Death Wars

THE struggle over legalizing euthanasia is not just another public-policy debate. As in the national convulsion over slavery in the last century, nothing less is at stake than our view of human life-from which spring our defining values, our ethics, and indeed, the very nature of the society we will create for our descendants.

There are grounds for alarm in the extent to which advocates of euthanasia and assisted suicide-the death culture -have succeeded in the last ten years in undermining the traditional Western ethic that views all people as having been born with equal moral worth. As a result of the death culture’s efforts, the “inalienable” right to life, identified by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, has less resonance among many than a so-called right to die.

About the Author

Wesley J. Smith

Wesley J. Smith is an author and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism.

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THE struggle over legalizing euthanasia is not just another public-policy debate. As in the national convulsion over slavery in the last century, nothing less is at stake than our view of human life-from which spring our defining values, our ethics, and indeed, the very nature of the society we will create for our descendants.

There are grounds for alarm in the extent to which advocates of euthanasia and assisted suicide-the death culture -have succeeded in the last ten years in undermining the traditional Western ethic that views all people as having been born with equal moral worth. As a result of the death culture’s efforts, the “inalienable” right to life, identified by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, has less resonance among many than a so-called right to die.