I Don't Want a Choice to Die

Wesley J. Smith comments on how assisted suicide advocacy hurts the sick, and he provides a moving letter from a friend.

Excerpt:

Imagine you have Lou Gehrig’s disease. You know you are dying.

But your struggle is made even more difficult by advocates who claim:

1) You should commit suicide if you want “death with dignity;” and,

2) Your society should help you do it.

I DON’T WANT A CHOICE TO DIE

By

Robert Salamanca

I have lived with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease) for seven years. On January 8, the Supreme Court heard arguments concerning whether terminally ill people have a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide. After the two-hour hearing, with its blending of emotion and law, the justices seemed highly skeptical.

I hope so. For as Chicago’s beloved Cardinal Joseph Bernardin wrote to the Supreme Court just before he died: “There can be no such thing as a ‘right to assisted suicide’ because there can be no legal and moral order which tolerates the killing of innocent human life, even if the agent of death is self-administered. Creating a new ‘right’ to assisted suicide will endanger society and send a false signal that a less than ‘perfect’ life is not worth living.”