Making Suicide Acceptable

The push for legalised euthanasia, or assisted suicide, is taking an existing problem and making it much worse. All over the West suicide rates are high, yet the ‘compassion as killing’ crowd simply is making the situation even more pronounced. Three recent examples of this should leave no doubts in our minds as to how bad the push for assisted suicide and state-backed killing really is.

Let me first look at some frightening statistics on suicide in Australia. One report from late last year put it this way: “Australia’s Suicide Crisis Has Peaked to a Terrifying New Height”. It begins, “Australia’s suicide rate is the highest it has been for at least ten years. In 2015, 3,027 people ended their own lives in Australia. That’s 12.6 people in every 100,000. That’s more than eight people every single day. One person every three hours.”

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said this about the figures: “Suicide was the leading cause of death among all people 15-44 years of age, and the second leading cause of death among those 45-54 years of age. In 2015, suicide accounted for one-third of deaths (33.9 percent) among people 15-24 years of age, and over a quarter of deaths (27.7 percent) among those 25-34 years of age.”

But those calling for the full legalisation of euthanasia are only going to be adding to these terrible statistics. Consider what has just transpired in Queensland where three women took their own lives. None were terminally ill, but they were all members of a leading euthanasia group. As one report begins on this tragic story:

Euthanasia activist Philip Nitschke says a Gold Coast mother and her two daughters had been members of his euthanasia group and started planning their deaths more than six months ago. Margaret, Heather and Wynette Cummins’ bodies were found in one of their homes following an apparent triple suicide pact on Tuesday.
Dr Nitschke told AAP on Wednesday he did not personally know the women but confirmed they had joined his Exit International group. “It was a bit over six months ago,” he said from Amsterdam. “They were not terminally ill people but on the other hand, they were not in the best of health either. They were obviously working out what they wanted to do.”
Dr Nitschke said three members had never ended their lives at the same time before, and it was also unusual all of them chose to use the same method. But the man known as Dr Death said it appeared to be a “rational and informed choice” and their decision to end their lives because of their health problems was a matter only for them. “It needs to be respected, it doesn’t mean you need to be enthusiastic about it,” he said. The euthanasia advocate said Australia’s laws were stuck in the dark ages.

Did you get that? While Australia’s suicide rates are skyrocketing, all that Dr Death can say about this sad triple suicide case is “It needs to be respected”. We should respect suicide? We should just see it as acceptable, as normal? We should not lose any sleep over it?

That is the callous pro-death view of Nitschke and other pro-euthanasia militants. They seem to love death and hate life. And get this: euthanasia is not even legal here in Australia, yet we are already seeing out-of-control suicide, and presumably in this case, assisted suicide.

Let me look at another horrific case, this time in a country where euthanasia is already legal. The slippery slope in Canada is certainly alive and well, as so many had warned it would be. Check out this very recent story from there:

An Ontario judge has ruled a woman with a non-terminal illness meets the legal criteria for death by lethal injection after a doctor backed out of killing her because he feared being charged with murder. The question put to Superior Court Justice Paul Perell was whether a 77-year-old woman suffering from severe inflammatory osteoarthritis met the test that natural death is “reasonably foreseeable,” reported the Toronto Star.
Perell ruled June 19 that the woman, identified as AB because of a publication ban, did meet the test because the medical evidence showed “she doesn’t have long to live, given her age and health,” the Toronto Globe & Mail reported.
But Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition responded to the ruling by blasting the Liberals for the vague wording of Bill C-14, the June 2016 legislation setting out the parameters in which euthanasia and assisted suicide is permitted in Canada.
Schadenberg blogged June 22 that he was “convinced” when he read Bill C-14 that the Liberals “intentionally used imprecise language to enable the expansion of euthanasia without facing political pressure from passing a wide-open euthanasia law.”
And that is particularly the case with the “reasonably foreseeable” death criterion, even though the Liberals “claimed to be restricting euthanasia to terminally ill people,” wrote Schadenberg. Bill C-14 allows voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide for competent persons 18 years and over who are deemed to be suffering from a “grievous and irremediable” medical condition.

euth 6Vague wording in pro-euthanasia legislation is rather common, with things defined loosely enough so that before long most folks can qualify for a lethal injection. As Schadenberg put it, “In other words, people who are not terminally ill are terminally ill.”

