‘If They’re Going to Die Anyway, This Is Not Suicide’

I should know better, but when I saw this tweet earlier from Alexander Raikin, I thought surely that couldn’t be a real quote.

But, of course, Raikin knows more than he ever wanted to know about the depths of our Western culture of death when it comes to medically assisted suicide.

(I fear it may come to New York before too long — because we are ignoring what’s happening just an hour’s plane ride from New York City — in Canada.)

He wrote this expose for the New Atlantis and this for us at National Review.

The tweet links to a column in the Guardian about a new film featuring the life and death of Marieke Vervoort, who chose death after a small party in 2019. Despite a degenerative condition that caused “agonizing pain,” she was an award-winning Paralympian. (That description does raise questions about her pain treatment.)

The quote comes from the filmmaker.

“Absolutely, people should have the right to say whether they want to have a doctor help them at the last moment. If they’re going to die anyway, this is not suicide,” she said. The right to die saved Marieke Vervoort’s life, the director said: “She was gathering her pills together at age 29. She lived an extra 12 years, with great joys and highs and did wonderful things.”

The argument is that she did not kill herself because she chose assisted suicide. This strikes me as a cruel distinction, communicating: We’ll do it for you, because we agree your life doesn’t have value anymore.

Suffering is no joke. Neither is telling people they are a burden and making suicide a preference.

You can hear from Raikin about the culture of assisted suicide in Canada — where doctors now consider a standard of care encouraging homeless people to choose death — in this recent interview I did with him for the National Review Institute.