As a general rule, modern man is incredibly uncomfortable with the concept of dying.
In his defense, so have most people throughout time: The Epic of Gilgamesh is the story of a man seeking to avoid the inevitable; medieval philosophers took to alchemy; Ponce de Léon was allegedly searching for the mythical Fountain of Youth when he discovered Florida; and Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler apparently began a search for the Holy Grail, believing it would grant him eternal life. In our own day and age, scientists dabble in “cell programming,” or by trying to download their consciousness onto a database. (READ MORE: A Hopeful Pope Leo Change for Life)
There’s something childishly innocent about humanity’s attempt to live forever (although maybe not in the bloodbaths sometimes involved in that quest). From a Christian perspective, man wasn’t intended to die — death was a consequence of sin — and the ultimate answer to the quest for eternal life comes to us from the Nazarene: “[H]e that shall drink of the water that I will give him, shall not thirst for ever: But the water that I will give him, shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting.” (RELATED: Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid: Bryan Johnson’s Cult of Don’t Die)
What makes our current unease with death less than innocent isn’t so much our futile pursuit of eternal life, but rather our tendency to hide the whole thing — old age, suffering, terminal illness, etc. — in sterile nursing homes and care facilities. When those don’t work, or weigh on our consciences a bit too heavily, we offer these suffering men and women a quick out: suicide.
On Tuesday, Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer signed the End-of-Life Options Act into law, allowing mentally capable adults given six months or less to live the option to self-administer a lethal drug. Delaware is now the 12th state to allow the practice, meaning 1-in-5 Americans now have access to some form of assisted suicide.
Unfortunately, most Americans will move beyond these kinds of headlines this week, satisfied with the innocuous language used to describe the bill. “It’s about honoring autonomy,” State Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend said. “The law is about compassion, dignity, and respect,” Meyer assured in an official statement.
And why shouldn’t they? After all, some 74 percent of U.S. adults said they supported euthanasia, while 61 percent said they favored “doctor-assisted suicide” in a 2020 Gallup poll.
Those types of numbers point to a deep and prevalent rot pervading our society. Not only does the very presence of these “end of life options” pressure patients into opting to end their lives prematurely, but they also suggest that we’ve lost respect for the intrinsic value of human life and the merit of suffering. (READ MORE: Fertility Clinic Bomber Provides a Glimpse of the True End Game of the Culture of Death)
It would be unfair to assume that, when Gov. Meyer is signing this order surrounded by euthanasia activists, he’s conscious of any disrespect toward terminally ill patients. He and the activists around him likely believe he’s giving these suffering men and women a way out of their pain, allowing them to die the way they want to when they want to. This, he believes, is “dying with dignity.”
Yet, according to the research, just 28.8 percent of patients who opted for medical suicide in Oregon (where data has been collected since 1998), cited “inadequate pain control, or concern about it” as a reason. Meanwhile, 47.1 percent indicated that they felt they were a burden to their family, friends, and caregivers. The most common reasons cited were a loss of autonomy and the inability to engage in activities that made life enjoyable.
The fact that autonomy, dignity, and the feeling of being a burden rank highest as reasons among patients to end their lives should tell us something about our society’s failure to exercise actual compassion towards our fellow man. It’s difficult to have compassion — to share in the suffering of others — when we see no value in that suffering.
That, perhaps, is at the root of this societal problem. We see no value in suffering, and no value in death (unless it is to end suffering). We speak of things like “quality of life,” and the implication is that life is not worth living if it’s not of a certain quality. We view our human life as almost animalistic — if it’s charitable to euthanize a suffering dog, it must be charitable to offer man the same way out of his suffering.
But unlike the animals, we are beings composed of body and soul, existing in a world where, mercifully, physical suffering is meaningful for the soul. When we offer the terminally ill the option to kill themselves rather than to suffer, we deny them that meaning.
READ MORE from Aubrey Harris:
The Real Reason Yale Professors Are Leaving Trump’s America
