Disposable

“If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives - your family's lives - and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service." (http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=29538)

These are the words of Baroness Mary Helen Warnock, “regarded as Britain's leading moral philosopher” and often referred to as “the philosopher queen”. Lest anyone accuse her of inhumanity, Warnock spins suicide as altruistic: “There's nothing wrong with feeling you ought to do so [commit suicide] for the sake of others as well as yourself. In other contexts, sacrificing oneself for one's family would be considered good. I don't see what is so horrible about the motive of not wanting to be an increasing nuisance." Not surprisingly, Warnock’s views echo those of “prominent voices in Britain's House of Lords [who] continue to advocate for legalised euthanasia and assisted suicide.”


This is what passes for morality in our increasingly utilitarian Western culture.
Assisted-suicide supporters argue that suicide is voluntary and hence a personal decision beyond the reach of the state.

But let’s face it: once a human life’s continued existence is viewed as a drain or a nuisance, how long is it before that voluntary act becomes mandatory for the “good of society”? I was reminded of George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm as I read the above Catholic.org article. Farmer Jones mistreats the animals on the farm. The animals revolt and take over. Within no time the pigs take extra liberties for themselves, such as more food, and enlist the dogs to serve as their “muscle”. Ultimately, the pigs become more totalitarian than Farmer Jones ever was. No work of literature better expounds on the capacity of humanity to become that which it abhors, a point ably addressed in the Catholic.org piece.

“German officials in the 1930s instituted a program of mass euthanasia for persons the state considered undesirable, labeling them ‘lebensunwertes leben’: life unworthy of life and ‘useless eaters.’ Among the groups targeted for euthanasia were developmentally disabled people, disabled children, and elderly people suffering from dementia. In Nazi Germany's Aktion T4 programme, in which the gas chamber technology was developed, patients "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination," were killed by physicians on the grounds that they were a burden to their families and to the state. After the war, the Nuremberg Trials found evidence that about 275,000 people had been euthanised.”

Sound familiar? And for those who argue that today’s assisted-suicide and euthanasia movements are motivated by empathy, be aware that the Nazi’s also tried to portray euthanasia as “a ‘compassionate’ solution for patients and their families”.
A society’s responsibility is to defend those who cannot defend themselves. Judging by the “philosopher queen’s” comments we have lost sight of this.

Donald Tremblay