Making Killing Legal Again — The 1980s-1990s

Part 7 in the 11-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“

Mark P. Mostert, Ph.D.

By the end of the 1970s, while assisted suicide and euthanasia were still illegal in the U.S., bioethics continued to expand as a philosophical field, coinciding with a growing awareness of both the right to refuse treatment and the widespread use of advance directives and living wills.

In the early 1980s, largely as a result of the cases of Karen Ann Quinlan and others, medical issues around death and dying took center stage. Simultaneously, sophisticated medical advances in keeping patients alive accelerated; people who previously would have succumbed to their illnesses were now kept alive, often for a long time and in very difficult circumstances.

Important bioethical questions arose. For example, should people continue to live when there is no hope of them ever getting better? Who should decide when someone will die? Is it moral to end someone’s life when they are medically vulnerable? Should a patient’s choice to die be honored or refused? Should the quality of someone’s life influence whether they live or die?

The Right to Die movement seized this moment to mainstream the idea that assisted suicide and euthanasia were preferable to living with medical and other disabilities. The Hemlock Society, founded in 1980, led the way. It took its name from the philosopher Socrates, who died after drinking poisonous hemlock in 339 BC. The Hemlock Society advocated for terminally ill people to be able to choose assisted suicide or euthanasia rather than live on in suffering. The Society was highly influential not only in making the broader public aware of the difficult questions surrounding death and dying, but in pushing for legislation across the U.S. to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia.

However, the Hemlock Society’s pro-death stance received significant pushback, especially from pro-life and disability groups who — correctly, as we shall see later in this series — saw this shift as making a clear distinction between who deserved to live and who deserved to die. Facing strong opposition, the Hemlock Society attempted to soften its image by rebranding as End-of-Life Choices, and later into its current sleight of hand, Compassion and Choices.

As these debates began to seep into the consciousness of the general public, a rogue figure emerged: Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Kevorkian was a medical examiner by profession who became an assisted suicide and euthanasia activist. He became well known for his unapologetic right-to-die ideas and even garnered the moniker “Dr. Death” from his many media appearances. Kevorkian openly claimed that he had euthanized approximately 130 people between 1990 and 1999.

Kevorkian was subjected to various civil and criminal charges but was never convicted of a crime. This changed when, appearing on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in 1999, he shared a clip of him euthanizing Thomas Youk, a middle-aged man with severe Lou Gehrig’s disease. The video evidence was clear that Kevorkian had indeed killed Youk by directly injecting him with a lethal drug. Kevorkian was charged and convicted of second-degree murder and served eight years in jail.

Kevorkian’s macabre actions became the most effective harbinger of what was to follow, as U.S. states were soon under pressure to legalize medicalized death.

Around this time, two key lawsuits emerged: Washington v. Glucksberg (1997) and Vacco v. Quill (1997).

In Washington vs. Glucksberg, pro-assisted suicide doctors and terminally ill patients challenged Washington State’s ban on assisted suicide. While the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Washington ban, finding that there was no constitutional right to assisted suicide, the decision allowed each U.S. state to either legalize or prohibit legalized assisted suicide.

In Vacco v. Quill, a similar group of activists challenged New York’s ban on assisted suicide based on slightly different arguments. The key question in Vacco was: Does banning assisted suicide while allowing patients to refuse medical treatment violate the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause? The U.S. Supreme Court held that there was a clear distinction between patients refusing treatment and assisted suicide, and upheld the New York ban.

The pro-death lobby was just getting started. Knowing that the Supreme Court had left open the possibility of individual states legalizing assisted suicide, the wheels began to slowly turn.

Mark P. Mostert, Ph.D., is senior researcher for Able Americans, a project of the National Center for Public Policy Research. This is part 7 of the 11-part series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?”  Those wanting to be notified of future installments in the series should subscribe to the Able Americans email list.