Assisted Suicide Continues Its Expansion

More bad news on the euthanasia front: The northeast is seeing a concerted effort to legalize assisted suicide.  The Boston Globe reports (click here to read the whole thing):

A push for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide is under way in at least three Northeastern states including Connecticut, where proponents say they see strong support for allowing doctors to prescribe mentally competent, dying individuals with the medications needed to take their own lives.

Lawmakers in New Jersey and Vermont are also considering legislation that would allow doctors to prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill patients in a trend that advocates say may be related to the country’s aging population.

‘‘The deep yearning for increasing autonomy for patients themselves to have a voice, I think now it’s reaching a tipping point all across the world,’’ said Barbara Coombs Lee, an Oregon resident and president of Compassion & Choices, a national end-of-life advocacy organization. ‘‘I think the Baby Boomer generation has something to do with that.’’

Ms. Lee’s comment is troubling.  She intends, of course, to portray the legalization of assisted suicide as a compassionate expansion of individual liberty.  She’s not far from the truth – she just has the wrong interpretation.  The Baby Boomer generation is obsessed with personal liberty and increasing autonomy, and that’s a bad thing.  It has coincided with the legalization of abortion.  It has led to a horrible amount of national debt that their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have to pay off.  It has led to broken homes and an abandonment of all moral responsibility (except for the “responsibility” to “be yourself” and “not let anyone else tell you what you can’t do”).

This yearning for autonomy is in direct opposition to human responsibility and moral duty.  It says that individuals should be free of all imposition.  Tragically, I think our culture has largely embraced this understanding of human rights and human nature.  It is a view that is directly contrary to the development of a strong community, a strong family, and a strong church.  It reduces human society to two players: the individual and the state.  There is nowhere good to go from there.