Imagine describing suicide as a “gift” to your family. But, as I wrote today in First Things, that is the bottom line meme driving the assisted suicide movement. Assisted suicide isn’t “death with dignity” but “death with aesthetics.”
A perfectly-timed article in Slate precisely proves my point. John La Grange describes Brittany Maynard’s suicide as a “gift” to her family. From, “Brittany Maynard’s Gift to Her Husband:”
As I see it, Maynard gave her husband a gift. She gave him a gift by preventing painful images from being burned into his brain. He will not have memories of his beloved gradually losing her mind and control over her bodily functions. He will not have memories of watching the person he loves most moaning in pain, and not being able to do anything about it.
He will not have memories like the ones I have—of vomit and bedsores and things so horrible that I cannot bring myself to type them into this keyboard. He will not have memories of reaching the point where he started wishing that his wife, his partner of 38 years whom he loved with all his heart, would die. Those memories don’t go away; they come back in dreams and nightmares.
Anybody experiencing such bed sores and etc. received inadequate care! Focus on that, not killing!
But to the larger point: La Grange is arguing that the dying should put themselves out of their loved ones’ misery!
Imagine the hurt that kind of thinking causes the sick and dying.
If people can’t see the danger in that, they are not awake!