“The nihilists in our midst are groups who call themselves ‘Death with Dignity’ advocates. They’ve parachuted into our state [Washington] recently and have brought with them hundreds of thousands of dollars in special interest money to advance their philosophy of ‘life has no meaning.’ Their flag is Initiative 1000, the assisted suicide law that only one other state has passed in the last 10 years. They’ve targeted Washington state as their best hope for resuscitating their dying movement.”
     From “Assisted Suicide is a Dying Movement,” by Angie Vogt.

Angie Vogt’s eloquent Jeremiah against “assisted suicide” should be required reading, regardless of  where one’s opinion may fall on the bioethical spectrum. Since you can read the opinion piece in its entirely by clicking on www.pnwlocalnews.com/opinion/26182579.html, I will be very brief.

Vogt is wise to the many ways we mask our determination to evade responsibility and life’s sheer messiness in gibberish about “compassion.”

From the nihilist, she writes, “you hear a lot about ‘quality of life,’ which is their way of determining whether somebody’s life is worth living. They think they are being compassionate when they advocate for assisted suicide because life, ultimately, is only meaningful when it makes sense to them. They think they are alleviating grandma’s suffering by putting her down. What they are actually doing is quelling their own fears of inadequacy and hopelessness.”

Grandma is easy to love when she was baking cookies, Vogt writes. “[B]ut now she’s pretty useless there in her wheelchair. She must be miserable, so let’s just put her down, out of her misery, and get back to living life.”

When someone is terminally ill, it takes character to choose the difficult path: patiently standing by, ensuring that the person receives the medical attention she needs, and offering companionship. Caring for the vulnerable and the weak--this is compassion, Voigt explains.  “End[ing] the whole ordeal” (assisting in the person’s suicide), as the nihilist counsels, is not compassion but despair.

I wish I could share Vogt’s assumption that Washington’s effort to imitate Oregon’s one-of-a-kind law is the dying gasp of a movement in love with death. Alas, having watched them “parachute” into states from the Northeast all the way to Hawaii, I know they show no signs of giving up. Like all evils deeply rooted in our human frailty, assisted suicide must be battled day in and day out.