Saturday, 17 Jul 2010

In such a cultural milieu, eliminating suffering easily mutates into eliminating the sufferer

Dr John James

National President, Right to Life ( Australia)

Invites you to dinner with Wesley Smith

on Saturday, 17 July 2010

at Pennant Hills Golf Club, cnr Copeland Road and Burns Road (South), Beecroft

7 pm onwards

$55 per person

(Dress: Business attire)

RSVP: Dr John James, Lejeune Family Medical Practice

Phone: (02) 8197 9627 or e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or fax: (02) 8197 9628

Wesley J Smith

Senior Fellow in Bioethics and Human Rights

Lawyer/Consultant for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

Since 1998, when euthanasia advocates failed to qualify for a legislation initiative on the California ballot, the assisted suicide movement in the United States has gone from barely noticed fringe movement to a well-funded political machine that threatens Hippocratic medical values and the sanctity/equality of human life.

Considering the disturbing history: In 1994, US State of Oregon legalised assisted suicide (51%-49% vote), with the law going into effect in 1997. The movement had a setback in 1997 when the US Supreme Court ruled, in a rare unanimous decision, that there is no constitutional right to assisted suicide. But in 2008, Washington State legalised Oregon-style assisted suicide by a lopsided 58%-42%. Then, last year, Montana’s Supreme Court ruled that assisted suicide was not against the State’s “Public Policy”.

The euthanasia movement is not resting on its recent laurels. Advocates have filed a lawsuit in Connecticut to legalise assisted suicide by redefinition – on the dubious theory that a doctor who lethally prescribes drugs for use by a terminally ill patient is merely performing “aid in dying”, rather than the legally proscribed assisted suicide. Meanwhile, legislative legalisation efforts have been initiated in Hawaii, Arizona, Wisconsin, Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut – all without success.

A question amidst all of this Sturm und Drang naturally arises: Why now? After all, 100 years ago when people did die in agony from such illnesses as a burst appendix, there was little talk of legalising euthanasia. But now, when pain and other forms of suffering are readily alleviated and the hospice movement has created truly compassionate methods to care for the dying, suddenly we hear the battle cry “death with dignity” as “the ultimate civil liberty”.

Social commentator Yuval Levin, a protégé of ethicist Leon Kass, described the new societal zeitgeist in his recent book Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy. While not about to assisted suicide per se, Levin hit the nail on the head when he described society as no longer being concerned primarily with helping citizens to lead “the virtuous life”. Rather, he wrote, “relief and preservation from disease and pain, from misery and necessity” have become the defining ends of human action, and therefore human societies”.

In other words, preventing suffering and virtually all difficulty is now paramount. In such a cultural milieu, eliminating suffering easily mutates into eliminating the sufferer.