For my entire adult life, Americans have been sold the idea that allowing doctors to provide terminally ill patients intentionally deadly prescriptions counts as a merciful act.  There are several angles.  The patient, who has no hope of recovery, gains some element of control by choosing the date of death.  Hastening death is presented as a reasonable measure when someone who is already dying is suffering intractable pain.

Assisted suicide gets a lot of sympathetic media coverage.  The discussion is frequently accompanied by images of a frail, emaciated individual in a hospital bed.

Discussion of the practice is framed as legalizing assisted suicide.  But it’s unlike the situation where jurisdictions have legalized marijuana possession and consumption by adults.  When changing laws controlling marijuana, the state is repealing legislation enacted less than a century ago.

For assisted suicide, the jurisdiction doesn’t just cease to forbid, or even change to actively permitting (perhaps requiring registration or a tax to cultivate or sell a product).  The prohibition against killing the innocent is so deeply rooted in common law and legislation worldwide that words or terms used in legislation must be redefined.  Then a killing with certain elements no longer violates laws against suicide, assisting someone else’s suicide, mercy-killing, or homicide.

Permitting assistance of doctors also violates the original Hippocratic Oath.  The most widespread revision was written in 1964, and it doesn’t include the parts about nor providing poison or assisting others procuring poison.  It’s........

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