Suicide machine sparks outrage

This is a very sad and yet important article.

I ask the question: how does the public react to people who take the law into their own hands, such as Roger Kusch with his suicide machine. Some suggest that it leads people to become concerned, while others say that it forces the question into the political arena.

Some people argue that since assisted suicide happens already, therefore it should be legalized and regulated by the government. This is a false arguement. Many things happen already that threat individuals in society, and it would threaten the common good to simply regulate certain acts that must be prohibited.

Their is a gap in our western culture between radical individual autonomy and the need for the common good. Their is another gap in society based on the view of the nature of the human person - whether human life has inherent dignity, or humans are simply a higher animal.

The question that people fail to consider is: "Why is homicide(euthanasia), and assisted suicide illegal in the first place?" Some people say that it is just connected to a religious intolerant past.

The reality is that society must not allow one person to have the legal right to take the life of another person. The protection of the individual and the basis of equality of all human lives depends on a prohibition of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

To allow the killing of people, even for the most difficult circumstances leads to the direct threat to the lives of vulnerable persons, whose lives are already considered by many to be not worth living. The sad reality is that many of these people have been so abandoned by the attitude of radical individual autonomy that they themselves have even been made to feel that they are better off dead and they can succomb to the false ideology of compassion and choice which is neither compassionate or truly a choice.

Society needs to protect the lives of vulnerable persons, people with disabilities, the frail elderly, people who live with chronic conditions or depression. The common good for all in society demands that we care for people and not kill them.

April 4, 2008

Suicide machine sparks outrage

By CNN's Berlin Bureau Chief Frederik Pleitgen

Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/04/germany.euthanasia/index.html