Washington’s law was approved in November, and a Death with Dignity Act was passed in Oregon in 1994. Since then, 401 people have died this way.

I want to live my life out as long as I can, and I can’t imagine choosing to end it, by legal or illegal suicide. Even if I was sick, I don’t think I would want to put my trust in a doctor that would agree to kill me. After all, aren’t doctors supposed to be saving lives, not taking them?

If a doctor can simply administer a drug that will end a life, with much less effort and money than attempting to cure the illness, what is to stop them from implying to their patient that there is no hope for recovery? If a physician is OK with taking a life, I don’t know if I could trust that particular doctor.

I’m not sure if any one person should be granted that kind of power. Though advocates of legalizing assisted suicide claim it is humane and the choice of the patient, there is the potential through legalization that this power will be abused. It’s scary to think that the very person who is supposed to be helping you recover could be responsible for your death.

This issue is a little like abortion. People can argue forever about whether assisted suicide is morally right or wrong, but when it comes to an actual law, that debate must be put aside in favor of practicality and safety. In the case of abortion, even if it became illegal, abortions would happen anyway. They would be unsafe, and would be in unsafe circumstances, where the woman making the decision didn’t have the chance to discuss it with a professional first.

It’s the same way with assisted suicide. Many people kill themselves for a variety of reasons, but in the case of medical issues, being aided by a doctor is a better way to go. If someone is sick and dying and wants to die, they can kill themselves in any variety of ways, but going painlessly in a controlled setting is probably the best of those.

However, I believe that assisted suicide is taking the easy way out, on the part of both the patient and the doctors. Instead of putting in the effort to find new ways to solve medical issues, doctors can simply let their patient die when things get too difficult. I fear that if assisted suicide were legalized nationwide, medical innovation would grow stagnant. No one would like to believe it, but there is too high a risk that the power to legally end someone’s life would be abused.

Jack Kevorkian, a longtime advocate of legalizing assisted suicide, claims to have assisted at least 130 patients to their deaths in this way. He claims to desire only to end suffering, but was he actually helping his patients or just giving up on them?

To me, someone who was truly concerned with ending suffering would put all of their effort into solving the problems that caused the suffering in the first place. Yes, legalizing suicide would allow people to legally end their lives if they were suffering, but the consequences of legalizing assisted suicide are greater than the benefit of allowing someone an early and peaceful death.

That woman in Washington was able to die at a time she chose, in a desirable situation, and avoid the suffering caused by her disease. However, I think that doctors’ efforts should have gone into finding a cure for her disease, or a way to ease the suffering without resorting to death. These solutions are not going to come quickly, and they will take time, but doctors and patients need the motivation to fight medical problems without an easy button.

Doctors should be channeling their efforts into saving lives, not advocating the right to take them.

Gabrielle Moore is a State News guest columnist and journalism freshman. Reach her at mooregab@msu.edu.