I know many–including Diane Rehm–will be offended by the headline. But pushing assisted suicide, is pushing suicide, is pushing suicide.
People who kill themselves over health, disability, or mental illness issues commit suicide every bit as much as the mother who ends her live because her children died or a business does the deed after a business failure.
The word “suicide” is simply descriptively accurate.
The question which we are engaging in the assisted suicide debate is how a loving community should respond to a desire to end it all by those who want to die because of illness, disability, or mental illness.
In my view, all suicidal people should be offered prevention services, not have their deaths facilitated. Otherwise, a strong statement is being made by society that the lives of the healthy suicidal are worth saving, but not those of the ill suicidal are not.
In any event, NPR radio personality Diane Rehm’s husband committed suicide by self-starvation with her support–he was anguished over his severer Parkinson’s disease–a process euthanasia activists refer to as VSED (voluntary stop eating and drinking). VSED is pushed by Compassion and Choices as a splendid way for the elderly to become dead.
Rehm was understandably upset at watching her husband dehydrate slowly over two weeks, so she is lending her voice to push assisted suicide. From the loudly applauding Washington Post story:
After she stops hosting the show, Rehm plans to speak out on Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and the right to die.
When her time comes, if there is no physician-assisted way to end her life, she will do exactly the same as John did. “If I can no longer do what I physically want to do, I’m out of here!” she says. “Death is not something I feel frightened of.”
Leaning over in her sunny office, as if sharing a big secret, as if she has secrets, she says in a near whisper, “You know, I’ve had a great life! Great!”
Think of the message that Rehm unintentionally sent to those struggling with issues of physical decline or disability, with illnesses terminal and chronic, with mental anguish and pain, that if they are suicidal, they are right: Their lives are not worth carrying on.
It makes the lives of many such suffering people more difficult and harder to carry on! I know. I hear from them.
Also note that Rehm is of the demographic that pushes hardest for–and, it seems to me, obsesses most about–legalizing assisted suicide.
It is a movement of (and for) the white, privileged, well-off, and powerful–people who never have to worry about being pushed out of the lifeboat.
Diane Rehm to Push Suicide