Understanding assisted suicide Nine issues to consider

Mitchell (Seattle Univ. School of Law) offers an excellent book grounded in his attempt to understand his parent's confrontation with death, euthanasia, and his own involvement. The book is extremely well argued, equally well written, and superbly documented. The author considers issues that include moral and legal questions. Do culture and religion embrace the sanctity of life and thereby forbid suicide and euthanasia? If a particular suicide is justifiable, would condoning it create a "slippery slope" that causes the involuntary deaths of the most vulnerable, doing more societal harm than good? Does the principle of autonomy give people the right to choose death? Or is the choice of suicide evidence that one is irrational, lacking autonomy? Does the right to liberty give one a constitutional right to choose death? Or does it follow from the equal protection clause of the Constitution that to prohibit euthanasia (by the intentional administration of a lethal dose) in one case while allowing it in others (by discontinuing life support or administering lethal doses of morphine to "dull pain") is a dubious and arbitrary distinction? What happens when assisted suicide is decriminalized, as in the Netherlands and in Oregon? Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels. R. Werner Hamilton College