Whose life is worth living? Assisted suicide draws a line
by Jonathon Van Maren, LifeSite:
So it seems that suicide is now a medical service, and the debate in Canada has come and gone with barely a whisper. With the exception of a few newspaper columnists fretting here or there, the debate seems to have subsided before it really began. Those who oppose euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide now face the dual task of preventing suicide activists from successfully loosening euthanasia restrictions even further, and educating their peers on why legalizing any form of suicide — much less suicide facilitated and perpetrated by medical professionals — is so extraordinarily dangerous.
As I discuss which arguments can be used most effectively against euthanasia with other pro-life activists, one apologetic consistently stands out to me as especially powerful, perhaps because it is rooted in my own experience: The inescapable fact that legalizing physician-assisted suicide relegates those who qualify for such a service to the status of second-class citizen.
Let me provide an example to illustrate what I mean. I do not suffer from depression, but I have friends and family members who do. If I were to enter a hospital that provides physician-assisted suicide for those struggling with mental illness — a situation suicide activists are working hard to create — and asked to be provided with this “service,” doctors would review my psychiatric record, analyze my health, and inform me that I do not qualify. My life is too valuable, because I do not endure the same suffering that millions of other North Americans do. But one of my friends or family members who do suffer from depression could walk into the same hospital, provide evidence of their mental suffering, and be declared eligible for death. The State would have spoken: The life of someone without mental illness is more valuable than the life of someone with mental illness. A society in which medical professionals, mandated and funded by the State, will kill some but not others cannot claim to be a society in which everyone is treated equally.
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