Before Us Are Death and Life

The other day, The New York Times published a story with the headline, “A Yale Professor Suggested Mass Suicide for Old People in Japan. What Did He Mean?” 

That same day, in a tweet by Columbia University research fellow that’s been viewed more than a million times, Richard Hanania said: 

The following day, Maclean’s published a story with the headline, “I am a MAID provider. It’s the most meaningful—and maddening—work I do. Here’s why.”

In this article, a Canadian doctor confesses regret over murdering a young patient who had a 65% chance of cure saying, “I didn’t regret it at first. But when I started thinking deeply, […] I regretted ending this young person’s life.”

The situation is dire. Professionals in positions of influence at prestigious institutions are advancing ideas that are already having devastating consequences – both within the profession and in society at large. 

We desperately need to present an alternative moral vision with credibility, authority, and audacity. 

One example of this is the speech Lord David Alton just gave in South Korea. 

In it, he says: 

Today’s worldwide epidemic of abortion and now euthanasia laws must be seen against that backdrop and in a contemporary context where care and kill are being used as interchangeables and where so-called safeguards are a self-deluding fiction.

The evidence is clear: euthanasia is being promoted and practised in the context of a complete disregard for the sanctity of life; but also in the context of the mass manufacture and destruction of human embryos, the deliberate and grotesque creation of animal human hybrid embryos; in the context of eugenic and industrial scale abortion, some of it coercive. 

It is all of a piece.

The entire speech is excellent. I encourage you to read it in full, here. 

Also uplifting is the fact that many MPs have been speaking boldly against euthanasia on the basis of mental illness as a sole condition in the House of Commons. 

There have been many good speeches and questions. As a highlight, I invite you to watch this 10-minute speech by MP Garnett Genuis in which he breaks down the false dichotomy between MAID and suicide since “[MAID] is suicide with an accomplice.” 

Before us are death and life. This is a pivotal moment in our country and in the national conversation concerning euthanasia.

This post first appeared in Vital Bylines. Sign up below to receive Vital Bylines weekly.