Debate Over Physician-Assisted Suicide

* Is physician-assisted suicide a legal right? Erwin Chemerinsky has presented a strong case for the constitutional underpinnings of just such a position (Commentary, Oct. 7). I must submit, however, that this issue might not be best left to constitutional law or lawyers. Constitutional law, however important to the good of society, seems to have inflicted itself in one way or another upon almost every aspect of human life. Instead of protecting and enabling human life to flourish, a popular constitutional understanding of life and liberty protects the “right” to abort, contracept and may someday protect the act of committing suicide with the help of a doctor.

Chemerinsky notes that opponents to physician-assisted suicide worry about abuses leading to the assisted killing of the disabled or the mentally incompetent. Indulge my decidedly non-legal understanding, but I was under the impression that the Constitution was specifically drafted to protect life and nation.

REV. JOHN W. LOVE

Associate Pastor

Holy Cross Catholic Church

Moorpark

* Re “ ‘I Think She Was Touched by an Angel,’ ” Oct. 5, about Theresa de Vera’s recovery from a coma: The right to die is really about the right of individuals to make decisions for themselves. It is not about the “right” of doctors or even families to make decisions for individuals. The practice of “harvesting” organs can cloud right-to-die issues. It is important that we as a society (especially doctors) recognize that an individual’s organs belong to the individual, both before and after death. Organ donations should be made completely voluntarily.

De Vera was a devout Catholic, a theology student; she did not have an advance directive, and her family was against “pulling the plug.” Her doctors should have surmised that she was not someone who would have wanted to invoke her right to die.

It is apparent that the Catholic Church and conservative Protestant denominations are strongly opposed to the concept of the right to die not only for themselves but for everyone. The question is whether people of other religious and philosophical persuasions should be allowed to have control over their own processes of life and death. I believe that the right to live and the right to die are not mutually exclusive, they are complementary.

JEFF SLOAN

Irvine