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By Grant Avis
I read a depressing opinion piece in the Courier Journal
recently. The collection of words advocated for the passage of a
bill legalizing assisted suicide in Kentucky. This is claimed to be
the new humane position. I say it is the new eugenics, in which
human life is devalued, and the most vulnerable die first.
Assisted suicide is an uncomfortable topic. Death does not constitute polite conversation. Suffering is no one’s idea of a pleasant afternoon. But death and suffering, to whatever degree, is one of the few guarantees of the human condition. We may feel pain; we may feel excruciating pain; we may have difficulty walking; we may have difficulty speaking; we may have difficulty thinking; we may languish in dismal hospital rooms with the fetid smell of our excrement. We will probably suffer. Does suffering forfeit our right to live? Does that give a bureaucrat license to declare, “Die, wretch!” Does that mean our life matters less?
Most of us will become “burdens” before we die. We will be dependent on another person in some way, as we enter what is better described as our second infancy than our second childhood. Perhaps dying is a very human thing to do, since it is our shared destiny. But there was a man, once, who was also the Son of Man. Dying, suffering, and becoming dependent are so human that even God incarnate faced these fates. God suffered, God died, and another man helped carry God’s cross.
Beyond the evident excesses in polities that have legalized assisted suicide, where the elderly and the impoverished are encouraged to die by assured doctors, or the clear threat of giving any institution permission to decide who can live and die, assisted suicide must be opposed at every juncture because of its very premise. It is wrong to say that suffering and dying diminishes us. Dying is human. Dying is also divine. But let us not invite it, for life, all life, is worth living, and death is worth dying.
Grant is a McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville in the class of 2026. He is studying history and political science.