Finally consider this shocker of a story from Europe. Charlie Gard is a ten-month baby with brain damage who suffers from a rare genetic condition. And he has some loving parents who want to help him with some expensive therapy in the US. Jonathon Van Maren continues the story:

But that was before Charlie was sentenced to death by British doctors—and that sentence was upheld by the courts, culminating in the final rejection of the final desperate appeal of Chris Gard and Connie Yates by the European Court of Human Rights.
And why, might you ask, would a human rights court of all places refuse to allow a loving mother and father do everything in their power to save the life of their little son? Simple. It’s because doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, where Charlie was being cared for, announced that they had decided to turn his life support machine off. When presented with the fact that Charlie’s parents had raised the equivalent of millions of dollars to try and save him, the doctors remained unmoved. It was time, they insisted, to let little Charlie “die with dignity.”
As I’ve written before, “death with dignity” is an insidious slogan that is being used to cull and kill those society has decided are done living, or no longer have lives worth living in the first place. Death with dignity, in the minds of these medical professionals, means those they have decided are no longer worth fighting for must die faster. There is an ugly ideology underlying the slogan—the not-so-subtle insinuation here is that if Charlie is kept on life support long enough to go to America and undergo therapy trial and passed away there, that this somehow wouldn’t be dying with dignity. For Charlie to die with dignity, these doctors said, he must die now.
I cannot imagine how Chris Gard and Connie are feeling right now, after being informed by the European Court of Human Rights that the decision is final, and there is no place left for them to plead for the right to fight for their little son’s life. I cannot imagine how betrayed they feel by the doctors who decided that their prognosis meant that Charlie wasn’t worth the attempts of his parents to see if anything could yet be done for him, even if it was a long shot. I hope that they can at least spend a little bit more time with the little boy they love so much before the end, and hope God will comfort them in their grief. Their society has betrayed them all.

Wow, can you imagine being Charlie’s mother and father? I have included their picture here. At the very least, you can keep them in your prayers. What we are seeing here is the forced killing of those the state has decided are not worthy of life.

Hmm, if that has a familiar ring to it, there is a good reason for it. A 1920 book written by two German doctors helped pave the way for the Nazi killing machine in general, and its euthanasia program in particular. The book was this: Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens (The Authorization of the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life).

Sadly most Germans back then did not protest all this, or did not see where it was all heading – until it was too late. We are now seeing history repeating itself. Will we also stand by and say nothing and do nothing? Or will we stand up for the vulnerable and defenceless, whether they are new-born babies or the elderly?

In my book The Challenge of Euthanasia which appeared last year, I warned about how the slippery slope is inevitable whenever we head down the path of legalised euthanasia. And some of these shocking cases are occurring where it has not yet become law.

Welcome to the brave new world of state-sponsored killing and state-approved suicide. We will simply see the death cult of Germany in the 30s and 40s being replicated all over the West, unless we stand up and speak out. The choice is ours.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/09/27/australias-suicide-crisis-has-peaked-to-a-terrifying-new-height_a_21480647/
https://au.prime7.yahoo.com/q1/news/a/-/local/36178271/qld-trio-planned-their-deaths-nitschke/
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/woman-with-non-terminal-illness-can-be-euthanized-under-ontario-law-judge
https://thebridgehead.ca/2017/06/28/the-european-court-of-human-rights-sentences-a-little-british-boy-to-death/

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13 Replies to “Making Suicide Acceptable”

  1. Praise JESUS that our GOD is GOD of the SUPERNATURAL. OUR God reigns & heals & is God of the impossible.
    In Jesus name I pray for baby Charlie to be completely healed & his healing will bring glory to God.

  2. That photo is heartbreaking. I just tucked my children into bed and I can’t breathe with the thought that a doctor or court could withhold my baby from me. This whole children as property of the state nonsense is cruel. It won’t work, people will fight for their children. “We may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers… and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses.”
    C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man.

