Proponents of assisted suicide are ever trying to fool all the people all the time. One method is word engineering. Ever since euthanasia advocacy began over 100 years ago, advocates have continually sought the perfect phrase or advocacy term that will convince society to swallow their hemlock. Indeed, the first such word was “euthanasia” (good death) itself, which before early mercy killing advocates co-opted it, meant dying naturally and peacefully in a state of grace.
Compassion and Choices (formerly, Hemlock Society), even uses euphemisms in its name. And now, the organization has published a glossary pitching assisted suicide as “aid in dying,” a euphemistic term if one was ever invented. From C & C’s website:
aid in dying – aid in dying is a practice, legal only in Oregon, Washington and Montana, that allows mentally competent, terminally ill adults to request a prescription for life-ending medication from their physician. This medication must be self-administered. Always use aid in dying instead of assisted dying, physician-assisted suicide or death with dignity. This phrase is hyphenated when used as a modifier. Example: In Washington we passed an aid-in-dying bill. Or, aid in dying has been legal in Oregon since 1994 and Washington and Montana since 2008.
Has there ever been so much gobbledygook pitched? But C & C claims that the accurate and descriptive term, physician-assisted suicide, is the inaccurate phrase:
physician-assisted suicide – An inaccurate and biased term often used to describe a terminally ill, mentally competent person’s choice to control the manned and time of death by self-administered life-ending medications prescribed by a physician. Preferred language is aid in dying.
What propagandists. The opposite is actually true—as a Connecticut judge recently ruled when C & C tried to legalize assisted suicide there by simply redefining the term.
And the moral of the story? When movement uses euphemisms and obfuscation to convince the people that there is nothing wrong with its agenda—there is something very wrong with its agenda.
