law, we ought to avoid platitudes that alienate more than clarify. Maybe let's commend those who are willing to be in the gray area with us; after all, that's where we all live.