Back in 2017, the Bishop Larry Silva of Honolulu invited me to dinner at his home around the Christmas season. The big news story at the time was that the Hawaii State Legislature was considering passing a euthanasia bill. Of course, this is something I am against.
By that point, anybody who could be persuaded to oppose euthanasia already opposed it anyway. I asked Bishop Larry, “What are the secular arguments against euthanasia?” The Bishop pointed out two things.
First, we spend so much time and resources in preventing teenage suicide. Nobody thinks teenage suicide should be permitted. Why then are we not applying that same standard to someone seeking euthanasia? Why do we give more value to the teenager’s life?
Second, why should someone seeking euthanasia even seek permission to kill themselves? Realistically, people kill themselves all the time. People who seek euthanasia do it with the mindset that they want control over their own bodies. But if that’s so, why do they need to seek permission to do this? A euthanasia law would have the patient get perscription from a doctor — essentially needing the doctor’s permission to commit suicide. If this is all about bodily autonomy, why does the person need permission?
The Bishop was, of course, totally correct.
The euthanasia law in Hawaii now reads as such:
§ 327L-2. Oral and written requests for medication; initiated
Except as otherwise provided in section 327L-11(c), an adult who is capable, is a resident of the State, and has been determined by an attending provider and a consulting provider to be suffering from a terminal disease, and who has voluntarily expressed the adult's wish to die, may, pursuant to section 327L-9, submit:
(1) Two oral requests, a minimum of five days apart; and
(2) One written request,
for a prescription for medication that may be self-administered for the purpose of ending the adult's life in accordance with this chapter. The attending provider shall directly, and not through a designee, receive all three requests required pursuant to this section.
Laws 2018, ch. 2, § 3, eff. Jan. 1, 2019; Laws 2023, ch. 43, § 3, eff. June 1, 2023.
To kill himself by euthanasia, a man still would need to request it.
I thought about it more. I realize that legalizing euthanasia is meant to serve as an emotional crutch to suicide. Somehow, if a man takes his own life, it feels more official, more clinical, more acceptable if it’s done with the prescription from a man in a white coat. He still could buy a bottle of Tylenol and do it on his own.
Physician-assisted or not, it’s still a suicide. It is essentially no different from a depressed teenager.
And that is the illusion of euthanasia laws. A shotgun suicide is no different from a clinical and sterile suicide.