Yes, another article about assisted suicide. Ottawa is appealing the B.C. ruling on assisted suicide. I am hoping that the court overturns the ruling that favours suicide.
At the end of June, Cross Country Checkup had a programme about assisted suicide. One of the callers ended his contribution with the following words: “Yea choice.”
I was stunned. I thought what an inappropriate comment to make about ending one’s life. It had about it the sound of a cheerleader at a sports event.” Yea choice” goes with the vast assortment of food at the supermarket, furniture, cars, schools, movies, but not death.
So many of us have no understanding of the miracle of being born in the West. We take freedom of choice for granted. There are so many throughout the world who have no access to choice nor any right to choose. And I would suggest that given choice, death by one’s own hand –or assisted-would not be on their radar screen. Those who demand the right to legally end their lives at will would be looked upon as some kind of freak of nature by those who have truly suffered. I am referring to people who have suffered torture, degradation of mind, body and soul and continue to choose life.
I have met and listened to stories of Holocaust survivors. We have witnessed the horrors of Rwanda and the massacres that occurred after the break-up of Yugoslavia. I recently met Marina Nemat, author of Prisoner of Tehran, and listened to a brief description of her torture in Evin prison and then the torture of living with the horrors that she kept secret for so many years, and the suffering that has come from telling her story. There are women who have had their noses and ears cut off, children stolen from their homes and dragged into service as child soldiers trained to kill. There are thousands of women raped in order to destroy whole communities. And we have heard their stories. Because they survived. Because they did not commit suicide to end their pain. It never occurred to them that they had the “luxury” of suicide or someone to assist them.
To choose death is to demean life for all. Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel wrote, “Every man must believe that his every deed involves all other men.” But we don’t want to hear those words. We want life, and death, to be easy, forgetting that Paradise is lost. I know it is hard for those who believe in assisted suicide to understand why those of us against it are so opposed. We fear the diminishing, the devaluing of life. Here, in a vast country filled with incredible opportunity, access to multiple choices in food, clothing, shelter , health care, friendship, love, access to so much that others beg to come to our shores, we talk about ending one’s life-to prevent future pain. It is like throwing out our leftovers in front of someone who has not eaten.
To end with another quote from Elie Wiesel, “But it is given to man to begin, again-and he does each time he chooses to defy death and side with the living.”
Listen to Episode 3
