George Weigel on a Pending Euthanasia Measure & the Culture of Death

As the moral and linguistic confusions, subterfuges, and just plain falsehoods surrounding a bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide in Colorado graphically illustrate, euthanasia kills more than a disturbed human being facing life’s most challenging moment. The proponents of the culture of death are persistent and assiduous in their efforts to undermine and replace Christian values.

George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in an article for National Review Online, explains what is at stake as Colorado voters prepare to decide on Proposition 106, the "End-of-Life Options Act," that would legalize physician-assisted suicide in the Centennial State. Weigel notes that the citizens of Colorado should bear in mind the unintended consequences and implicit dangers of such a law. He writes:

"The more apt mot about all of this lethality masquerading as compassion, however, is from the quotable quotes of... [Fr.] Richard John Neuhaus, who famously said of the morally egregious and its relationship to law, 'What is permitted will eventually become obligatory.' Canada isn’t quite there yet, nor is Belgium; but they’re well on their way, not least because their single-payer health-care systems will increasingly find euthanasia cost-effective — and because the arts of pain relief combined with human support will atrophy in those countries as the 'easy way out' becomes, well, easier and easier."

Physician-assisted suicide is an affront to human dignity. Father Frank A. Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life states: "Euthanasia is not a future problem. It is a present problem. It is happening now and becoming increasingly accepted. And we are asleep, not realizing that the road we are on will lead to the massive elimination of the elderly and 'incompetent,' and anyone else considered to be a burden to society." The culture of life extolled by the Church is in every way superior to politically correct sentimentality. The former demands that persons be loved. The later treats persons as objects of use, to be thrown away (abortion) or discarded, (euthanasia) according to the capricious determinations of others.