SHOCK (Not): Assisted Suicide for a Depressed Woman

The media in Australia and New Zealand are shocked that Philip Nitschke—the Down Under Jack Kevorkian—would help a woman commit suicide who wasn’t terminally ill. What amazes me is that they are seemingly surprised. He’s done it before in the Nancy Crick case, in which he admitted both that he and Crick knew she wasn’t terminally ill when he counseled her to commit suicide and that he and she had lied to the media before the event claiming she was dying in order to gain sympathetic coverage. From the current story:

Australian euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke has been accused of advising a depressed woman who took her own life about smuggling lethal drugs from Mexico. The Sunday Star-Times reported that the 68-year-old woman, who was not terminally ill, killed herself in 2006 with drugs she smuggled home from Mexico after seeking advice from Dr Nitschke.

Why is anyone surprised? When I toured Australia in 2001, we made headlines proving that Nitschke wants his suicide pills to be made available to troubled teens. (He admitted it in an interview with NRO, which I wrote about here.) I arrived in Australia on a Sunday morning to a media frenzy (caused by our press release). On Monday, Nitschke admitted his belief to the Sydney Morning Herald. More media frenzy. On Tuesday, he changed his story and denied it. I remember one radio host stating I had been rebutted. I said lying wasn’t a rebuttal, and read his admission to the Herald. Rather than deal with that issue, the assisted suicide-sympathetic host quickly changed the subject. We then made headlines proving he was importing the “Exit Bag” suicide devices from Canada, with a big front page story in the Australian, Australia’s national newspaper.

With regard to assisted suicide not really being about terminal illness: Many just don’t want to see the evidence that is before their very eyes. Here is just a sampling:
- Euthanasia/assisted suicide is available to the depressed in the Netherlands.
- The Swiss Supreme Court recently created a constitutional right to assisted suicide for the mentally ill.
- There is advocacy in very high places here in the USA for the same thing.
- Most of Jack Kevorkian’s “patients” were not terminally ill, and five weren’t even sick upon autopsy.
- At least one non terminally ill patient (as defined by the Oregon law) has received a lethal prescription in that state. Despite it being revealed in a peer reviewed journal article, the state took no action against the prescribing doctor.
- In Canada, Tracy Latimer, murdered by her father because she had cerebral palsy was not terminally ill—and he was supported by a wide swath of the public and media commentators.

I could go on. But you know the old saying, none are so blind as those who refuse to see.

Dear Reader,

You have a decision to make: double or nothing.

For this week only, a generous supporter has offered to fully match all new and increased donations to First Things up to $60,000.

In other words, your gift of $50 unlocks $100 for First Things, your gift of $100 unlocks $200, and so on, up to a total of $120,000. But if you don’t give, nothing.

So what will it be, dear reader: double, or nothing?

Make your year-end gift go twice as far for First Things by giving now.

GIVE NOW