American assisted suicide advocates pretend they want a very narrow license for “terminally ill” people for whom nothing else can be done to alleviate suffering. It’s pure baloney.
They have a much more radical goal–they just hide it for political reasons. But once people accept the ideological premise of the movement–killing as an acceptable answer to human suffering–then eventually logic will move the needle as it has in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and during the Kevorkian escapade.
But every once in a while, a little truth seeps in. In Kansas, an assisted suicide legalization bill has been introduced, that won’t pass, but which illustrates my point. Note the definition of “terminal illness.” From HB 2108:
(p) “Terminal disease” means an incurable and irreversible disease that has been medically confirmed.
Well, that could include just about anything, from asymptomatic HIV, to arthritis, diabetes under medicinal control (which is incurable and not reversed with insulin), bi-polar disease, and the debilitation of old age.
The goal of assisted suicide is a broad death license. If it is a “right,” then it has to be open to everyone, not just some. That is the real argument we should be having, because if it is legalized, that is what we will eventually become.
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LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. Excerpted from his A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement (Encounter, 2010). This post originally appeared at First Things, the location of his blog Secondhand Smoke.
