Better off dead? I don’t think I am.”
Liz Carr was accepting an award for her work on a BBC documentary of the same name. She’s an actress and a disability rights activist, who’s been using her platform to highlight the evils of legal medically assisted suicide, the topic of the documentary.
Ahead of a House of Commons debate, the leading sponsor of legislation to legalize assisted suicide in the U.K. shared a love story on social media. The Guardian told the tale of a married elderly couple who chose assisted suicide for themselves in Australia. She had a degenerative spinal condition. He had PANIC ATTACKS. Look, I’ve had panic attacks. They are not fun. They can be, in fact, terrifying and even debilitating, but they are also treatable, and there are years’ worth of solutions to explore before taking such an extreme measure as death.
Of course, it wasn’t about panic attacks in this particular case. It was about having some semblance of control. It was about taking a prescription and dying with his wife. This was supposed to be romantic. Are we only years away from a MAID
(Medical Aid in Dying, the preferred euphemism by advocates) rom-com?
Their decision, their terms, their timing – together — is how the Australian couple’s story was presented. But that’s all a delusion. Not one of us will ever be fully in control of our life or our death. Neither, ultimately, is our idea, after all.
In New York, two elderly women recently joined mostly pro-life opponents of assisted suicide in a walkway in the Albany statehouse. There were also doctors, families, nuns and a Franciscan friar. The two women’s signs and t-shirts indicated they were “pro-choice” and “progressive,” but were still against assisted suicide. It was awesome to see them there — their presence made you do a doubletake. “So, you’re for abortion, but against assisted suicide?” I heard them asked. “Yes. Exactly.” One pro-lifer — I suspect he wasn’t the only one — found common ground on “choice”; once murder is legal, it becomes the expectation. Even the late progressive hero Ruth Bader Ginsberg said as much on abortion. Advocate though she may have been for abortion, she saw what it did to a culture. But one Democrat in the assembly, who had already voted for assisted-suicide legislation, dismissed the two lovely women with disgust. There was no sisterly rapport. “Ridiculous!” she said as she walked faster, shaking her head. “They make no sense!” she said, looking at me, because I was the closest human, not because my anti-state sanctioned suicide sign was a welcome door.
In England, offering assisted suicide to kids seemed to be step too far, as the House of Commons struck down an amendment that would permit it. The phrase that comes to mind is: Thank God for small favors. And yet, it is a step in the right direction.
Our choices on these matters say, regardless of whether we want to admit it, what we really think about the very meaning, and, yes, value, of life itself. We are better off loved. Killing out of convenience isn’t even cheap grace. It’s murder. Call it mercy all you want — there is no mercy for anyone in lying. Loving in the agony of suffering is the harder, more merciful way — for everyone involved.
(Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book “A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living.” She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan’s pro-life commission in New York, and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.)
