Government-Assisted Murder?

 

"Life Unworthy of Life": 1938 Nazi German poster.

Friend Xerxes the leftist columnist has weighed in on assisted suicide for the mentally ill. He is for it.

I am not current on “Medical Assistance in Dying,” but the issue of what to do about the mentally ill seems to me to confirm the wisdom of G.K. Chesterton: if anyone wants to tear down a fence, they must first demonstrate awareness of why it was there in the first place.

If, on the one hand, one refuses the same right to the mentally ill that we extend to everyone else, this is discrimination against the mentally ill. So, apparently, the Quebec courts have now ruled. The right to be put to death by the state must now be extended to the mentally ill, those with Alzheimer’s, the unconscious, minors, and the mentally retarded.

But “suicidal ideation” is a standard symptom of virtually all mental illness. Which is as much as to say, if we extend this right to them, it arguably amounts to a genocide against the mentally ill; they are in effect being killed for being mentally ill. Awkwardly, that is just how Hitler’s policy of genocide began: with exterminating the mentally ill, those with Alzheimer’s, and the mentally retarded, as “life not worthy of life.” 

Worse, there is a growing belief among psychiatrists/psychologists that mental illness in general is akin to PTSD: it is caused, in other words, by one’s environment, one’s life situation, by those around the victim, especially in childhood. “Gaslighting” is becoming a familiar term, and a familiar notion: people are driven mad. If this is true, mental illness is a case of someone being driven to kill themselves. Having the government assist makes the government complicit in murder. A perfect way to get rid of an unwanted spouse, child, or other relative.

The same consideration arises to a lesser extent for those with Alzheimer’s, or in a coma. But at least in this latter case, the relative or intimate making the decision to kill has not themselves caused the problem.

The only solution is to pull away from the whole business of assisted dying. Bad idea. Some will suffer. But there was a reason for that fence.