Euthanasia
Our culture's acceptance of mercy-killing logically entails imposition of the duty to murder on health-care personnel. If someone has the "right" to end their own life or another person's life on the grounds of avoiding suffering and expense, then health care professionals have a "duty" to provide that "health care."
Catechism
- Intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms or motives, is murder. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator.
- Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable.
- Thus an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator. The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.
The Culture of Death
- After World War II, the assisted-suicide movement went underground. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, it was making a comeback, prompting Malcolm Muggeridge to say: “For the Guinness Book of Records, you can submit this: that it takes about thirty years in our humane society to transform a war crime into an act of compassion.â€
- The Patients Rights Council commented, “If it is good medical treatment to end suffering, why deny it to a 3-year old, a 5-year old, an 8-year old?â€
References
Links
- UK and Massachussetts both approaching legalization of physician-assisted suicide. Washington and Oregon already have such laws on the books. The Massachusetts referendum is called "Prescribing Medication to End Life."
- Suicide.
- "Our Neurotic Fear of Suffering."
- The culture of death turns the alleged "right to die" into a "duty to die" to serve others.