Lessons From UK "Mercy" Killing
A UK woman named Maureen Messent has come forward to admit that she murdered her great aunt in the 1960s, stating she was right because the aunt, Eileen O'Sullivan, was near death from lung cancer. This is a typical apologia for euthanasia that appears regularly in the media, which are somehow always agog as if such articles have never been written before. Still, there are important lessons to be learned here:
1) There is no indication that O'Sullivan wanted to be killed. The killer took it upon herself. This is classic euthanasia thinking. Once killing to end suffering is transferred in the brain from bad to good, what does consent have to do with it? Thus, in the Netherlands, there have been tens of thousands of such murders over the last thirty years with nary a thing done about it. Messent's article demonstrates that in the end, consent easily becomes a mere technicality, easily tossed aside.
2) Killing is not a medical act. The article say that the doctor left morphine, telling the family to palliate O'Sullivan as needed. Messent decided that was a license to kill. But notice that she is not a doctor and that the doctor didn't do the killing. It doesn't take special training to kill somebody. Just a special arrogance. The Swiss permit assisted suicide, but don't permit doctors to do the killing in their professional capacities. Euthanasia is not a medical act.
3. Today, hospice care for the dying is vastly improved: This killing appears to have happened before Dame Cecily Saunders pioneered in-home hospice in 1969, and perhaps before she opened St. Christophers in 1967. The care available for the dying in those days was far inferior to that of today. Hospice has the capability to control the symptoms of dying people without killing them. The lack of mention in this article about hospice, or of the coverage of it (in the BBC, for example), is so typical. I have been to the UK several times speaking out against euthanasia. For some reason, the media never bring hospice up even though the UK gave hospice to the world.
4. Most euthanasia deaths are not "last minute:" Like most pro euthanasia propaganda, the example of the killing depicts the victim as on the verge of death so that the killing shortened life by a mere hours or a few days. But most legal mercy killings are not "last minute." Not in the Netherlands, not in Belgium, not in Switzerland, and not in Oregon.
The media's continual articles and columns extolling suicide and mercy killing is damaging to the crucial understanding that dying is not dead: It is living. And it constitutes abandonment of those in most need of protection by the community.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:20 AM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
I was talking with someone here in Eugene, Oregon, just the other day: he is certain that the so-called PAS regime here involves... the moribund within hours of 'natural' death. Absolutely certain. One says, well, look at this data... but, really, with some people it operates almost as a faith, this belief in life-as-my-possession. Thanks for your good work!
People won't see what they don't want to. Supporters of assisted suicide tend to live in what I call euthanasia world, where the birds tweet and the sun always shines. Every doctor is Marcus Welby and every family the Waltons. Thanks for writing.
Yes, Wesley, there is an incredible arrogance of the killers within health "care" who push their agenda upon the unwilling, the vulnerable, without permission, often without even informing the victim. And the killers (and that is what it is) never admit the truth of what it is they are about: power to end life at will, at any age, whether or not ailing. They want to be able to eliminate those they deem to be "nonpersons," so the eugenics movement can move forward.
What is that about? Eliminating those who the Nazis called "useless eaters," the disabled, the unwanted, so that society could be "perfected" and engineered according to their "superior" judgment about who should live and who should not be allowed to live.
As I wrote in "A Very Small Candle,"
www.hospicepatients.org/a-very-small-candle.html
"There is something incredibly blind about those who don't have the slightest clue what life is about, who go through life bulldozing their way into, through and over others around them. And they are convinced they know SO much better than any of the rest of society! Whether they kill one person or dozens, they believe in what they are doing."
"The amazing thing is that these same people who preach about how much they respect the patient's wishes and the patient's right to choose, never lift a finger to protect the rights of those patients who are coerced into death, they do not fight for those who are neglected and abused within health care. They are not exposing the serious understaffing in health care agencies, while at the same moment major health care corporations are raking in billions of dollars in profit. They do nothing to encourage better treatment of the severely disabled. They don't want to. Where is the respect there?"
"In their minds (and they are sure they think better than the uninformed, "unenlightened" who revere life), they know better. They are absolutely sure of that! It means nothing to them that only God may create life. It means nothing to them that every moment of life reveals a unique opportunity for communication, sharing, loving, and learning. It means nothing to them that you never know what may happen from one moment to the next."
Keep up the good work Wesley! There are so few who bravely speak out, who give of themselves so relentlessly as you!
Fight the good fight! Never stop speaking out for those who so often cannot speak for themselves, or for those who speak out yet are ignored as their lives are swiftly snuffed out!
Ron Panzer
Ron, good to hear from you. Thanks for your input and your kind words.
Post a Comment
<< Home