Against “The Right to Die”

Ethan Epstein at True/Slant says that legalizing physician assisted suicide, instead of giving individuals more freedom, would limit individuals’ control by creating a new bureaucracy. “The codification of a formal ‘right to die’ hardly prescribes the way society operates: it merely describes it,” says Epstein. “Assisted suicide laws do not, therefore, guarantee a right to die. Rather, they create a new right through legislation: the right of doctors to kill their patients. The only party whose rights are expanded by assisted suicide laws are those of physicians who wish to terminate their patients’ lives.”