The headlines in Massachusetts are telling a grim story that is repeated all too often in America. When voters in that state go to the polls in November, they will decide whether or not to approve a measure known simply as “Death with Dignity.” The proposed law “would allow individuals who have been diagnosed with an illness that will cause death within six months to obtain medication to self-administer to end their life.”
In other words, Massachusetts citizens will be using their vote to decide whether someone with a terminal illness, or even a grave illness with a poor prognosis, should have the right to be given a prescription for a drug that will kill them at a time of their choosing. This argument advocates for a freedom of choice regarding death—which is a very dangerous choice. For those who favor such an action, the choice should never be controlled by law or, for that matter, by faith principles.
The usual suspects—Compassion & Choices and the Death With Dignity Center—were involved in crafting the strategy that got the measure to this point in Massachusetts. Both organizations have pioneered the sales pitch needed to convince voters that euthanasia is actually a good idea.
Compassion & Choices, formerly called the Hemlock Society, is an organization founded by man named Derek Humphry who facilitated his own wife’s death. While the story of Jean Humphry’s demise shocked many at the time, Derek’s brainchild is now about as mainstream as any death-marketing charity can get, complete with a new name.
Compassion & Choices has an additional claim recently reported by Rita Diller, national director of Stop Planned Parenthood International. Planned Parenthood insider Theresa Connor is now the director of government affairs for the assisted suicide group. Connor, described as a “warrior for reproductive autonomy,” began her journey as a journalist with CNN in Los Angeles. From small beginnings and a pregnancy as a single mother, which she chose to carry to term, Connor wended her way to Planned Parenthood and now has supplemented her journey to thread the deadly pieces together by working for an organization that encourages death for the gravely ill in the same way Planned Parenthood encourages death for the preborn.
It may sound preposterous, but the fact is that once a person buys into the philosophy that there are lives unworthy of being lived—as is the case with those who market abortion—there is little to nothing stopping that same individual from advocating death as a solution to life’s challenges when they are at the other end of the spectrum.
Freedom of choice has no boundaries once God is taken out of the equation and personal self-interest, often called autonomy, moves in to take center stage.
As Diller wrote,
We have long been aware of the slippery slope that leads from birth control, to abortion, to pressuring the elderly and caretakers of the critically ill to end their lives. Planned Parenthood operatives like Connor transition into organizations that deal with assisted suicide, bringing with them their allies in the culture of death. In reality, assisted suicide, abortion, and birth control are all fruits of the same tree—secular humanism. The secular humanists work unceasingly to saturate every phase of life with the poison of the culture of death under the guise of liberty and even religious liberty.
Secular humanists have long believed that man is god and that God is dead. So it is that the mainstreaming of killing continues to seep into the nooks and crannies of public consciousness.