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How is ‘assisted suicide’ anything other than the glorification of suicide?
LifeSiteNews ^ | 11/16/15 | Jonathon Van Maren

Posted on 11/16/2015 8:28:48 AM PST by wagglebee

Nov. 16, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - I’d like the defenders of euthanasia and so-called “death with dignity” to explain something to me. How is the legalization and relentless promotion of “assisted suicide” not the “glorification of suicide”?

I’m tired of all of transparently mindless babble about how “assisted suicide” is not a slippery slope. The phrase itself screams with denial: “Wanna kill yourself? Here, let us help you with that.” When helping people kill themselves is referred to as “end-of-life care” rather than “accomplice to murder,” who will be picking up the phone at the other end of the suicide prevention hot line?

Here’s the thing. I know many people who struggle with depression. I would wager that everyone does. If we’re honest, we can admit that many people who struggle with mental illness would, in a particularly black moment, consider suicide if it was easily available and relatively painless. That is the reason the number one cause of death by gun in Canada is suicide—because many people who would not have ordinarily taken their own lives do so in a fit of palpable darkness.

The idea that our government, our health care system, our society, would send such mixed signals to those contemplating suicide is criminally negligent and outright disgusting. Suicide is never the answer, campaigners used to say. Now, I suppose, they’ll have to qualify. Suicide is never the answer—except sometimes. It’s complicated!

That’s not exaggeration. It’s already happening.

Consider Laura, a healthy 24-year-old from Belgium. Doctors recently approved her request for euthanasia, because she had “suicidal thoughts.” The solution to suicidal thoughts is now suicide, apparently. One of Laura’s friends, who was also suicidal, had died by euthanasia some time previously.

The story hasn’t caused much of a stir, though. Five people a day die by euthanasia in Belgium, and reports have emerged that many elderly people are increasingly being killed without their consent, like aging house pets being put to sleep. For some reason, we’ve managed to abolish the death penalty for rapists and serial killers but approved the needle for the old, the sick, and the depressed.

And then there is the Netherlands, where a report noted that a minimum of 50% of those killed by euthanasia were suffering from depression at the time. The Dutch researchers didn’t find this a big deal, stating that there was no reason to believe that the death requests by these people were not thought through properly, as if requesting death was not in and of itself a sign of warped thought processes.

This is not some conspiracy theory, either. In 2013 the Dutch Health Minister Edith Schippers admitted that there had been at least 45 “psychiatric euthanasia deaths” in that year alone.

The impact of families can be tragic, as Tom Mortier can attest. He filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights to challenge Belgium’s euthanasia laws after doctors killed his mother because of “untreatable depression”—and nothing else. The heart-broken Mortier, who wasn’t even contacted by anyone, said his mother was depressed because of a recent break-up—and the doctors who killed her didn’t even have any psychiatric qualifications.

But where there’s death, there’s often money—from greedy heirs hoping to hasten the exit of their elderly parents, to the Swiss suicide groups who are cashing in on the suicide boom. Just last year, the Swiss suicide company Exit announced that they would be expanding their services to healthy people who struggle with depression or other forms of mental illness.

It was only a few years ago that a Canadian man was convicted of manslaughter for advising a woman with depression to commit suicide. With the Canadian Supreme Court’s recent ruling on euthanasia, it seems that such things are soon about to arrive in our healthcare system.

Everyone knows someone who has struggled with depression or mental illness. Most of us know people who have attempted suicide. And some of us have had the extraordinary privilege of having elderly relatives, with all their aged beauty and wisdom, to enrich our lives and our perspectives. I don’t exaggerate when I say that a euthanasia regime in Canada would pose a very real threat to many of the people we hold most dear, and greatly cheapen the lives of so many mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, friends and loved ones.

Suicide, of all things, is not something we should be sending mixed signals about.

We don’t have to make a slippery slope argument. All we have to do is look to where euthanasia has already taken hold. There, we see medical practitioners busily digging graves at the bottom of the slope to accommodate the day’s fresh kills. 


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: assistedsuicide; euthanasia; moralabsolutes; prolife
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The solution to suicidal thoughts is now suicide, apparently.

Which just shows how pervasive the culture of death has become.

1 posted on 11/16/2015 8:28:48 AM PST by wagglebee
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To: Coleus; narses; Salvation
Pro-Life Ping
2 posted on 11/16/2015 8:29:22 AM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: 185JHP; 230FMJ; AKA Elena; APatientMan; Albion Wilde; Aleighanne; Alexander Rubin; ...
Moral Absolutes Ping!

Freepmail wagglebee to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.

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[ Add keyword moral absolutes to flag FR articles to this ping list ]


3 posted on 11/16/2015 8:29:45 AM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee
How is the legalization and relentless promotion of 'assisted suicide' not the 'glorification of suicide'?

In fact, "assisted suicide" is a euphemism for MURDER.

4 posted on 11/16/2015 8:31:41 AM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: wagglebee

Until this theocracy and its assertions made as a creed
http://www.theusmat.com/islamandfreewill.htm
remain uncontested and condemed by Christian leadership and a effort made to conversion such attacks will continue


5 posted on 11/16/2015 8:35:31 AM PST by mosesdapoet (My best insights get lost in FR's because of meaningless venting no one reads.)
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To: EternalVigilance
You are absolutely right.

