A Cruel and Twisted Look at Assisted Suicide
A person named J. J. Hansen has an
opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal about the right to die a natural,
pain free, comfortable death. Apparently
he thinks he is best suited to tell every American how they should react to a
fatal illness. He doesn’t want you to
have the option of death with dignity.
Mr. Hansen was diagnosed with brain cancer and given a short
time to live. Fortunately for him and
his family he has survived for several years.
But because he at one time thought of suicide he has concluded
that not only was it not right for him, it is not right for everyone and he is
leading a charge to keep millions of people he doesn’t know from having a
choice.
Legislation
being pushed throughout the country promotes assisted suicide for cases like
mine. Instead of providing support and working to make life more comfortable,
this legislation would encourage victims to choose the least expensive
option—death. We cannot trust insurance companies, which are profit-driven
businesses, to continue offering quality care to terminally ill patients. They
will choose the cheaper option every time.
I’ve
seen the danger of assisted suicide, and that is what moved me to dedicate the
last year and a half to fighting assisted-suicide legislation across the
country with the Patients Rights Action Fund. If suicide becomes a normal
medical treatment for terminally ill patients, lives will be tragically
shortened, as patients who might have outlived their prognoses by months or
even years kill themselves prematurely.
Like almost every opinion piece in the ultra conservative
WSJ the article does not even acknowledge the opposition to his radical
proposal that government should interfere in a person’s decision to end their
life if they have a horrific fatal disease.
He doesn’t mention the protections in place, or the fact that states
that allow assisted suicide have had no problems or complaints. He implies there is no support for the
terminally ill, ignoring organizations like Hospice and other patient support
groups that do a fantastic job in giving support to terminally ill people.
But with his ignorance and arrogance what he really does is
set himself up as the arbiter of other people’s lives. And he wants government to enforce his
opinion on everyone else. One would
think that this position, the exact opposite of principled conservatism would
not be found in the WSJ, or at least would have a rebuttal. But that assumes current conservatives like
those who run the WSJ are principled.
No comments:
Post a Comment