By Father Shenan J. Boquet
Any pro-lifer who has spent any significant time and effort investigating the topic of euthanasia and assisted suicide will quickly be disturbed by a characteristic that unites some of the leading pro-euthanasia activists. They seem to have a bizarre fascination with death and to even take a strange, sometimes exquisite, pleasure in promoting death as a “solution” to people’s problems.
Take the example of “Dr. Death,” Jack Kevorkian. This American doctor and activist spent eight years in prison after being convicted of the murder of a man suffering from Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Although the man had requested Kevorkian’s assistance in dying, the law prohibited euthanasia. Kevorkian himself invited the prosecution by having the euthanasia filmed and publicly broadcast with the explicit goal of overturning the laws against euthanasia.
One of the most disturbing things about Kevorkian’s story is just how obsessively preoccupied with death he was from early on. As this EWTN profile notes, as early as his residency, Dr. Kevorkian asked to be put on the night shift because more people died at night than during the day. He would use the opportunity to take photographs of people who were in their final moments.
This macabre obsession with death manifested in a host of other ways. Kevorkian was an accomplished painter. However, his paintings are not for the faint of heart. They all have to do with death in some way or another, depicting such things as severed heads or ill-treated corpses. It is hard to think of another word for these works of art than “diabolic.”
Early in his medical career, Kevorkian proposed anesthetizing convicts on death row, then experimenting on them while they were still alive. He even went so far as to construct a homemade machine for precisely this purpose. Initially, he attempted to experiment with his machine on an animal. After he was unable to secure a dog for that purpose, he advertised for a suicidal person. He successfully found his first “patient” – a woman who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Tragically, she killed herself using his machine.
Eventually, Kevorkian would go on to develop a “death van” in which he would end the lives of those who opted for his “services.” All told, he boasted of killing or assisting at the deaths of at least 130 individuals. Some observers noted that, while assisting at these deaths, Kevorkian often seemed surprisingly cheerful and would laugh and crack jokes.
Despite the numerous signs that Kevorkian was a deeply disturbed man, including an incapacity to maintain normal, healthy human relationships, he continues to be celebrated to this day as a “pioneer” in promoting the “right” to assisted suicide and euthanasia. As Kevorkian’s attorney put it, in what can only be described as a desperate attempt to put lipstick on a pig: “Kevorkian’s qualities were probably not the best qualities to have in intrapersonal relationships, but they are qualities which allow people to rise above the rest of us.”
“Rise above,” indeed!
The Sarcopod
Which brings us to Dr. Philip Nitschke, and his so-called “Sarco.”
A few days ago, a 64-year-old American woman took her life in Switzerland. She used a device dreamed up by Nitschke that has been dubbed the Sarco, which is short for “sarcophagus,” i.e. a coffin.
This painstakingly designed and 3D-printed device has been referred to by some as the “Tesla of euthanasia.” Looking at photos of it, you can see why.
The sleek device looks like something out of a sci-fi movie, perhaps one of the “pods” that intergalactic travelers might use to go to sleep in for a few decades while awaiting arrival at their destination. But this pod is designed to take people to their true final destination – death.
“Users” of this device can take their lives by pressing a button. Once the button is pressed, the device will fill with lethal levels of nitrogen. Nitschke and his organization have made clear that they designed the device with the goal of making it easy to re-create. They have made the plans for the device publicly available so that others can 3D print their own and presumably set about “helping” people commit suicide.
Swiss police stated that they had arrested “several” people after the woman’s death. Although it is legal for foreigners to travel to Switzerland to end their lives, including with the assistance of others, the “Sarco” had not yet been approved for use. We will see if anyone involved pays any significant penalty for their role in the woman’s death. I’m not holding my breath.
Marketing Death
Looking at the Sarco, one can’t help but think that its creators are not so much in the business of helping people to die, but rather in marketing death.
Everything about the device seems to speak to our contemporary obsession with sleek, attractive, high-tech devices. Just as the smooth curves of the Apple iPhone are designed to convince us to purchase a phone with a promise that the device will somehow make our lives far better, the Sarco looks as if it was designed to suggest that killing yourself is an attractive, inviting, and very modern thing to do.
