Legalized assisted suicide costs us the presence of good people, who had they been given emotional support to help them not commit suicide in their time of health extremis, would be so glad to be alive. I have written frequently of my last hospice patient, Bob, who had been suicidal for 2 1/2 years after his Lou Gehrig’s disease diagnosis. He told me he would have gone to Kevorkian if his family had cooperated. But they wouldn’t and so he didn’t–and to his delighted surprise, he ended his life so very glad to be alive to the last breath. He would have been cheated out of all that happiness by the false compassion of assisted suicide–and the beauty part for the doctor-prescribed-death crowd is that no one would have ever known.
The same point is made in a letter to the editor published in the Boston Globe today by a cancer survivor, reacting to an opinion column in favor of a legalization proposal in Massachusetts. From the letter “She Pushed for Legal Right to Die, and – Thankfully – was Rebuffed:”
I am a retired person living in Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal. Our law was enacted through a ballot initiative that I voted for. In 2000, I was diagnosed with cancer and told that I had six months to a year to live. I knew that our law had passed, but I didn’t know exactly how to go about making use of it. I tried to ask my doctor, but he didn’t really answer me. I didn’t want to suffer. I wanted to do what our law allowed, and I wanted my doctor to help me. Instead, he encouraged me not to give up, and ultimately I decided to fight the disease. I had both chemotherapy and radiation.
I am so happy to be alive! It is now 11 years later. If my doctor had believed in assisted suicide, I would be dead. I thank him and all my doctors for helping me to choose “life with dignity.’’ Assisted suicide should not be legal. I hope Massachusetts does not make this terrible mistake.
I am continually disheartened that letters such as this often resonate less than if the same woman had written, right after her diagnosis, that she just wanted to die. Doctor prescribed death activists will say, “Well, she didn’t die, so what’s the problem?” Intentional obtuseness.
For some reason, the contemporary “compassion” reflex has a hard time embracing a life with health difficulties–but rocks and rolls with accelerated death. But know this: There are people who received doctor-prescribed/administered death, who would have survived long enough to be happily alive had assisted suicide not been legalized in Oregon and Washington, applied so callously in Switzerland, and euthanasia added to the mix in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
Assisted suicide is not “choice,” it is the end of all choices. “Death with dignity,” is actually the euthanasia of hope.
October 4th, 2011 | 6:41 pm
[...] Assisted Suicide Is the Euthanasia of HopeFirst Things (blog)Legalized assisted suicide costs us the presence of good people, who had they been given emotional support to help them not commit suicide in their time of health extremis, would be so glad to be alive. I have written frequently of my last hospice …Paradox and Perspective: The Art of Dr. KevorkianAsbarez Armenian Newsall 2 news articles » [...]
October 5th, 2011 | 3:35 am
So true – but not often expressed so well. The good news stories just aren’t sensational! “Man threatens to kill wife and kids” is a lot more newsworthy, it seems, than, “Man kisses wife and hugs kids.” Pity. But embrace the tyranny of the ‘false choice’ of euthanasia & assisted suicide and perhaps the good news stories like Bob’s will become news if only because of their increasing scarcity!
October 5th, 2011 | 12:39 pm
[...] J. Smith at Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog: Legalized assisted suicide costs us the presence of good people, who had they been given emotional [...]
October 6th, 2011 | 3:59 am
Wesley, I like your statement that euthanasia “is the end of all choices.”
October 14th, 2011 | 10:31 am
[...] but was later so glad to be alive. I also quote the letter to the editor in the Boston Globe (mentioned here at SHS before), expressing the same sentiment. I then conclude: Hall and Bob convey an important message we [...]
October 14th, 2011 | 9:01 pm
So your argument is that the possible deprivation which you would suffer from people who kill themselves, or have others assist or do it for them, that deprivation is so severe that everyone should always be forced to carry on living whether they want to or not? You claim that because some people say they are happy to have been prevented fromwho failed to or were prevented from killing themselves when they tried later said that they were glad
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