When Does the Right to Die Become the Duty to Die?
by Grazie Pozo Christie, National Review:
History tells us that where voluntary ‘mercy killing’ is allowed, involuntary euthanasia inevitably follows. Compassionately caring for the severely mentally ill is a challenge for every society. Many countries, including ours, are failing that challenge. Patients suffering from schizophrenia and other severe psychiatric disorders compose large proportions of the homeless and incarcerated. And the Netherlands has taken failure to new heights: The country’s growing trend of euthanizing the mentally ill most recently included a woman in her twenties.
Mercy killing in the Netherlands for psychiatric reasons is increasingly popular. It is a supposedly neat and tidy end for untidy lives and is promoted as strictly voluntary — a jewel in the crown of individual freedom and self-determination. For the mentally ill, however, the siren call of individual freedom dovetails too nicely with society’s proven intolerance of the troubling behavior of people with mental disorders. In fact, the roots of mercy killing in modern times are lodged in the unsavory and downright savage practices of the last century.
Progressives in the early 20th century advocated voluntary euthanasia, as both a right and a practice that would benefit society. But when applied to the mentally ill and other undesirables, the euthanasia movement became tied to the eugenics movement. For those with “lives not worth living,” the societal duty to die appeared quite clear in the face of pressing needs for social reformation and urban hygiene. In the Bollinger case, a handicapped baby was refused a lifesaving operation in Chicago in 1915, touching off a national debate over mercy killing the mentally disabled.
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