The big push for physician-assisted suicide – why it doesn’t make sense
They used to call it assisted suicide.
Now they’ve turned to other terms to make it sound more palatable.
“Medical aid in dying,” “compassionate dying,” and “physician-assisted dying.”
How could you argue about giving someone help of some kind?
But it’s still the same thing – finding someone to take your own life.
The problem is, it goes completely against how we normally feel about living our lives.
Here’s what I mean.
When you’re sick, you want to get better. If you walk down a dark alley, you sense danger and want to get to a safe place. You want to live, not die.
Plain and simple – wanting to die seems to go against nature. “Give me one more day to see my family,” cries out the dying grandfather.
The Roman orator Cicero wrote a treatise on the benefits of old age, even though many of his contemporaries took their own lives when life became troublesome.
Closer to our own day, Archbishop Fulton Sheen broadcast a popular TV show in the ‘50’s, “Life is Worth Living.”
Today we have suicide hotlines to give hope to veterans, to young people and just the general population who are thinking about taking their own lives.
All who jumped regretted it
A few years ago a researcher interviewed 29 people who had tried to end their lives by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge.
“All 29 people who survived their suicide attempts off San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge have said they regretted their decision as soon as they jumped,” said journalist Ed Newman on the website Medium.
Newman tells the story of Ken Baldwin, one of the 29, whose immediate thoughts upon leaving the railing were,
“‘What am I doing? This was the worst thing I could do in my life.’ He instantly thought of his wife and daughter and didn’t want to die. He recalls realizing that everything he thought was unfixable was totally fixable — except for having just jumped.”
But today, the promoters of assisted suicide are pushing hard to make it legal for doctors to assist in suicide. It was first legal in the states of Washington and Oregon, and now it is legal in nine other states, according to the pro-suicide website Compassion and Choices.
These efforts raise a lot of red flags, says Newman, who has done much research on the issue. “I would urge caution,” he said.
For legal efforts to respect life and the ethics of end-of-life decisions, check out the Life Legal Defense Foundation.
(The articles here are not meant to be taken as medical advice. If you are suffering from any physical or mental malady, seek the help of a qualified medical professional.)