A Merciful End: The Euthanasia Movement in Modern America

Alan Belk is a Ph.D. candidate in the Philosophy Department at the
University of Guelph.

In this well-researched and scholarly but readable book, Ian Dowbiggin,
a professor of history at the University of Prince Edward Island,
presents the confused history of the eugenics movement in the United
States over the last century.

A Merciful End can be regarded as a political war story. It is a
history in which the Roman Catholic Church forms a coalition with
fundamentalist Protestant groups. What unites them is the idea that
suffering is the human condition and that to ease a dying person’s
suffering opposes religious dogma by usurping the will of God. Joining
their coalition is a medical profession that is motivated by concerns
about rising malpractice insurance premiums. Opposing them are
Unitarians and others who want society to recognize that death is often
not pleasant, quick, or easy, and who argue that it is compassionate to
alleviate a dying person’s pain and suffering. The fact that this
latter group can’t separate this argument from their views on
abortion, birth control, sterilization, female emancipation, world
peace, racial tolerance, the feeble-minded and malformed, and eugenics
makes them easy targets for the politically savvy “good guys” who
aim to maintain the status quo.

Since this is U.S. politics, anything goes; reason and informed debate
are the first war casualties. The spectres of Adolf Hitler and Jack
Kevorkian, with his syringe of mass destruction, overshadow the whole
book. Anyone who advocates euthanasia is a putative Nazi eugenicist and
those who advise or help anyone in committing suicide are terrorists
just waiting to depopulate retirement castles throughout the United
States.

Here are the “successes” of the euthanasia movement: advance
directives/living wills are legally recognized, although narrowly
interpreted in the United States; there is an ineffectual euthanasia law
in Oregon. The war continues.