PROSECUTING SUICIDE LAW

Prosecuting Suicide Law

Prosecuting Suicide Law

Assisted suicide seems, at first blush, like a good thing to have available. But on closer inspection, there are many reasons that legalizing assisted suicide is a terrible idea.

How Many Would Be Helped and How Many Would Be Harmed

While an extremely small number of people may benefit, they will tend to be at the upper end of the income scale, white, and have good health insurance coverage. At the same time, large numbers of people, particularly among those less privileged in society, would be at significant risk of substantial harm.

Managed Care and Assisted Suicide Are a Deadly Mix

Perhaps the most significant problem is the deadly mix between assisted suicide and profit-driven managed health care. Health maintenance organizations (HMO's) and managed care bureaucrats are already overruling doctors' treatment decisions, sometimes hastening patients' deaths (Smartt 2009 100). The cost of the lethal medication generally used for assisted suicide is about $35 to $50, far cheaper than the cost of treatment for most long-term medical conditions. The incentive to save money by denying treatment is already a significant danger; it would be far greater if assisted suicide is legal. It's not coincidental that the author of Oregon's assisted suicide law, Barbara Coombs Lee, was an HMO executive when she drafted it. Assisted suicide will accelerate the decline in quality of our health care system (Background Monograph).

A 1998 study from Georgetown University's Center for Clinical Bioethics underscored the link between profit-driven managed health care and assisted suicide. The research found a strong link between cost-cutting pressure on doctors and their willingness to prescribe lethal drugs to patients, were it legal to do so. The study warns there must be "a sobering degree of caution in legalizing [physician-assisted suicide] in a medical care environment that is characterized by increasing pressure on physicians to control the cost of care (Yount 2002 25-69)."

What does the policy say and how has it changed?

The final version of the prosecuting policy has changed from the interim version, but in the words of the DPP "the Policy has neither been relaxed nor tightened" (Quill 2004 23-69). A prosecution is less likely if the assisted person made a voluntary, well informed decision to commit suicide, and if the assister was wholly motivated by compassion and if they had sought to dissuade the person from committing suicide (Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody).

A prosecution is more likely if the person committing suicide was under 18, if they did not have mental capacity or had not made a voluntary decision. A prosecution is also more likely if the assister has a history of violence or abuse towards the assisted person, if they assisted or encouraged several people's suicide, or are paid for their assistance.

The factors relating to the health and disability and to the relationship of the suspect to the person assisted (that the suspect was the partner, a relative or close friend) have been removed. However, prosecutions are more likely if the assisted person was physically ...