The pro-death organization used to be called the "Hemlock Society," but they must have been informed that Socrates was EXECUTED by being forced to ingest hemlock, he didn't want to die.

6 posted on 11/16/2015 8:38:33 AM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee

It should be pointed out too that the word “suicide” is also another word for murder. It’s just self-murder. But murder nonetheless.

“Assisted suicide” is not just a euphemism, it’s an oxymoron.


7 posted on 11/16/2015 8:46:08 AM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: wagglebee

Assisted suicide is a homicide in most cases.

Wat about people who are at the very end of their life because of cancer where all options have been exhausted and death is a matter of days or weeks away? Is it really an assisted suicide if maybe a larger dose of pain killers is given to speed up the inevitable? I don’t think so.


8 posted on 11/16/2015 8:48:33 AM PST by SeaHawkFan
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To: SeaHawkFan
Wat about people who are at the very end of their life because of cancer where all options have been exhausted and death is a matter of days or weeks away? Is it really an assisted suicide if maybe a larger dose of pain killers is given to speed up the inevitable? I don’t think so.

Same here. If I find myself in that sort of situation, there will be no law that can stop me. There is a big difference between killing and waiting around to finally die.

9 posted on 11/16/2015 8:53:05 AM PST by gdani (Government surveillance - the topic no candidate dare mention)
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To: wagglebee

Under the new paradigm you don’t have to bother trying to talk down the person on the ledge. All you need to do is spread a tarp down on the pavement underneath him.


10 posted on 11/16/2015 8:54:14 AM PST by Mr Ramsbotham (Laws against sodomy are honored in the breech.)
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To: wagglebee
How is "assisted suicide" anything other than the glorification of suicide?

Because it is murder.

If a person wants to die there are a number of ways they can accomplish that without involving anyone else. I believe that people who want someone to murder them actually think that suicide is a sin and that by having someone else do it they have "found a loophole".

11 posted on 11/16/2015 8:56:48 AM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (Proud Infidel, Gun Nut, Religious Fanatic and Freedom Fiend)
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To: wagglebee
I have a number of friends in the health care profession that have absolutely no problem with assisted suicide. their thoughts are that if a person is in unbearable suffering that there is no sense in prolonging that suffering.

I have asked them who determines that it is unbearable. I have also made the point that it is a short step from optional to mandatory. Of course they have countered with the slippery slope fallacy. At which point I explain that ANYTHING the government get involved with ends up on a slippery slope.

12 posted on 11/16/2015 8:59:04 AM PST by verga (I might as well be playing chess with pigeons.)
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear
If a person wants to die there are a number of ways they can accomplish that without involving anyone else.

Well, unless you are so far gone with something like Alzheimer's you cannot even feed yourself, walk, always soiling yourself, etc.

13 posted on 11/16/2015 9:02:26 AM PST by gdani (Government surveillance - the topic no candidate dare mention)
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To: SeaHawkFan
Assisted suicide is a homicide in most cases.

"Assisted suicide" is homicide in every case.

Wat about people who are at the very end of their life because of cancer where all options have been exhausted and death is a matter of days or weeks away? Is it really an assisted suicide if maybe a larger dose of pain killers is given to speed up the inevitable? I don't think so.

That's murder.

Quit trying to play God. That never turns out well.

14 posted on 11/16/2015 9:06:15 AM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: gdani
Well, unless you are so far gone with something like Alzheimer's you cannot even feed yourself, walk, always soiling yourself, etc.

Sorry but that would not be suicide.

While you were capable you decided that it was better to live like that then die. Now that they are no longer capable other people want to murder them.

Only because it is in their best interest of course.

15 posted on 11/16/2015 9:08:29 AM PST by Harmless Teddy Bear (Proud Infidel, Gun Nut, Religious Fanatic and Freedom Fiend)
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To: EternalVigilance
Quit trying to play God. That never turns out well.

I submit it is playing God to keep someone alive artificially.

16 posted on 11/16/2015 9:13:31 AM PST by gdani (Government surveillance - the topic no candidate dare mention)
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To: gdani

No, it’s not. God commands us to care for the sick.

He also says: “You shall not murder.”

What part of that absolute command do you fail to understand?


17 posted on 11/16/2015 9:17:17 AM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear
While you were capable you decided that it was better to live like that then die. Now that they are no longer capable other people want to murder them.

"Decided it was better to live like that then die?" Hardly. People's health can irreversibly change in an instant -- auto accident, stroke, heart attack, etc.

What about the person who makes it quite clear, while healthy, they want to be killed should they ever reach a point of no return but are physically unable to carry it out themselves?

Apparently, some people view it as "merciful" to keep those people in pain, hooked up to machines, force-feeding them, and everything else when everyone agrees death is near.

18 posted on 11/16/2015 9:19:26 AM PST by gdani (Government surveillance - the topic no candidate dare mention)
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To: EternalVigilance
What part of that absolute command do you fail to understand?

Do you fail to understand not everyone shares your religious views? Yet, you think Big Government should impose them on others.

19 posted on 11/16/2015 9:21:16 AM PST by gdani (Government surveillance - the topic no candidate dare mention)
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To: wagglebee
Assisted suicide is murder. Any other view is wrong, today, yesterday and tomorrow. You can legalize it or justify it but you can't make it right.
20 posted on 11/16/2015 9:22:10 AM PST by Phlap (REDNECK@LIBARTS.EDU)
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