Rita Marker Tells a Duty to Die Advocate How To Win

Rita Marker, the head of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide knows more about the politics and facts of the facilitated death agenda than anyone else on earth. In this “open letter” to Baroness Warnock, who SHS readers will recall recently renewed her call for the UK to accept a duty to die once one becomes a burden, Marker adopts a The Screwtape Letters approach, to explaining to us all the euthanasia game that is afoot.

Telling Warnock that people can’t swallow her callous death agenda whole, Marker advises the Baroness to follow the path blazed by her USA counterparts, that is, to take her time and feed her people the cultural hemlock in smaller, bite size pieces. First, Warnock must toss aside her cold candor in favor of gooey euphemisms for killing. From Marker’s column:

Quite frankly, Baroness, it’s time to face the fact that it has been eighteen years since you first voiced your proposal in an open forum and you’re no closer now than you were then to achieving your goal. If you want to succeed, you really must change your approach.

You may want to consider following a model that seems to be working here “across the pond.” That model is from Oregon. It started with a proposal much like yours. In 1991, Senator Frank Roberts sponsored a measure (SB 1191) to permit “aid-in-dying,” defined as “a medical procedure” performed by a physician “to end the life of a patient in a dignified, painless and humane manner.” Of course, it meant killing the patient with a lethal injection but, you’ll note, that the soft phrase, “aid-in-dying,” was used. That’s an important point since words like “euthanasia,” “assisted suicide” or, as you say, “put others down” really turn people off.

Next, throw in a little religious bigotry, (an increasingly popular pastime these days):

During the campaign prior to the vote, proponents of the assisted-suicide bill played on Oregon’s anti-Catholic biases. They deluged the airwaves, telling voters that the Catholic Church was behind all opposition to the bill and that one religion was trying to deny dying patients the right to choose death with dignity...Remember, you need to take things step-by-step; use carefully-chosen, comforting words to describe what you are proposing and find a bête noire (such as the Catholic Church or evangelical Christians).

You then make sure that a benign face can be placed on the whole process that the MSM—already in your camp—will swallow whole:

They [pro euthanasia activists] solidified their organizational structure, changing their name to Compassion & Choices (by merging the Hemlock Society and Compassion in Dying). And, most important, they collected “proof” that Oregon’s law is working well.

Under Oregon’s law, doctors who prescribe lethal drugs for patients must file reports with the state and, then, that information is used to formulate official annual reports. And, since Compassion & Choices has arranged and participated in 75%of the state’s assisted-suicide deaths, it has maintained control of most information contained in annual reports. (Oregon officials acknowledge that there is no way to verify whether the self-reporting by assisted-suicide-prescribing doctors is accurate or complete.) All that can be claimed with certainty, is that, after ten years of assisted suicide in Oregon, there have now been ten annual official reports which are, at best, questionable. Nonetheless, this “proof” has become the most powerful tool for those who share your views. They’ve been able to claim that there have been absolutely no problems or abuses.

Marker concludes with a sad truth that I have also noted that it doesn’t matter what horror you promote, do it in suitably Oprahesque tones of oozing compassion and you will be well on your way to victory:

However, more than that, I hope those who read this advice will see you as an ethics guru, grown arrogant by too much deference, whose agenda is a cold, cruel dismissal of the lives of those who are most vulnerable. Furthermore, I hope they will recognize that Washington’s assisted-suicide proposal and Oregon’s law are rooted in the same mentality.

To which I would also add, get bounteous funding from people like George Soros and the Tides Foundation that wish to remake Western Civilization, and you will be well on your way to creating a culture of death.