Brittany Maynard, the young woman with a malignant incurable brain tumor, killed herself this weekend. She appears to have done so under Oregon’s Assisted Suicide Law, by taking an overdose of medication deliberately prescribed by a physician.
Her death is tragic, not only because of her incurable tumor (which was not the medical cause of her death), but because she committed suicide, and because the medical profession and the government of Oregon helped her kill herself, and because her suicide implicitly devalues not only her life but the lives of thousands of Americans with terminal illnesses.
We should be careful not to focus our opprobrium on Brittany herself. She faced an illness that is surely to be dreaded, and she had to do so at a very young age in the prime of her life. May God rest her soul, and comfort her family in this terrible time.
Such mitigating circumstances do not obtain for the euthanasia ghouls like Compassion and Choices who used this young woman’s illness to advance their odious agenda. The assisted suicide movement has learned its lessons from the Kevorkian debacles — their PR is of a much more professional caliber.
In America, fragile human lives very close to beginning and very close to ending are increasingly considered expendable. The handicapped and the melancholy are next. We are stepping into an abyss.
Image: Adams Memorial (“Grief”), Rock Creek Cemetery/Wikipedia.