When you begin to devalue human life, where do you stop? When a fetus isn’t a person, is an infant a person? Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer doesn’t differentiate between the born and unborn, and proudly says that he’d kill a baby if it were in the best interest of the family. Eugenics, anyone?
At the other end of life is assisted suicide, which I vehemently oppose. I think Million Dollar Baby is the stupidest movie ever. If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t bother. The chick overcomes tremendous obstacles to become a champion, then becomes a quadriplegic. She begs her mentor to kill her, and in an “act of mercy” he does. It didn’t even make sense for the character. The girl who triumphs over every challenge that life throws at her is not going to give up on life because her body doesn’t work the way it used to.
God puts us somewhere because that’s where He wants us to be, and to play god is to tell Him that He’s wrong. Guess what? We don’t know everything. God does. This is why I never, ever pray for patience. I know that He will give me opportunities to learn it, and having very little to begin with, I don’t have the patience to learn patience.
I heard about Dignitas awhile ago and was appalled but not surprised. The Swiss clinic exists solely to kill people. Excuse me, I mean transition people gently from one side of life to the next. Bull hockey. Death is death is death is death, and it sucks. There may be a small amount of comfort in knowing that someone is in a better place, but really, our lives here are left with holes in them.
So Dignitas expedites the process of dying, leaving an emotional mess of a loved one behind. Rather than going on living, the death clinic is now trying to legalize assisted suicide for the brokenhearted relatives left behind after they helped kill off a beloved family member.
Swiss suicide clinic Dignitas has called for the healthy partners of chronically ill euthanasia patients to be allowed to kill themselves too.
Clinic head Ludwig Minelli has called for suicide drug cocktails to be made legally available to the heartbroken relatives who have just helped their loved ones end their own lives.
‘Relatives should also be allowed to have a prescription for suicide drugs even when they are not terminally ill,’ Minelli told Swiss newspaper Blick Sonntag.
The family suicide kits would be illegal under current Swiss law where assisted euthanasia is only legal for those suffering from terminal illness of incurable chronic medical conditions.
Is that sick and twisted or what? And here’s the problem I have with it: When we start devaluing human life, when does it end? Who gets to decide when a baby is a baby or when terminal is terminal? Who decides that someone in a vegetative state doesn’t want to go on living, even when her mere presence brings joy to others? Who decides when your life becomes inconvenient?
Why even head down that slippery slope?
FINALLY! Someone who actually sees the idiocy of the ending of that otherwise good movie. In essence, the point of 99% of the film, you can overcome anything by pure will. The point of the ending, the rest of the film was incorrect. Good call my dear.
While I agree with you that abortion should not be allowed (and infanticide doubly so), the “end of life” issues are more grey area. If a person is mentally competent to decide that they no longer wish to continue living (and, if they are so emotionally crippled that they feel they cannot continue life without the person they just put down), how could any government deny them the right to end their own life as they see fit? It’s no different than the government stating that you’re not allowed to eat a certain brand of soup because it contains too much sodium, or smoke cigarettes, or drink alcohol. These things are bad for you, probably will kill you, but you’re an adult, in control of your mind, and should be allowed to make these choices for yourself.
Besides – the world is a better place when those who think they can’t survive in it check out on their own. They’ll either do it with a drug cocktail in a clinic (nice and clean) or they’ll tie up traffic by jumping off a bridge. The world works better when we let them off themselves in a comfortable way.
For me, the mind is the soul: when the brain starts a recognizable human EEG it’s a human, when it no longer does so, it does not and we can be sure the soul is with G-d.
People either fend for themselves or become the property of those that do. In which case they aren’t people at all.