Death wish taking center stage

by Bill Beckman

The slogan of "choice" is now becoming a death wish.  On November 4th Washington state voters approved legalizing assisted suicide to mimic Oregon.   Now a judge in Montana has ruled that citizens there have a right to assisted suicide, but that decision will be appealed.  Unfortunately, prior rulings from the Montana Supreme Court do not look promising for overturning this ruling. 

A poll taken in England suggests that a solid majority of citizens there think choosing death is not a problem at all.  Of 2,000 people surveyed, 61% would consider an assisted suicide for themselves.  Even televising such events does not raise much of a concern there, with 61% seeing no problem with Sky TV showing the death of Craig Ewert, who killed himself by assisted suicide while in Switzerland.

Switzerland allows what Wesley Smith describes as "suicide tourism".  For $8,000, an organization called Dignitas accommodates people who travel to Switzerland to be made dead, exercising their "right to self-determination."  These "tourists" include depressed people with disabilities, people with terminal illnesses, and some people who are not sick at all. 

Respect for human life, even one's own, is becoming politically incorrect.   Playing God, by deciding when you will die, is now the "correct" thing to do.  As has already been revealed in Oregon, this "right" to die soon turns into a duty to die.  Ask the Oregon patients who were informed that the state health plan would not cover their cancer treatments, but would cover the cost of assisted suicide.  How compassionate of them!  

Comments

[David P. Graf]

This is one example of where the "slippery slope" analogy does ring true. However, let's not forget that it is the expense of the treatment that is driving the state's decision. Could it be that we have another example of where the ethics of social conservatives are in conflict with the libertarian principles of economic conservatives?

[spintreebob]

David, good question about a possible conflict between social conservatives and libertarians.

In the real world it is complex. The same liberal relativists who support legalizing assisted suicide are the same ones who label suicide to be a public health/mental health issue worthy of government funding.

One of the quickest ways to get a grant is a proposal for a program to prevent suicide among
people facing foreclosure or
people facing major illness or
people facing the stress of work or
people facing the stress of unemployment or
teenagers or
Blacks facing the stress of racism or
any victim group's stress.

Next will be the debate over whether a doctor assisting suicide can bill Medicare/Medicaid/AllCare.