The second pitfall appears when assisted suicide becomes a pawn in the abortion debate. The connector is usually found in some aspect of the phrase "the right to life." The morality of abortion is a worthy debate on which good and decent people hold deeply contrasting views, but to confuse assisted suicide with abortion is both inappropriate and misleading.

In assisted suicide the choice to end one's life under certain circumstances takes place at the end of the life cycle, and it is a choice made by the affected person. Abortion occurs when the life of the fetus is still potential, and is an action in which the subject is neither consulted nor given a choice. Assisted suicide and abortion are thus quite different.

The concept of assisted suicide is a peculiarly modern topic. It was all but inconceivable a century ago. It is before us today because of human ingenuity. Advances in the practice of medicine and the spectacular development of various medical technologies are the co-parents of this debate. Medical science has succeeded in so many areas. Pain is today capable of being relieved in remarkably effective ways. Many killing diseases have been conquered. Both the boundaries and the quality of life have been extended beyond anything our ancestors could have imagined.

These are remarkable achievements in which we can rightfully rejoice. But, this very success has created for us the dilemmas out of which the assisted suicide debate has arisen. For it is the skill of medical science that has enabled us to cross that mysterious boundary that separates the prolonging of life and good health from the ability simply to postpone death. We must recognize this subtle distinction. To enhance the length and beauty of life is clearly a value, but simply to prevent death is at best a questionable virtue.

We human beings now have arrived at a set of circumstances that requires us to embrace the freedom and to find the courage to decide for ourselves how long our will be extended and under what circumstances our deaths shall occur. Once there was a neat distinction between what religious people called passive and active euthanasia. Passive euthanasia meant the refusal to take extraordinary means to extend life and it was generally approved by traditional religious teaching. Active euthanasia meant taking an overt action to hasten death and it was generally condemned by traditional religious thinking. That distinction, however, has been rendered all but meaningless by the advances in modern medicine.

Today, decisions by doctors and family members to remove or not to remove life support systems and to assist nature or to let nature take its course are daily occurrences in hospitals across this nation. That spectre causes many people to seek the assurance that the patient will have some say about his or her destiny prior to that moment of life. Many of us want the moral and legal right to choose to die with our faculties intact, surrounded by those we love before we are reduced to being breathing cadavers, attended by strangers, with no human dignity attached to our final days.

We are aware that life can today be prolonged by managing pain with pain killing drugs, but that relief is sometimes achieved at the price of the destruction of the patient's mind or the loss of the patient's capacity to relate to other human beings in a meaningful way. Surely the prolongation of a person's days in a meaningless breathing body is not a witness to the sacredness of life. These are the situations out of which the demand arises for some legal means to preserve the individual's right to make an informed decision about the way he or she will die. Surely the right to make so personal a decision as this should not be abrogated by the state, nor should it be condemned by any part of the Christian Church. The legal right to die with dignity is essential new modern freedom from which mature human beings dare not shrink. Life must not be identified with the extension of biological existence.

Another factor in this decision-making process arises from the incredible expense of terminal care. Obviously the value of life cannot be measured in economic terms alone, and economic considerations must never drive this debate. Yet, when the options are clear and a patient knows that he or she faces days, weeks, perhaps even a few months of expensive, pain filled, not always conscious life with no hope of long-range cure, then at least I, as one citizen, want to be given the right, morally and legally, to make a decision for myself. I want the ability to weigh the value of those additional days, weeks, or even months of my existence against the costs that my family would have to pay, both in terms of their financial resources and their emotional reserves. Because of the love I have for my wife and my children, I want to be able to cast my vote for what is in their best interest, even if that means choosing the quicker end rather than allowing the inevitable lingering dissipation of my mind and body.

If leaders of religious and political organizations want to look at the immorality of applying an economic agenda to the present debate, I suggest that their focus should not be on the issue of assisted suicide. Rather, we should look at the rich capital gains being accrued to smart investors in health care industries and at those million dollar bonues paid to CEOs of HMOs. The failure of this nation to enact universal health care has also consigned the bottom 20 percent of our population to grossly inadequate medical attention that dooms many to an involuntary early death. Surely immorality also resides there.

Of course, there are dangers when a society decides to allow its citizens this freedom of choice at the end of life. Convenience and greed, in cooperation with a few unscrupulous members of the medical profession, have the potential to create a world of horrors for many people. Those dangers, however, are not inevitable.

I suppose it will be quite impossible for all malfeasance to be eliminated from thisarea of life. Malfeasance has not been eliminated completely from any other area of human activity. I do suggest, however, that this is only an excuse, and a poor one at that, when we assume that the same human brilliance that has produced the miracle of modern medicine cannot also solve the problem of prohibiting improper decisions while still allowing individuals the choice of how they want to live out their final days.

When human beings have done an audacious thing, we ought not to tremble before the choices presented to us by our own audacity. Safeguards can be put into place. The slippery slope arguments against assisted suicide, continually offered by those who seem to fear every new possibility, can be addressed.

Finally, I want to be clear, particularly because the common wisdom is that religious voices are overwhelmingly opposed to assisted suicide, that I have come to these conclusions as a Christian and out of my Judeo-Christian faith tradition. I state them to the world and to the Church at large specifically as an Episcopal Bishop. My personal creed asserts that every person is sacred, created in God's image; that every person is loved by God in Jesus Christ, and that every person is called into the fullness of his or her humanity by the Holy Spirit. I see the holiness of life enhanced, not diminshed, by letting people have a say in how they choose to die.

I also believe that we live in a country which endows its citizens with certain inalienable rights. Among those rights, newly given, as a peculiar gift of this modern world, is the right to participate in the management of our own deaths. Assisted suicide must never be a requirement, but it should always be a legal and moral option. This decision to end one's life needs to be faced openly, honestly, freely and in consultation with our loved ones, our doctors, and our spiritual advisors. When the decision on assisted suicide is made this way, I am convinced that it is a life-affirming moral choice. It is also a human right that I hope this Congress will grant to the American people.

Thank you very much.

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