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The death of Daniel James, the 23-year-old rugby player who visited a Swiss euthanasia clinic last month, is the most appalling burden his parents will ever have to bear, whether or not they are prosecuted, and whether or not they are sent to prison for what they did on his behalf.
They decided to believe him when he said that after he was paralysed in a scrum his life was of no value to him, and that he would prefer death. It was not a sudden decision but one taken over many months, during which he had shown, by attempting suicide, that he was in deadly earnest. They made a deliberate moral choice, and carried it out in what must have been an agonising journey to Switzerland. Their courage has been enormous; but it would be hard to deny that they acted unlawfully.
"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."
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This is how the culture of death moves toward cultural hegemony: The first step is to claim that killing (which is descriptive and accurate in that it means "to end life") will be reserved for the very rare case. But as soon as that premise is accepted, the acceptable category of killable people steadily increases.
Now in a tragic case in the UK, we see that very process in action. An athlete who became paralyzed and subsequently suicidal, was taken by his parents to Switzerland for an assisted suicide.