Assisted Suicide: I’m Not Against It, But…

15 Jun, 2011 by John Hawkins

Print this article Font size -16+

You hear people say that there are no easy answers. That’s often not true. There are a lot of easy answers, even if they’re not always politically correct or what people want to hear.

However, assisted suicide is one of those places where there really are no easy answers.

Personally, I don’t have any ethical problems with assisted suicide for people who have fatal, painful diseases. The reason why I say that is simple: I’ve seen it happen to people and it’s horrific. To watch strong, vibrant people spend months suffering terribly, not able to take care of themselves, feeling like they’re a burden on the people they care about, and knowing that there’s no end to it other than death — it’s a tragedy.

There’s no upside to that, no dignity to that, no redeeming virtue present. It’s suffering for the sake of suffering. Nothing more, nothing less.

Of course, people in that situation COULD kill themselves. But, there’s a moral issue with that. As a Christian, I believe it’s wrong for people to take their own lives. So, I don’t have a problem with someone giving another human being the same courtesy that he’d give a family pet in that situation. If a dog is in pain and dying, we put it to sleep and call it mercy. It really shouldn’t be any different for a human being.

This however, is where the big issue comes in.

You see, this IS a slippery slope and if we, as a society, start giving the thumbs up to assisted suicide, it won’t end with cancer patients or people in the final stages of Alzheimer’s. It would proceed from there to people with non-fatal ailments, to people who were unhappy, and one day, maybe even to people who are just “too old” to be “useful to society.”

That’s why the people who oppose assisted suicide are justified in taking that position. I get it. I also get why people never liked Jack Kervorkian. He was a ghoulish guy who seemed to be far more into what he was doing than was healthy or normal.

Still, I feel bad that there are so many families out there who have to watch someone they love die in agony, knowing there’s no release for that person other than death. Yet, they would have to break the law and take personal responsibility for ending someone’s life to end their pain. Maybe it has to be that….maybe, but it shouldn’t be that way.