Vote against assisted suicide in Colorado: Column

Several Mondays ago, the school a few miles from our offices canceled its classes. One of its students, a high school sophomore, committed suicide on campus, his lifeless body found by school security in the early morning hours. For the rest of the week, school administrators proactively flooded the school with counselors, assemblies and other resources for students, hoping to curtail the kind of tragic chain reaction that happened in high schools across our city the year before.

As educators know, suicide is contagious. Twice as many students killed themselves in our town of Colorado Springs in 2015 than 2014. Colorado, in fact, has one of the highest suicide rates in the country. Last year, 1,000 Colorado students took their own lives. And then there’s the military. The (Colorado Springs) Gazettewon a Pulitzer a few years ago for its coverage of the post-traumatic stress order epidemic at Fort Carson. Perhaps you’ve participated in the push-up challenge: one push-up for each of the 20 veterans who take their own lives each and every day in this country.

And yet, on the Colorado ballot this year is Proposition 106, which would legalize doctor-assisted suicide in our state. The End of Life Options Act is modeled after the law passed last year in California.

There are a number of reasons to oppose this particular initiative, even if one is not personally opposed to the idea of assisted suicide. It would introduce insurance companies and their financial interests into a patient’s most vulnerable medical decisions. Coroners would be forced to lie on the death certificate about the cause of a patient’s demise. And there is no requirement of medical supervision in the administration of the lethal prescription, allowing for third-party pressure on the most vulnerable. This is just the wrong act. After all, you can always say yes later, but you can’t say no later.

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And yet, as a citizen of Colorado, none of those issues troubles me as much as the message Prop 106 gives to students, veterans and others struggling to find the will to live. We already have a suicide problem in this state. Now is not the time for the state to officially endorse it. This is not only the wrong act. It’s the wrong act at the wrong time.

After all, how will we tell students who watched grandma fix her suffering with suicide that it’s not the answer for theirs? Proponents of Prop 106 dismiss this concern, saying this is about alleviating physical pain, not mental anguish. They point to the fact that two doctors must affirm that a patient only has six months to live.

However, many people have outlived their doctor’s timeline and, more important, we know from two decades of watching Oregon that patients list psychological pain more often than physical pain as their reason for choosing death. And yet, only rarely are patients considering assisted suicide sent for psychiatric evaluation in the decision process.

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Our 21st century techniques of physical pain management and palliative care are excellent, and do nothing to compromise the primary calling of doctors to care and not to kill. Prop 106 would change that. Instead of treating the mental condition rendering patients unable to deal with their physical condition, doctors will look around the real problem and offer what is a final solution, all in the name of compassion.

If Prop 106 passes, Colorado will send tragic messages to its citizens. We will be telling those with terminal illness that they shouldn’t burden anyone else with their care. We will be telling those in the medical community that killing is a form of care. And we will be telling vulnerable students, veterans and others that death is a solution they should consider.

That’s why I will vote no on Proposition 106.

John Stonestreet is president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. 

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