One has to wonder: if euthanasia activists are simply interested in helping people escape intolerable suffering, why is it that they are going to such efforts to make death look good?
Perhaps the reason is that, as Bobby Schindler put it here, Dr. Nitschke, like Kevorkian, is “obsessed with death.”
Even people who are otherwise supportive of euthanasia and assisted suicide confess themselves troubled by Nitschke’s enthusiasm for helping just about anyone die, regardless of whether they are terminally ill or not.
Nitschke has helped people who were depressed to kill themselves. But his obvious duty as a doctor was to help such people.
From Wanting Suicide to Wanting Life
In Dr. Nitschke’s life, there is one particularly telling episode.
At one point, Nitschke decided to try on the hat of stand-up comedian. It might sound like a joke, but I’m being deadly serious.
Originally, Nitschke was supposed to perform his stand-up routine in a double act with comedian Mel Moon. Moon had come across Nitschke after she was diagnosed with an incurable, and likely fatal, endocrine disease. She reached a point of despair, and she reached out to Nitschke’s suicide organization to explore the option of suicide.
“There was seemingly no positive outcome, just more of the same until one day I’d die,” she said. “Quality of life had gone, my relationship was almost over, I couldn’t even hold my children as it hurt too much. I just thought one day, enough! I wanted to take back control, so I contacted Exit (UK branch) to look at options, read his book and contacted him directly.”
To Nitschke’s credit, he actually advised Moon to keep working to find a treatment for her disease. Eventually, she did find a drug that worked. Still, she was in extremely rough shape and supported Nitschke’s work. Hence the double act.
But then the show got cancelled when Moon’s condition significantly improved. As Moon told The Guardian:
I really wanted to work with Philip, but we are very different people. I was a very poorly person at one point; and, even though I’m not fully recovered, I’m a hell of a lot better than I ever was. I want to live now and I want to talk about living.
And it was a real conflict of interest because obviously their message is about the ‘right-to-die’ and ‘ways to die’ and I could see the makings of a workshop and Philip has clearly said it would resemble (a workshop) and I really didn’t want to be a part of a workshop.
In fact, her zest for life came back so strongly that she subsequently stated that she “still wake[s] each day so grateful” that she didn’t take her life.
Authentic Mercy
The Catholic Church is unwavering in its condemnation of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
“Intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms or motives, is murder,” reads the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “It is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator. Suicide is seriously contrary to justice, hope, and charity. It is forbidden by the fifth commandment” (no. 2324).
To some, the absoluteness of this teaching can seem “unmerciful.” In reality, as the story of Moon so starkly highlights, this condemnation is profoundly merciful.
Right now, various countries are wrestling with euthanasia and assisted suicide. Some already have or are considering legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide. Some are considering further liberalizing their laws, including opening euthanasia and assisted suicide up to the mentally ill or otherwise not terminally ill. Often, they are driven to do so by savvy and passionate activists like Kevorkian and Nitschke.
However, these sick people are operating from a radically different perspective than that adopted throughout the history of Western medicine, particularly since the Christian revolution, which resoundingly affirmed the inherent sanctity of human life and the healing function of medicine.
In nations that have legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide, the result of the activists’ efforts has been a parade of horror stories. Sick and vulnerable individuals have been steered towards death rather than being offered the authentic medical assistance that they so desperately need.
In its absolute prohibition of euthanasia and assisted suicide, the Church has put in place an impregnable bulwark against the sick minds and sick souls of those who lack the conviction of the deep sacredness of life, and whose ideology preys upon the minds and lives of the most vulnerable.
Suicide is never a morally permissible act.
Let us pray, asking for God’s mercy for those who have taken their lives out of desperation. Let us also pray that more will turn to authentic palliative care that upholds and supports the dignity of human life until the moment of death. And let us exert ourselves to the utmost to offer the sick and suffering the authentic compassion of clear moral teaching, of true physical and mental healthcare, and of the love that accompanies the sick and dying with such a closeness that fear and despair do not have a chance to rear their ugly heads.
This article has been reprinted with permission and can be found at hli.org/2024/10/true-mercy-in-the-final-moments-of-life.