I am appalled that we can live in a country that spends time and energy and money on pleading with those with mental illness NOT to take their lives and here we are making it legal. I have written elsewhere that I believe that no one who is thinking clearly will take their own life. Pain at 16 is no different than pain at 60; whether it is physical, emotional or mental-pain is pain. It seems to escape those who think assisted-suicide is right, that the reason people give for ending their lives are quite similar to those of us who have contemplated it or even attempted it. Madness. Here is the email that I sent to CBC regarding assisted-suicide.
I would like to ask about the difference between our response to suicide at 16 and 60. We spend a great deal of time protecting all kinds of people from killing themselves-we even have suicide watches in prisons. Yet, we are preparing to make it legal to kill oneself out of fear of what might be. Rather than lionize “assisted”-suicide and justify feelings of helplessness (loss of autonomy) as reasons for ending one’s life why do we not put money into providing palliative care for all; care that makes it possible to enjoy what is left of one’s time with family and friends? There is article in Post about a woman who planned her “death” party. She had cancer and having been told that she would die soon had chosen to take her own life. She might have had a few more months to live. She has a husband and a child. Why would she deny her family and herself the time to be together? Too many of us have come to expect that life should be fair. It isn’t. It is our response to all of life’s experiences that defines us.
The idea that we are rational human beings who can guarantee that there will be no abuse of the assisted-suicide system has been proven incorrect. Abortion began as a procedure for a limited number of reasons. It is now an unfettered procedure that makes it possible for women carrying more than one fetus to say, “No thank you, I only want one.” Or makes it possible for families to say, “No thank you, I don’t want a girl,” and access an abortion. I am pro-choice, but not to the point that having a child is like picking out a couch. Based on that experience, how can we guarantee that assisted-suicide won’t expand to the point that elderly or unwell people won’t feel obligated to end their lives or come to believe that an unhealthy life is not a life worth living?
How we treat people at the beginning and end of life speaks to who we are as a nation. We either value all life or we start to pick and choose. Under the guise of self-regarding ethics we are developing into a country of people with grandiose infantile delusions of entitlement, ethics that are selfish. We are losing the most important lesson that underpins the foundation of Western culture-that we care for the other, that we have responsibilities to others that must balance rights. That belief is the reason many of us are repulsed by sex-selection abortion and encouraging people to end their lives for fear of what might be. Our priority should be “LIFE WITH DIGNITY” rather than death with dignity.
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