State-Endorsed Death

I was reading an article today on physician-assisted suicide and realized how near we are to that becoming a common fact of life. The state of Oregon is the only state that has presently legalized such, but others are considering it. Oregon passed the "Death With Dignity Act" in 1997 and since that time 263 people have used legally prescribed lethal drugs to commit suicide. (Those are the reported deaths though it is believed that the number is much higher.)

The proponents of the law assured voters that the doctors would only prescibe these medications for patients who were mentally competent and who were terminally ill with only six months or less to live. The article, however, made reference to a number of people who had been prescibed these medications (and obviously not yet taken them) who were still alive anywhere from 17 months to even 2 years later, thus proving we cannot, for certainty, predict ones life expectancy. Furthermore, there have been a number of cases reported where elderly who suffered with dementia and have been declared "cognitively impaired" by their physicians, have been given these medication at the insistence of their own children.

Wesley Smith wrote an article for the Weekly Standard (Nov. 8, 1999), titled "The Deadly Ethics of the Futile Care Theory" in which he said, "Once the legal view of killing is shifted from automatically bad to possibly good, it becomes virtually impossible to restrict physician-assisted suicide to the very narrow range of patients for whom proponents claim it is reserved. The 'protective guidelines' allegedly designed to guard the lives of vulnerable people soon become scorned as obstacles to be circumvented. And so, eligibility for physician assisted suicide steadily expands to permit the killing of increasing categories of ill and disabled patients. Thus, an act that is supposed to be 'rare' is likely to become more common. And what was seen as a last resort, something that might be considered if palliative treatment failed, becomes an alternative to treatment." That is scary, but very real, stuff.

The awful atrocities of Hitler included the killing of mentally ill, retarded and physically disabled because they were seen as expendable and as a burden to society. These are things the world was shocked and horrified over and yet, they are, in our lifetime, happening once again under the guise of "mercy" and "death with dignity". A rose by any other name is still a rose and this still constitutes murder in God's book!

We as Christians must not allow ourselves to be lulled into believing that this "mercy killing" is OK--it is not. We have never had the right to play God and determine when it is appropriate and when it is not for someone else to live. For years now, America has legally allowed the killing of innocent babies through abortion and now we are extending that to the other helpless members of our society. Shame on us and we will be judged by God for it.

But you know, the most ironic part of all of this is that, in America, we loathe and bemoan the fact that so many animals are euthanized each year. We see that as some terrible thing, yet it is becoming a desirable thing to "get rid of" unwanted humans. Truly we are becoming like those spoken of in Romans 1:25; "Who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator..." May God help us all!!!

Dana Burk

Article referenced--Blocher, Mark B. "State-Endorsed Death: Physician-Assisted Suicide and the Future of Medicine." Christian HealthCare Newsletter July 2006