On Monday, the Vermont House approved a bill to legalize assisted suicide in the state by a vote of 75-65 (the VT Senate passed it previously by a vote of 17-13). The governor supported the bill and will surely sign it, making VT the 4th state in the nation to legalize assisted suicide.
There’s nothing like sending a message to the most vulnerable people among us that we think their lives are of such little value that they can be disposed of at will. Our moral decline continues….
HT: Wesley J. Smith
Thinking to Believe 
May 16, 2013 at 9:36 am
“At will?” Whose will?
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May 16, 2013 at 10:21 am
I think the important story about this sad commentary of society is WHY so many people have lost hope, cannot wish anymore, have become so disappointed that prayer is never answered despite religion’s argument to the contrary; they have nothing to look forward to in medical advances, they have no more dreams left in them, drained of vision, drained of life, alone in pain without resolve, opting for the “dead who know nothing” scenario of Ecclesiastes 9:5.
Assisted suicide has not come about because of old age, it has come about from the lack of medical remedies for those afflicted by genetic deformities, anomalies, diseases and deficiencies that medical science has not yet advanced sufficiently to overcome.
And very few people give them encouragement; they only get pounded by people giving them “discouragement” prompts, trying to discourage them from a moment only their own, arrived at in complete isolation from a “shell fish” world from which derives the term “selfish”, a world it seems to many that lives only for itself, for its own moment in the sun, lacking in compassion for the essence of what it means to be alive, the Sanctity of Life.
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May 16, 2013 at 1:03 pm
Stan, at the will of the person wanting to die.
Jason
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May 16, 2013 at 1:05 pm
Leo,
How is telling people that you approve of them killing themselves going to bring them “encouragement?” Instead, it sends them a message that their lives are not worth living.
Jason
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May 16, 2013 at 7:36 pm
Jason:
My point was that because they have been so isolated without encouragement it has come to this. I am not approving the law I am trying to explain why the Law was arrived at, not trying to encourage them to die; I am saying that because we did nothing before the Law to encourage them, gave them no hope, they reached this point where nothing is left for them except to end it all.
I hope that clears up any misunderstanding.
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May 17, 2013 at 4:52 am
Jason,
Why shouldn’t the individual be allowed to commit suicide? If they could do it themselves, then they presumably would do, so why not allow them to organise assisted suicide? Just curious for your thoughts really.
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May 21, 2013 at 12:30 pm
Scott,
1. It is not necessary.
2. It is a slippery slope
3. It is not an act of compassion, but abandonment.
4. It promotes a cultural duty to die
5. It changes the doctor-patient relationship
Suicide should not be society’s answer for suffering. We have great palliative care to address that concern. From what I have studied, pain is not the reason most people want to die. It is usually emotional in nature (in one survey, only 27% of those who received assisted suicide did so because of pain, or anticipated pain, whereas 89% cited loss of autonomy).
And most organizations who support the legalization of suicide want it to be available to all people, regardless of their physical health. Legalizing suicide for the terminally ill is a slippery slope for the legalization of all suicide under all sorts of circumstances, as has been amply demonstrated in Europe. The reason for this is simple: the logic demands it. After all, the two main arguments are personal autonomy and the idea that killing is an acceptable solution to the problem of suffering. So why limit suicide to physical suffering? Why not allow it for depression if the person wants to die? After all, it’s all about the right to exercise one’s personal autonomy to eliminate their suffering.
Contrary to what those who advocate for suicide say, this is not an act of compassion. To exercise compassion means to suffer with the person. Killing them does not fit the bill. Compassion is to offer effective palliative (medication) and psychological care. Killing is not an acceptable solution to the problem of suffering.
I also think it promotes a cultural shift in which it is viewed as one’s duty to die (to save the family money, emotional pain, and inconvenience). It buys into the quality of life nonsense as a justification for life, as well as the idea that human value is extrinsic.
Defining killing as a medical treatment changes the conception of killing from something bad to something good.
Wesley J. Smith gives a nice summary of what is wrong with legalizing suicide:
First, once assisted suicide or euthanasia is legalized, it will not long remain a limited enterprise. This is not a “slippery slope” alarmist projection but a conclusion abundantly demonstrated by facts on the ground in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland…
Second, legalizing euthanasia changes culture. Not only do the categories of people eligible for euthanasia expand, but the rest of society generally ceases to think that it matters. This desensitizing, in turn, affects how people perceive the moral value of the seriously ill, disabled, and elderly–and perhaps how they view themselves.
Third, euthanasia corrupts medical ethics by mutating the role of doctors into purveyors of death rather than consistent enablers of life…
Fourth, once a person is deemed the member of a killable caste, it becomes easier to reduce his worth to that of a mere natural resource that can be exploited for the benefit of society.
http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/346784/european-euthanasia-changes-culture
Jason
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May 21, 2013 at 1:54 pm
Jason:
I agree; killing should remain as something bad and should never be allowed to become something good through desensitization, abandonment and cultural change. Society uses the compassion card to put animals down and now try the same tactic for putting humans down.
I have noticed lots of comments on social media by youthful writers mocking old people as useless and just waiting to die anyway and youth of course has always had a lack of respect for the elderly by virtue of their, youthful immaturity and undisciplined ego. 2 Kings 2: 23″…..as he(Elisha)( was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him, and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!”
This lack of respect for the sanctity of life amply demonstrates the cultural shift taking place in society: abortion, gun violence, war, bully bombers, movies, video games; all of it glorifies death, today’s heros are all lying in the cemetery for goodness sakes. Now that the program is reaching legislators and becoming law the trend is alarming.
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