Thinking to Believe

Mark Langedijk was an alcoholic.  He battled his addiction for eight years.  The battle was so difficult for him that he decided he would rather die.  And in the Netherlands – where the logic of euthanasia has run its course – he found a doctor who would make him dead.  And why not?  He was suffering.  It doesn’t matter that his suffering did not involve physical pain or that he was not terminally ill.  All that matters is that he was experiencing suffering and wanted relief.  Euthanasia knows no limits.

And last year, a person suffering from mental illness due to sex abuse as a child was also euthanized.  Euthanasia is an easy way to throw broken people away rather than treat them.  It is abandonment.  These people need our care, not a lethal injection.

Wesley J. Smith reports that the Dutch government is drafting a law that would legalize euthanasia for the perfectly healthy who feel that they have “completed life” and want to die.  This is not surprising given the logic of the pro-suicide position.  The two prongs on which it hangs are self-autonomy and ending suffering.

I’ve long thought that these two rationales would be decoupled, such that justifiable suicide would no longer require that both requirements be met.  In this case, self-autonomy alone is the justification for suicide.  A perfectly medically and mentally healthy person just wants to die.  No more justification is needed.

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Wesley J. Smith writes about the strange ethics afoot in the medical world today. While more and more doctors and bioethicists are advocating the repeal of conscience rights for doctors, insisting that they participate in euthanasia and abortion because the patient’s desires are autonomous and trump the doctor’s conscience.  Ironically, however, many in this crowd also support futile care laws which allow a hospital to determine that due to your quality of life, the healthcare desired by the patient is not worth the cost and can be denied.  Smith ends by saying, “Autonomy rules if you want to die–even over medical conscience. But doctor/bioethicists values rule if you want to live.”  Clearly, this is not about patient autonomy.  It’s about strong-arming an anti-human view on the medical field, forcing everyone who values life out of the business.