“But he who misses me or sins against me wrongs and injures himself; all who hate me love and court death.” (Proverbs 8:36 AMP)
Coming soon to a state near you? Euthanasia for terminally ill people is legal in nine states and the District of Columbia. So far.
In The American Spectator, Wesley J. Smith says that limiting euthanasia to the terminally ill is “philosophically unsustainable.”
“If the point of allowing suicide by doctor is to eliminate suffering — and if eliminating suffering can include eliminating the sufferer — how can facilitated death be forbidden to patients, such as those with dementia and mental illness, who may suffer far more extremely and for a much longer time than the already dying?”
That might sound reasonable. After all, who wants anyone to suffer? Who wants someone else to suffer?
Or is there an alternative–like treatment and compassionate care? Is death the only option?
Part of the discussion surrounding the argument over abortion is whether the unborn child suffers as he or she is torn apart via suction or dismemberment, receives a shot of digoxin to stop his/her heart, or is crushed to death by instruments.
Deniers of unborn pain deny because they understand that only a cruel person doesn’t care whether others suffer.
So before we embrace an idea intended to alleviate suffering, let’s consider what follows.
And what follows is what’s happening now in Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and perhaps soon, in Canada. The first three nations allow euthanasia for mental illness, and, Smith tells us, “Such procedures are not rare.”
The Swiss high court determined “several years ago that the mentally ill have a constitutional right to access death.” Switzerland has assisted suicide clinics. (See Soylent Green.)
Canada is considering expanding the “right to die,” now available only to the terminally ill, to include the mentally ill as well.
But a right implies choice. And Smith provides two accounts of euthanasia implemented involuntarily. In one case, over the objections of the patient, and in the other case, when the patient’s death was not “foreseeable” (a requirement of the law) and over the objections of the family.
You might expect that the respective governments would intervene or prosecute, but ultimately in these cases, the physician’s decisions were lauded.
And lest you think those cases are aberrations, 20 percent of “assisted suicides” in the Netherlands happen without “explicit consent.”
Voluntary euthanasia leads us to involuntary euthanasia. Every time.
Nancy Pearcey: ““It is a tragedy to see the medical profession move from suicide prevention to suicide facilitation. The right-to-die movement presents euthanasia as compassionate. But disparaging human life as expendable is not compassionate. The term ‘compassion’ literally means ‘to suffer with’ (com=with, passion=suffer). True compassion means being willing to suffer on behalf of others, loving them enough to bear the burden of caring for them.”
Those who make money from abortion say they support choice, but are quick to find only one “solution” for a crisis pregnancy.
And those who make money from euthanasia–and thus save the expense of caring for those in crisis–are quick to present the same “solution”.
Seldom today does anyone suffer without an available form of treatment or help. We can do more than death promoters acknowledge.
They present euthanasia, as they did abortion, as an easy out. But like abortion, euthanasia will prove to be not so easy and just as harmful to the cultures it touches.
As these proponents love and court death, they wrong and injure themselves.
And all of us with them.