Legalizing Euthanasia Poisons a Nation’s Soul
Originally published at The Epoch TimesEuthanasia isn’t only bad medicine but also poisons the soul of nations that embrace killing as an answer to human suffering.
I understand the emotional pull of the “right to die” movement’s siren song. People are scared—of dying in unalleviated pain, hooked for an eternity to medical machines, or lying unattended in filth with dementia in a poorly run nursing home.
Advocates are aware of this terror and—like the snake seducing Eve into eating the apple—craftily assure us that legalizing assisted suicide or lethal injection euthanasia will be limited to worst-case scenarios, a “safety valve” when nothing but induced death at the hands of a doctor will suffice to end suffering. As to those who could be abused by transforming killing into a “medical treatment,” well, not to worry, “strict guidelines” will protect against abuse.
Here’s the problem. The guidelines aren’t “strict” nor limited to worst cases. Moreover, assisted suicide/euthanasia systems depend on death doctors’ self-reporting to authorities about their lethal acts, which they’re about as likely to do as inform the IRS about their own tax fraud. And even if they do let bureaucrats know they didn’t follow the guidelines, state enforcement mechanisms are weak or non-existent. Besides, why should we trust doctors who we worry will fail to treat us properly with the power to end our lives?
Beyond that, once most of society bites the snake’s apple, that culture’s moral mindset is corroded. Because eliminating suffering now permits eliminating sufferers, actions previously considered monstrous or tragic are redefined as empowering and compassionate. As a result, the killable caste of people continually expands over time, opening the door to a vastly enlarged killing field.
This warning isn’t slippery slope argumentation but based on demonstrable facts. The Netherlands illustrates the peril. The Dutch formally legalized lethal jabs in 2002. Since then, Dutch doctors have gone from legally killing the terminally ill to the chronically ill, to people with disabilities, to the frail elderly, to the depressed and mentally ill. Dutch doctors are also allowed to commit infanticide of terminally ill and disabled babies under a bureaucratic death checklist known as the Groningen Protocol. The Dutch even pioneered conjoining euthanasia with organ donation, allowing the mentally ill and people with disabilities to check into hospitals, be dispatched, and then wheeled into a surgical suite for organ procurement.
The same toxic transformation occurred in Belgium—which also legalized euthanasia in 2002. After only two decades of killing as a “medical treatment,” Belgium permits joint geriatric euthanasia killings of married couples—in one case, the couple was worried about the future suffering of widowhood. Their deaths were arranged by their own children. A psychiatric patient was euthanized in part because she was distraught over being allegedly sexually predated by her previous psychiatrist. And, a transgender person was dispatched because the patient was in despair over a botched sex change surgery, among many other such abuses that aren’t “supposed” to happen. Good grief, Belgian doctors recently kept a 16-year-old brain cancer patient sedated for 36 hours to test her organs and find recipients before dispatching and harvesting her.
Back in the Netherlands, a huge polling majority would permit healthy elderly people to receive a lethal jab for what’s called a “completed life.” As described by the NL Times, “D66 [parliamentary] bill to allow assisted suicide for people who feel their life is complete” is supported by “a massive 80 percent of voters … based on a Kieskompas poll of almost 200,000 people. … The bill would allow people over 75 to decide when to die with professional help if they feel they’ve reached the end of a completed life.”
Note well that a “completed life” need not involve any physical illness, disabling condition, or psychiatric malady and could include wanting to die from loneliness, boredom, worries about going to a nursing home, or for no reason at all. And why should eligibility be age-limited? Once the concept of the “completed life” is accepted, why not open the death option to younger people who no longer wish to be in this world?
Before the legalization of euthanasia, I’m confident that few Dutch would have supported allowing doctors to kill healthy geriatric patients—any more than (I hope) Americans would. But after decades of euthanasia normalization, only 10 percent think it would be wrong. See what I mean about euthanasia poisoning a nation’s soul?
The same cultural pollution is evident in Canada. Euthanasia has only been legal north of the 46th Parallel since 2016, and Canada has already followed the same road blazed by the Dutch, including lethal jab eligibility for the mentally ill starting next year.
Not only that, but increasing numbers of Canadians support euthanasia for suffering caused by social conditions. A shocking recent poll found that 27 percent strongly or moderately agree that euthanasia is acceptable for suffering caused by “poverty,” and 28 percent strongly or moderately agree that killing by doctors is acceptable for suffering caused by “homelessness.” Talk about the milk of human kindness turning rancid.
But Wesley, the same moral decay hasn’t happened here in states that have legalized assisted suicide. As a fact checker would put it, that’s partially true. People aren’t (yet) assisted in suicide for a botched sex change surgery or for having been sexually predated by their psychiatrist.
But that shouldn’t make us sanguine. Almost every state that has legalized assisted suicide already liberalized their regulations to allow easier access to doctor-prescribed death. Oregon and Vermont have done away with residency requirements, and some states even allow virtual assisted suicide with doctors over the internet. Besides, the people of the United States have only nibbled at—but not yet swallowed—the snake’s proffered poison apple, which is why only 10 states have legalized assisted suicide despite decades of effort by death activists.
But if we ever do yield to the culture of death, the same tragic trajectory seen so vividly in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada will happen here too. It’s only logical. Human nature is what it is. Once killing to end suffering becomes culturally embraced, there’s no limiting principle on the kinds of suffering that will justify killing.