    Praying for Connie, Chris and little Charlie tonight.

  3. The thinking behind the pro-euthanasia/pro suicide advocates of our times is strikingly resonant with the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra and his Twilight of the Idols, where the most desirable death is conceived of as an exercise of one’s will to power by dying at the best opportunity to make one’s death the most advantageous to one’s personal goals and to an alleged progress of the human species across the abyss between ape and Übermensch.

    Nietzsche himself was mentally and physically incapacitated for the last ten years of his life: He never did get the chance to put into practice his Zarathustra’s concept of “Voluntary Death”.

  4. All of this should surprise no one. I suspect virtually no one in Nazi Germany protested because inbreeding and incest had produced burdensome, defective offspring most families did not want. Considering the limited land area and economic resources, the idea of destroying the defective (who were taking up too much space) and promoting the healthy and normal seemed right and profitable for the majority. Much of this reasoning can be seen in the sad case of the Gard family’s so-called doctors. Yes, it is sad indeed when doctors, who are supposed to be healers, become killers.

    In the United States, there has been a trend for the legal system to give light sentences to young criminals who kill the elderly. This was seen about 30 years ago when elderly Grace Pelley, who had a Bible ministry to children and youth, was murdered by a teen-age girl who had attended the Bible class, presumably to case Mrs. Pelley’s home. The legal system was saying the murder was justified because the teen-ager, being young, was “more worthy of life and space on earth” than the elderly Christian woman. Since that time, there have been numerous, similar cases. The public needs to protest the culture of death in its entirety.

  5. This is truly awful and I cannot imagine the betrayal, sadness, frustration and probably righteous anger the parents feel to these individuals in courts and hospitals.

    I hope and pray they know that God is with them in this dark valley, created by the wickedness of people who have given their lives (to date) to Satan’s causes. I pray their marriage will see them through and that they will stay together.

    Please keep going Bill. Your contribution is helping more people than you are (or maybe ever will be) aware of.

  6. Any wonder why there are so many crimes and anger worldwide, when moronic doctors and courts dare try to have the audacity to try enforce a court order on whether a child should be taken from their parents, No man has the right to play God with a child’s life.

    God above sees and hears everything and the bible itself says gods vengeance is his, these people who separate children from their families for whatever reasons they claim to decide will see eternal damnation and thus they deserve it.
    I am appalled by the lack of empathy and compassion shown towards this child, a beautiful precious baby boy, I pray that God delivers a miracle for Charlie Gard and his parents and that what the doctors reap they shall sow.

  7. I have observed that atheism seems most attractive and accessible to people with plenty of money and distractions. This may account for some of the rise in secularism as a county gets richer. But there’s something ugly and awful hidden under the surface of life lived only in the material world. What does all our work and life add up to in the end? For an atheist, it adds up to nothing. One must wonder what the point of it is, and that right there is the seed of depression. Therefore I can’t see how atheism can ever do much to cure depression or suicide. Your article suggests that some atheists are starting to get used to ‘being okay with that’.

    However, I think the average atheist/agnostic (i.e. not a euthanasia activist) would probably be appalled by the stories and statistics in this article. If you asked them where that appalled feeling came from, what would they answer? We might also ask them, why shouldn’t one simply die, if one can’t (to paraphrase the famous atheist bus ad) ‘relax and enjoy oneself’?

    I am informed anecdotally that suicide and depression are surprisingly big problems with FIFOs (fly-in, fly-out workers). These are people who work hard in remote areas for good wages, but spend much of their lives away from families. I wonder if there are any statistics on that.

  8. You’re welcome, Bill. Thank you for your contribution to keeping the sanity!
    I love that Lewis quote. God help me to be more beneficently obstinate.

  9. Nitschke and Nietzsche… German names keep springing up!
    From the anti-Semitism of Luther, the Biblical criticism of Wellhausen, the corrupt philosophies of Nietzsche… No wonder Hitler’s toxic ideas were able to take root in a land where man’s thoughts were higher than God’s word.
    Makes you wonder what could happen today in western countries that seem to be morally and spiritually lower than Germany was in the 1930’s.
    Ideas can be very dangerous things indeed.

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