Living to the Very End

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Back in the day when I worked in Human Services, I took a course on Death and Dying.  My friend Eileen and I worked on a project together.  We went to a home where a young man was dying of Aids.  We spent some time with him and were impressed with the amount of papalliative care he was given.  He was determined to live his life to the very end.

Today's article "Fighting to Live Versus Dying to Die," in Zenit, reminded me of that time.  The article gives us the USCCB's approved policy on Physician Assisted Suicide, and Euthanasia.  The Bishops' statement is called "To Live Each Day with Dignity: A Statement of Assisted Suicide."  This statement debunks the illusion that killing one's self is expressing freedom of choice.  That's a sad misconception.  Helping someone to die is not compassion; it's a delusion.  The Bishops propose a better way.  They make ten salient points:

1.     Those requesting to die are very vulnerable.  They commonly suffer from clinical depression.  They should be treated for depression, not allowed to kill themselves.
2.     Chronically and terminally ill patients are liable to suffer undue influence from the biases and expediencies of those who are impatient with their weaknesses and disabilities.
3.     Proposals to legalize Physician Assisted Suicides define a small class of people--those with "terminal illness"--as legally exempt from laws against assisting in the suicide of another.  But clinical definitions of "terminal illness" are nototiously unreliable and ambiguous and risk sweeping up into themselves chronically ill patients who could live a long time if given proper care.
4.     "The assisted suicide agenda promotes...an expectation that certain people, unlike others, will be served by being helped to choose death."
5.     But human life is always good and sacred.  "By rescinding legal protection for the lives of one group of people, the government implicitly communicates the message...that they may be better off dead."
6.     But we cannot devalue some lives by saying through law that they are better off dead.
7.     In countries where assisted suicide is legal, a dangerous lack of scrutiny and oversight exists.
8.     Mercy killing invites a slippery slope toward ended the lives of people with non-terminal conditions.
9.     Thus the bitter truth of the right-to-die movement is this: It ended up posing grave risks to those whom it claims to serve, namely, people with serious illness.
10.     Rather than investing in more efficient ways of killing infirmed patients, our society should invest in improving palliative care.

Choose the natural way, will you?  Reject the siren's call to "end it all."