Revised and Updated:

"FORCED EXIT"

By Dave Andrusko

It's no secret to anyone who peruses Today's News & Views or National Right to Life News that NRLC is a big, big fan of Wesley Smith. His essays glisten with insight and he helps his readers sense the true dimensions of the evil of euthanasia and assisted suicide. An added treat is his sparkling prose, which is a delight to read.

Smith will speak at the annual NRL Convention, held this year in St. Louis, July 3-5. As it happens his appearance coincides with publication of a paperback edition of Smith's 1997 book, Forced Exit, revised and updated.

Forced Exit is one of a series of remarkable books and thoughtful articles that Smith - - an attorney and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute - - has written that shears through the layers of misinformation and emotionalism that are the assisted suicide movement's most potent weapons.

Smith shows us that the assumptions and givens that the pro-death forces are trying to insinuate into public conversation and into public policy are like unexploded shells. Once they are buried, it is only a matter of time before they go off, killing not only the currently intended victims (the "permanently unconscious," for example) but bystanders (other categories of vulnerable people such as the frail elderly who are confused) who are next in line as well.

Smith insightfully illustrates that once respect for all human life is scissored out, the only question is, "Who is next?" This depletion of our common humanity is masked both with the thinnest pretenses, such as "respect for autonomy" but also with more intuitively appealing rhetoric (to "end suffering"). Smith cuts through the rhetorical fog on both.

In a review of Forced Exit in the magazine First Things, the reviewer astutely summarized one of the principal strands in Smith's argument:

"Assisted suicide, Smith says, is only the opening wedge of an argument that will inexorably lead to involuntary euthanasia. Once it becomes licit for doctors to end their patients' lives for compassionate reasons in the case of terminal illness, what will stop that same compassion from administering death to those who, although not terminally ill, are suffering from intractable pain?

If there is in fact a constitutional right to die, how can it be denied to those who are comatose? And if deliverance by death is thought to be an appropriate beneficence for the senile elderly, why is it not equally appropriate for medically compromised children who face a lifetime of pain and debilitation? Indeed, why must one be a 'patient' at all? Why shouldn't all the arguments apply with equal force to those who are not ill, but have nevertheless been reduced by the vicissitudes of life to the point where they simply no longer wish to live?"

There are many ways we can fight the euthanasia juggernaut. At the very top is understanding its historical roots, its philosophical kinship to many of the ugliest movements of the 20th century, and acquiring the ability to make crucial distinctions with intelligence and moral clarity.

Forced Exit helps equip you to accomplish all three.