Aussie Columnist Gains Wisdom About Euthanasia

This is an interesting column from the Adelaide Sunday Mail. (I was in Adelaide in 2001; lovely town.)

When an elderly Australian woman went to Switzerland to die by what has come to be called “suicide tourism, columnist Amanda Blair intended to write an adamantly pro-euthanasia column that would be percolating with the idealized ideology of “choice.” But then, she had a heart-to-heart with her physician husband, and began to see that the reality of mercy killing and the context in which it would actually carried out, would not be as simple and easy as she had thought.

She came away from the conversation, not against euthanasia exactly, but confused and with a more realistic understanding of the dangers that euthanasia consciousness poses.

Good for her for struggling with this important issue. I hope she continues to ponder deeply and explore the pros and cons, potential benefits and profound dangers of assisted suicide, and comes to see what a disaster the so-called “right to die” would be in the long run to the disabled, the sick, the elderly, the dying—and more fundamentally—to society’s willingness to defend the intrinsic worth of all human life.

I have always said: The more people know about euthanasia, the less they tend to like it. This column is a case in point.