Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
The other day I published an article about a Seattle assisted suicide party propaganda story. One of our supporters sent me the link to a Canadian euthanasia party propaganda story, a story that I did not write about when it was first published.
The story by Susie Adelson was published by Toronto Life features Adelson's grand mother, Sonia Goodman (88).
Goodman visits Sunnybrook hospital in pain and with sepsis and tells the medical team that she wants them to end her life. Adelson writes:
At first, the doctors suggested palliative care, but she was adamant: no more surgeries, no more drugs, not even antibiotics. She had watched her friends pass away and my mother suffer, and she didn’t want to go through that. Neither did I: seeing my mom languish in a hospital bed for months left me anxious and terrified of death.Adelson is concerned that her grandmother would languish in a hospital bed for months. Clearly this statement is designed to cause fear but it indicates that she is not terminally ill.
There is more to the story. The woman does not appear to be terminally ill - "natural death is not reasonably forseeable" but demands and receives death by lethal injection.
The article raises a concern with the social approval of elder suicide. When
the doctors decided that she was qualified to die, the decision seems based on her age (88). The fact that she demands to die seems very similar to suicide. When did approving suicide based on age become acceptable?Adelson then builds the propaganda by emphasizing how they all shared a celebration drink and spoke about their memories of Goodman. Adelson writes:
Relishing the spotlight, she encouraged us to go around the room and share our memories of her. She was delighted when person after person remarked on her glamour. When it was my turn, I thanked her for giving me my mother—and for her advice to never leave the house without a coat of lipstick. She laughed, and I held her hand. When it was time, we raised our Dixie cups: “To Yaya!”We all want the focus to be on us in our final days, but it doesn't require a lethal injection to make it happen.
The euthanasia lobby is promoting death. As I stated in my response to the Seattle article - assisted suicide was once an avant garde concept, now normalizing assisted suicide is really another propaganda tool.
Its time for real journalism with real life, juxtaposing stories, complicated reality, and not propaganda.
6 comments:
Totally agree. In NZ the promoter of the End of Life Choice Bill is also on the Abortion Committee and the Cross Party Mental Health, Addiction and Well-being Committee!
Abortion started (legally) 50+ years ago and only now, since there have been enough cases to study (and that's an understatement) the ill effects on women who had abortions, do we understand how abortions affect people's lives long, long after that decision. That includes men who were involved as well as other children who were born to these women after abortions.
Unlike abortion, we have not yet seen documented long term effects of euthanasia on surviving family members, particularly those who participated in the decision through their support or involvement.
Sadly, survivors' lives will be changed forever and like abortion, when they realize, either immediately or after, what the deceased person has done or what they did to encourage or support that suicide, they will suffer the psychological effects of an unwanted death, a death they could have perhaps prevented.
Suicide is suicide, no matter how one tries to sugar coat it or reduce it to a celebration party. Those who survive will carry the burden of this, I'm afraid to say, selfish and unloving act of killing yourself.
Maybe, with time, we will re-learn that families need to take care of one another and not abandon those who are aging or facing physical or mental challenges due to age or illness.
Let's hope it doesn't take another 50+ years for society to become educated on this subject.
I can't seem able to leave a comment.
Dear Audrey:
I control the comments to avoid having people who are attacking others or people who are selling products freely post. When you press post I will approve.
Great and continuing work Alex.
I have one question: if only comments that are in accordance with one perspective are approved and the comments that are contrary to that perspective (seen as attacks) are not approved, wouldn't that be a kind of propaganda?
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