![]() ![]() With the phrase “my body, my choice,” we are left with a limited vision of what is right, wrong, and good. How is suicide-assisted or not-an action that bestows dignity? Moreover, the Act would lead us to view suicide as a dignifying act. The “End of Life Option Act” proclaims some lives are worth living and others are not. As Scottish ethicist Calum Mackellar has pointed out, the belief in such acts can only take place in a culture that no longer values human life. We must reject a movement that sets the stage for the rejection of the inherent, immeasurable meaning and value of human life in the suffering and content alike. The reality is physician-assisted suicide is a spine-chilling fracture in the moral foundations of our society. The logic of the Act is that only some people have a life worth living. By existential, I mean that it pushes the value of a human life in an entirely subjective direction, and this disproportionately impacts the economically marginalized. It does not acknowledge and recognize dignity it robs people of it! In other words, it pilfers humans of any “essential” or inherent dignity and replaces it with a dignity that is purely existential and economic and, therefore, top-heavy. It catapults us toward a view that “some” human lives are worth living and others are not. The “End of Life Option Act” undermines this very thing. The second reason it is not advantageous for Pennsylvania residents is that we ought to cling to the inherent dignity, value and worth of human life-even in suffering. The great emblem of healing, the physician, is being deformed before our very eyes. Physician-assisted suicide creates havoc in its wake because it upends the very nature of medicine. Recent studies have demonstrated that physician-assisted suicide generates PTSD-like symptoms in the physicians who “legally” kill a patient and likewise produces similar effects in the family members of the deceased. The introduction of physician-assisted suicide in Pennsylvania places the hood of the Grim Reaper upon our physicians and stunts true end-of-life care. Our physicians, as it stands, practice according to the famous clause in the Hippocratic oath that no physician should actively use their knowledge to end a life. The first is that it irrevocably changes the nature of medicine. It is not advantageous for Pennsylvania residents to ride the wave of autonomy in the “End of Life Option Act” for at least two reasons. healthcare system from reaching the conclusion that it would be economically and pragmatically expedient for us to do so? What’s to keep this logic from demanding that we ought to have control over our own demise? Even more harrowing, with the anticipated doubling of assisted living facilities by 2060, what’s to keep the U.S. jurisdictions and is being considered in the Pennsylvania Senate via SB405, the “End of Life Option Act.” As one considers the phrase “my body, my choice,” we soon arrive at a worrying conclusion. At the moment, euthanasia is illegal in all 50 states, but physician-assisted suicide, its kissing cousin, is legal in 10 U.S. As one scans the horizon of ethical decisions facing Pennsylvania residents, one cannot help but be uneasy at this phrase being applied to physician-assisted suicide. “My body, my choice!” is a well-known cultural epithet that has championed the idea of human autonomy in relation to ethics. ![]()
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