Two Wesley J. Smith Blasts from the Past

I was doing a little research and came across an article of mine, “Depressed? Don’t Go See Kevorkian,” published in the New York Times all the way back in 1995. Anyone interested, can check it out here.

Then, I thought I would see whether the very first piece I ever published about assisted suicide—back when I was writing books with Ralph Nader—is available on-line. Whaddya know: It is.

In “The Whispers of Strangers,” published in the June 28, 1993 Newsweek (back before my beard was gray), I described my reaction to the suicide of my friend Frances under the influence and instruction of proselytizing pro suicide literature put out by the Hemlock Society (now Compassion and Choices). I also analyzed the subversive nature of the euthanasia movement, of which Frances had been a part.

The mail I received from this article was nasty and voluminous (and this was before e-mail made it so easy to reach out and hate), convincing me (along with reading Rita Marker’s Deadly Compassion), that something was going desperately wrong with our culture and that I needed to engage the issue of assisted suicide as a public policy advocate. My life changed forever.

I think these paragraphs from the piece—which were based not on research as much as projecting out and connecting dots—were and are certainly right:

Frances once told me that through her death she would be advancing a cause. It is a cause I now deeply despise. Not only did it take Frances, but it rejects all that I hold sacred and true: that the preservation of human life is our highest moral ideal; that a principal purpose of government is as a protector of life; that those who fight to stay alive in the face of terminal disease are powerful uplifters of the human experience.

Of greater concern to me is the moral trickledown effect that could result should society ever come to agree with Frances. Life is action and reaction, the proverbial pebble thrown into the pond. We don’t get to the Brave New World in one giant leap. Rather, the descent to depravity is reached by small steps. First, suicide is promoted as a virtue. Vulnerable people like Frances become early casualties. Then follows mercy killing of the terminally ill. From there, it’s a hop, skip and a jump to killing people who don’t have a good “quality” of life, perhaps with the prospect of organ harvesting thrown in as a plum to society.

The journey from there to here has been a long, shocking, and often disheartening experience. But everything I have learned along the way has only served to reinforce my commitment to working alongside so many others to thwart the death agenda. Hopefully, we will succeed. But even if we ultimately fail, it will have been well worth the trying.