{"id":1200,"date":"2005-11-01T21:56:35","date_gmt":"2005-11-02T01:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=1200"},"modified":"2005-11-01T21:56:35","modified_gmt":"2005-11-02T01:56:35","slug":"assisting-suicides-is-bad-law-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2005\/11\/assisting-suicides-is-bad-law-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Assisting suicides is bad law, policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.discovery.org\/scripts\/viewDB\/index.php?command=view&#038;id=2975&#038;program=Bioethics&#038;callingPage=discoMainPage\">Discovery Institute<\/a>  Wesley J. Smith <\/p>\n<p>Sacramento is considering creating an Oregon-style system to end lives <\/p>\n<p>Advocates of assisted suicide label hastened death a &#8220;compassionate choice.&#8221; But such gooey euphemisms seek to hide the harsh truth: Assisted suicide isn&#8217;t about caring: It is about the intentional ending of human life \u2013 an act barred by the Hippocratic Oath for more than 2000 years. <\/p>\n<p>We are told that assisted suicide would be restricted to cases of unbearable suffering. Yet, legislation in California to legalize assisted suicide \u2013 AB651 by Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka \u2013 contains no such requirement. Nor does the law in Oregon, where doctors who assist suicides report that most patients do not seek death because of pain, but because they can no longer engage in enjoyable activities, fear losing dignity or are worried about becoming burdens.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nDon&#8217;t get me wrong: These are important issues that cry out for proper care. Thankfully, we have hospice \u2013 true death with dignity \u2013 to treat these needs. Indeed, studies show that when these problems are addressed, suicidal desires almost always disappear. <\/p>\n<p>While acknowledging the truth of the previous sentence, assisted-suicide proponents contend there will always be a few people who want assisted suicide, anyway. But placing California&#8217;s seal of approval on some suicides would send an insidious message to dying patients that they are burdens; that their illness does make them less worthy of being loved; that they will die in agony. And it would signal the broader society, including young people, that suicide is right in some cases. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Discovery Institute Wesley J. Smith Sacramento is considering creating an Oregon-style system to end lives Advocates of assisted suicide label hastened death a &#8220;compassionate choice.&#8221; But such gooey euphemisms seek to hide the harsh truth: Assisted suicide isn&#8217;t about caring: It is about the intentional ending of human life \u2013 an act barred by the &#8230; <a title=\"Assisting suicides is bad law, policy\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2005\/11\/assisting-suicides-is-bad-law-policy\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Assisting suicides is bad law, policy\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1319,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sanctity-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1319"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}