Protect us from each other, not from ourselves

This memorable line from Bill Maher's When You Ride Alone, You Ride With Bin Laden in regards to assisted suicide comes into play again today when a doctor from British Columbia was found guilty of trying to help a 92-year-old woman commit suicide. Now, I'm not supporting this specific doctor, as he had already been charged a few years ago for having sex with a patient in his office, but rather it is important to see assisted suicide under a more realistic light.

I have always believed that a person's life is theirs to control and live. If this woman, at the age of 92, decided that she had spent a good life and wanted to end it, for whatever reason, then she is entitled to do so. It is not up to the State to decide how a person can die, and what the criminal implications of suicide are. These types of laws are rooted in Christian religious morality which states that only God can give life or take it away. It is therefore a sacred gift.

Of course, it is important to determine where the boundaries between murder and suicide are, but this is also part of the problem. Because physician-assisted suicide is a criminal offense, it is far more difficult to determine the context and situation at hand. If, on the contrary, it were State-supported, like in the Netherlands, the processes could be monitored and standardized in order to ensure that the patient fully agrees with the decision. This would also prevent any type of murder suspicions.

The media also does a disservice to a situation like this. Out of all the sources that reported this story, only one mentioned that the patient was a 92-year-old woman. There is also a lack of understanding of the differences between euthanasia an patient-assisted-suicide. At the age of 92, the context is probably more likely to be euthanasia than a simple desire to die because of a heartbreak or something of the sort. We, of course, perform euthanasia on or "put down" animals all the time, without questioning the religious implications of the situation. God obviously cares about the life of man, but who gives a shit about animals... a typical religious fallacy which places human beings on a pedestal at the center of the universe.

In the case of legally assisted suicide, quick and painless solutions are used, much as they do in the case of lethal injections in many US states. This is better than a man-nurse finding some little old lady hanging in a nursing home bathroom. In the case of people wanting to commit suicide, it is often the pain that is feared, not death in itself. We can, of course, take the life of murderers that we condemn, but a person making up their own mind is obviously just completely fucking psychotic. God would never allow such a thing! Again, I say, like Mr Maher, protect us from each other, not from ourselves.