The Illinois Legislature has just passed an assisted suicide legalization bill, tying a black bow along with New York’s legalization bill passed a few months ago. Both measures still await signing by the states’ respective governors, which I fear is quite likely as the death agenda is firmly ensconced in blue state policy on assisted suicide.
Should the bills get signed into law, more people will live in jurisdictions (including three of our most populous: California, New York, and Illinois) that validate some suicides and allow doctors to facilitate such deaths than live in states where assisted suicide remains illegal.
The states are nationalizing assisted suicide as well. New York’s bill has no residency requirement. Vermont and Oregon did away with theirs. And the Illinois bill’s residency requirement is so weak that one could become a resident in a day by, say, renting an apartment and registering to vote.
This Is So Disheartening
Suicide is being redefined into a medical treatment. Which is odd because legalization is a vote of no confidence in the medical profession’s ability to care for people with serious illnesses. Hippocrates would not stop throwing up (to steal a Woody Allen line).
We have seen that once these bills pass, they are soon expanded to allow more people to be grasped by the suicide maw. So we are well on the way now to becoming more like Canada, where we have seen how the euthanasia virus leads to terrible abuses once people accept it as normal.
We are no longer an anti-suicide nation. Deploying gooey euphemisms like “MAID” (medical assistance in dying) doesn’t change the factual nature of what it is that much of liberal society seems to want.
A Germane Observation
Once again Canadian journalist Andrew Coyne’s observation is germane:
A society that believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death. A culture that has lost its faith in life cannot comprehend why it should be endured.
Is he wrong? It seems to me that for millions of us, getting people dead has a greater emotional hold than ensuring that people receive proper care.
Postscript: Convicted attempted Trump assassin Ryan Routh has asked to be imprisoned in a state where assisted suicide is legal. Whether or not that’s germane, I leave to the reader.
Cross-posted at National Review.