Brittany Maynard picked the day she is going to die, November 1st. A 29 year old beautiful , well- spoken woman shared with the world that due to her terminal brain cancer she moved to Oregon so that she could have a legally authorized ‘death with dignity’
(http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/26724752/terminally-ill-womans-wish-raise-awareness-about-dying-with-dignity). She will end her own life “…using medication prescribed by her doctor.” Like many others, I grieved upon hearing this woman’s story about her cancer, but I was also horrified by the public admission that she plans to commit suicide. How can so much compassion be combined with killing? It is only a medical pseudoscience that offers death as a cure.
Clothed with deceit the term ‘death with dignity’ builds a medical bridge to paid, licensed, well groomed doctors in white coats becoming the professional contract killers of the sick. This will only encourage the theory of biological perfection to become routinely enforced by giving permission to doctors to destroy life. Over every hospital who wants their patients to have ‘death with dignity,’ should hang the signs, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” and “If we can’t heal you, we’ll kill you.” What if killing becomes just a regular part of their ‘care’? Maybe we should free all the hospital beds of the chronically sick. Goodbye chronic back pain patient, goodbye chronic headache patient, and goodbye to the development of cures and treatments along with them. This opens the door to a fanatical doctor with vile intentions to cure the world of all the undesirable sick people, people he thinks are inferior in some way…incurably so…and uses the ‘death with dignity’ as his deadly disguise for murder.
We do not need the medical community to become the arbiters of death. Changing their practical science of healing and hope into a group of medical killers is to “abandon healing for killing” as journalist Gitta Sereny writes in her book “Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder.” There must continue to be a firm boundary between medicine and murder.
Why make our medical industry carry the staggering burden of needless bloodshed for those who are already dying? After years spent in study to help the human condition, we turn the doctors knowledge of the caloric chart into a how-to- guide to starvation and the skill of prescribing medicine to help someone get better into an overdose of death. If we are being brutally, honest wouldn’t a bullet be faster and cheaper than a medically sterile and sanctioned version of death? How is it possible that our conversation has changed from how to treat and help the sick to which method would be suitable for killing the sick?
Many people have examples of a loved one dying unexpectedly or a friend who beat the odds of a doctor’s diagnosis of eminent death. The prediction of death is not an exact science. It would be terribly disturbing to have a doctor mistakenly make their decision to put to a patient to death by relying on outdated research in the rapidly changing field of medicine. The doctor’s lack of knowledge could kill the patient without cause. Eventually, the U.S. may decide to widen the umbrella of the sick that are able to commit medical suicide to include children under 18 like Belgium. Society may even start deciding for those who are mentally handicapped that they too are better off dead under the mistaken notion that because they cannot do what we do they would prefer to die. No one will be safe in the presence of the medical professionals when they have such power over the life and death of their most vulnerable patients.
‘Death with dignity’ will never be accomplished by any in the medical field. Interestingly Noah Webster, in his American Dictionary of the English Language, included this in his definition of dignity, “the man who deliberately injures another, whether male or female, has no true dignity of soul.” None of us can find dignity in death for it can only be found by living a life of true honor and nobility.
BIO: Jesi Smith and her husband Brad are pro-life speakers with www.SaveThe1.comfrom Rochester Hills, Michigan. This blog originally appeared at www.keepingourfaith.com
