A New "Pro-Choice" Position

The old pro-choice folks were "pro" the choice to kill someone else. The new pro-choice folks (come to think of it, probably many of the same folks) are "pro" the choice to kill yourself.

Oh, they don't call it that. They favor terms like "hastening death" to "suicide" in the same way that the old pro-choice folks prefer "terminating the pregnancy" to "abortion." But that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and suicide by any other name is still killing yourself.

Arland Nichols has a good roundup of the countries and states that are pushing suicide, and the reasons for doing so, over at Homiletic and Pastoral Review. He also talks about the strategies that proponents use to get people to overcome what is as much a natural revulsion to suicide as people once felt to killing babies in the womb, contraception (yes, look it up, people almost universally used to feel revulsion at the idea) and other sins that have been redefined as virtues.

The danger is real. Already, the idea that killing yourself before your life becomes unbearable or before you are "too much of a burden" for others is gaining acceptance. The 1997 VA publication Your Life, Your Choices came under attack for doing just that last year. Vigorously defended by the VA, the publication (available online) says that physician assisted suicide is "currently illegal" but contains a worksheet that includes various forms of incapacity and invites the veteran to decide which would make life "difficult but acceptable," "worth living, but just barely," or "not worth living."

Well, as Bishop Sheen used to say, "Life is worth living." To paraphrase Gilbert Meilaender, whose 1991 essay I Want to Be a Burden to My Loved Ones was revisited by First Things last month, we're supposed to be burdens to our loved ones. More than that, we're supposed to be a burden to people who don't even know us. Being a burden is sometimes a part of life, and we're not supposed to throw life away -- even if Clint Eastwood thinks it's a good idea.