By Judie Brown
Masking the actual intentions of those who promote medical aid in dying becomes very easy in an era when nobody wants to recognize the value in suffering for Christ and with Him. One Catholic writer opines, “Worldly people are miserable when they have crosses, and good Christians are miserable when they have none. The Christian lives in the midst of crosses, as the fish lives in the sea.”
This may be an overcomplication because, really, nobody seeks to suffer. But when such anguish does occur in our lives, how we handle it tells the Lord and others how much we truly love the life God has given us. In this era of assisted suicide marketing, it is important to accept the truth that there is no such thing as life without suffering. But there are myriad ways to handle it. Some are laudable, others are deadly.
Today it is far too easy to obtain the drugs to end one’s life if a person is so inclined. Such was the case of Eileen Mihich, who fraudulently obtained the drugs she needed to die according her timetable. A brochure entitled “Step-by-Step Instructions for Taking Aid in Dying Medications” was found near her lifeless body.
The most shocking part of Mihich’s story is that she “submitted the prescription for the poison drug cocktail by claiming to be a California physician. The pharmacy didn’t check the credentials of the physician, but rather filled the prescription which enabled Mihich to die by lethal drug poison suicide.”
This is a tragic case of the devil literally being in the details—details that went unchecked until it was too late.
In another tragic example, we see the story of a Florida woman who killed her husband by allegedly employing mercy killing to end his suffering. She is now out jail and spreading her tale of woe as though it were good news for anyone who is suffering or living with a loved one who is confronting a life-altering condition.
These examples of human desperation in the face of dire illness or impending death are what Bobby Schindler described as our “death on demand” society. He writes:
Suicide contagion is real. When doctors, who are sworn to do no harm, are asked to prescribe lethal drugs and present death as a solution to suffering; when legislatures debate whether certain lives are disposable; when protections weaken for the elderly, people with disabilities, veterans, the poor, and those suffering from depression or loneliness; and when crisis hotlines and suicide-prevention efforts are undermined or ignored, moral clarity erodes. Notably, when moral clarity erodes, lives are lost as suicide rates continue to rise.
Schindler underscored the all-pervasive problem in a culture that has condoned millions of abortion killings and is now turning a blind eye to the tragic consequences that accompany the desire to intentionally usher the ill out of life rather than loving and caring for them until God calls them to Himself.
The consequences of a morality-free society in which God has been benched are far reaching. It is hard to escape the effects of what Pope John Paul II defined as a culture of death, writing that such a “structure of sin” goes against life. He explained, “The moral conscience, both individual and social, is today subjected, also as a result of the penetrating influence of the media, to an extremely serious and mortal danger: that of confusion between good and evil, precisely in relation to the fundamental right to life.”
For anyone who might doubt the veracity of these words, the question becomes whether each of us, as individuals, respects life no matter what might occur or whether we, like the examples above, have chosen to be the arbiters of who lives and who dies.
Such is the ruse in the deadly con games being played in our midst.