Marketed under terminology crafted to trigger sympathy and compliance, it still is what it is.
The former Hemlock Society changed its name to Compassion and Choices. Sounds nice and fuzzy. So does Death With Dignity, though less so Aid In Dying although that still softens the fact that someone is ending someone else's life. At least Mercy Killing uses the word, though softened with the spiritual concept of charity.
Working closely with Terri Schiavo's family and some of their legal and spiritual counselors during that ordeal which erupted on the national and then international consciousness in early 2005, I did investigative reporting that turned up facts, claims, contradictions and records that mostly didn't make it to big media reports on the story, though my radio network covered it all. Someone sent me a letter from a man in the Netherlands warning that if America let this woman die by court ordered starvation and dehydration, Dutch euthanasia would come to this country. How prescient that was.
Not long after, Hollywood gave the euthanasia and assisted suicide movements huge momentum, though not without warning there, either. Hollywood professional Barbara Nicolosi laid it all out here .
The evidence is undeniable: Somewhere in the middle of the Terri Schiavo tragedy, Hollywood and the cultural left climbed aboard the latest human-killing bandwagon and have since thrown the weight of their talent and creativity behind it. As with abortion, the forces of darkness are outmaneuvering the forces of good on what will certainly be the moral issue of the 21st century.
If we lose the fight on euthanasia, we lose our souls. By removing suffering and the meaning of suffering from our culture, we make the final step in denying and defying our creature-hood. Once again, the seductive lie of Eden will trip us up: "If you will do this thing, you shall be like God."
Our response to the mercy-killing machine must be more than an occasional op-ed piece; we need a shrewd and all-encompassing cultural strategy if we are going to make a good fight in the euthanasia war.
Shrewd means that we fight smart. It means appealing to the emotions of the masses through stories, not non-fiction tomes. Songs, not philosophical tirades. Heroes, not pundits.
That was 2011, we've had heroes and storytellers since then, but we still need that shrewd and all-encompassing cultural strategy. Because death has been peddled as an available and increasingly acceptable option, through semantic engineering. Barbara Nicolosi, one of the heroes, swung for the fences in this appeal to awareness and action, sanity and reason.
If we've learned anything from the abortion wars, it's that the words "choice" and "right to choose" set our cause back decades. We need an emotionally winning language for this fight. The other side should not get away with christening themselves "mercy killers"; they are "death dealers," "elder abortionists," "needlers." Please, not "death with dignity"; let's get there first with "medical murder" and "unnatural death." Not "end-of-life clinics" but "human garbage pits." We need slogans like, "Make your insurance adjuster's day; let him kill you." Or, "Everything we know about euthanasia we learned from the Nazis."
We must be aggressive in exposing the deceptions driving the euthanasia movement - lies like the implication that personhood can somehow disappear from a wounded human body. Or that a human life could ever lose its value. Or that suicide can be a courageous act. We must contradict the notion that suffering is the worst thing that can happen to a person.
That message got a lot of currency with the sad and tragic Brittany Maynard story used to the advantage of the assisted suicide movement and sensationalized by complicit media. What didn't get so much coverage were the stories, names, faces and voices of others who faced and knew extreme suffering, and tried to witness to the truth of Nicolosi's message about human life, dignity, and living through suffering.
Like the seminarian who kept trying to reach Maynard through Facebook posts and interviews, mostly in pro-life media, with true compassion. Philip Johnson had the same diagnosis and knew the pain.
And Lauren Hill , the determined teenager, who played her beloved sport of basketball even through pain and increasing disability, because her motto was "never give up." If you don't click on these hyperlinks to check out the stories, at least read this short one on her legacy, written on a Marine news site by Pfc. Ned Johnson.She was a basketball player - an athlete. She scored legitimate points for her junior college. But more importantly, she scored a lot of points in life.
Hill was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Cancer. In high school. At 18.
That's when Hill proved she was more than many of us could ever hope to be. She went to college with this tumor. Then she made the basketball team, scored 10 points across four games before her body became too weak for her to continue.
She started a fundraiser that raised more than $1.5 million for pediatric cancer research…
There are many others who witness to courage and hope and true dignity, through their own suffering. Mark Davis Pickup is one, and he's appealing to California legislators to consider the gravity of the bill before them this week, and the consequences of their vote.
I am a Canadian. As you know Canada's Supreme Court recently struck down my nation's laws against assisted suicide, opening wide the gates for physician assisted killing of suicidal sick and disabled people. Please do not take California down a similar path. It is not the hallmark of a "civil society". There is nothing civilized about euthanasia or assisted suicide. Do not be fooled by euphemisms for killing like "death with dignity". Dignity is not bestowed on people by injecting them with poison when they are at their lowest point. That is abandonment not dignity. Death with dignity is not an event, it is a process, the end result of having lived a life with dignity, benefiting from the best 21st Century palliative care (which is capable of eliminating physical pain), and being surrounded by loved ones.
Someone may say "What about those who do not have loved ones?" Precisely! What about them? Is the answer to euthanize them or seek to include them within the tender embrace of community? Another person may say, "I should have the autonomous right to determine the time and place of my own death." Really? That presumes decisions only affect the individual making them. That is not true. Our decisions always impact others. The idea independent personal autonomy is diametrically opposed to the concept of interdependent community.
If I choose suicide (assisted or otherwise) it will not affect just me: It will affect my wife, children and grandchildren. It will impact my community and my doctor for I will ask her to stop being my healer and become my killer. And it will affect my nation by helping to entrench the notion that there are some lives unworthy to be lived.
Doctors, patients and healthcare experts are appealing likewise to California lawmakers and the people who elected them to protect and defend human life at all stages. That state's lesislature is poised to vote one way or the other on the assisted suicide bill before them. Stephanie's Journey puts a personal face and family on a profound call for care taking in this delicate process. Carolyn Moynihan covered it well here .
Disability Rights & Defense Fund expert Marilyn Golden testified before the California State Senate Health Committee with this comprehensive, riveting report, so lawmakers at least would make an informed vote.
I'm covering this on radio Wednesday with a California expert speaking for the disability community, to hear what he's been saying in calls to legislative offices in the state, and hearing in response.
Because as Terri Schiavo's family continues to proclaim, in carrying on her legacy and give voice to the voiceless, where there's life, there's hope .