Among many of their euphemistic language juggles, the advocates of euthanasia pester about the human “right” to choose when and how to die. If someone – God forbid – has suicidal thoughts, if he or she refused God’s merciful hand, or blasphemed the Holy Spirit, they can just go where the demons are taking them. He or she can do that in many ways. But no, the demon wants more: he wants to bring to sin as many sinners as possible, so he has more sheep in his pen.
However, people who are decrepit, ill and old, but eager to live, are in the hands of legal murderers. Notable anti-assisted-dying activist Alex Schadenberg attests that patients from right and left turn to him and complain how medical staff force them, directly or indirectly, to take their own lives. God knows what stories they tell them, and reasons they give them for euthanasia. One of them, a Canadian, is scared – because his life is in question – that the Canadian law, clearly against life, will change the definition of “right to die” into “obligation to die”.
In countries where euthanasia is legal, the ill do not want to go to hospitals and even when they must, they ask for a guarantee that they will not be subject to this “merciful” death.
People want to live.
When I was a young priest, I saw how deep God placed the seed of life in people.
A woman called me. She said her father was in Riverdale hospital in Toronto; he was placed where the hopeless cases were. At that time, euthanasia was not permitted in Canada. So, I go to visit this man. When I entered the room, I saw a corpse lying on the hospital bed. He was absolutely motionless. He couldn’t even move one of his fingers. They even told me it was years since he was brought to that hospital. Only the pupils of his eyes were moving a little. I got closer to him, asked him questions, but I answered them myself. When I used up the whole repertoire of all possible questions and my own answers to them, deeply shaken and rattled, I left his tomb-room.
I went to visit him one more time, but this time with his elderly wife. During many years of him being in that state she succeeded in establishing some form of communication with him through their eyes. I called her once to ask to go together again to the hospital. She told me: “Don’t bother father, M… is afraid that he would die if priest came to visit him.”
Everyone would think that death would be the salvation for this man; everyone except him.
It is extremely hard to prove mistakes of medical doctors. But what if they do, by mistake, give wrong diagnosis and send the poor person to the queue for death. Among many other cases, let me mention this example: a Canadian woman Mya DeRyan, got a defeating diagnosis from her doctor – cancer. After numerous long considerations and calculations, she decided to take her own life. She boarded a ferry between two Canadian cities. In the middle of the ocean she jumped into her death. Somehow, she was rescued. She was taken to hospital, and there it was determined that she never had cancer.
In the other part of the world, in April 2013, a 62-year-old Pietro D’Amico, from Calabria, Italy, died in assisted suicide. A mandatory autopsy was performed, and the results revealed that, after all, the man did not have the grave illness that lead him into suicide.
And what to say for a woman who was hospitalized, in vegetative state for a very long time, and said that all her life functions were long dead, and who got raped, by, who else than, a medical worker, and on December 28, 2018 gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
The first widely known case of Terry Schiavo, that I have mentioned, shows all possible abuses and malversations, and how bad can become worse. A certain Thomas Middleton, in his inability, put all his trust in a woman in his vicinity. To his misfortune, he named her his estate trustee, moved into her home, and thanks to Oregon state law, he was subject to euthanasia. He didn’t even get cold in his grave, 2 days after he died, she listed his property for sale, deposited the money into her account, and – “the wolf was fed” and was licking his mouth, but the poor sheep – disappeared.
Philosopher Daniel Callahan says that euthanasia is not a matter of a personal choice of one’s own fate. In fact, “it requires two people to make it possible, and a complicit – society – to make it acceptable.”
A nurse in an American retirement home, Nancy Valko, testifies that those decrepit persons for whom no family member cares anymore, and that carelessness is justified in million ways, including that nonsense “we want to remember them for what they used to be”, those persons, those helpless elderly man and women, are the most vulnerable victims of euthanasia.
Unfortunately, financial reasons, or better yet, terrible self-indulgence, plays a very important role here. Even back in 1984, Colorado governor, – so not just anybody, – in New York Times, announced his perspective on how the elderly and the ill, will they-nill they, must die. Not so long ago, on April 13, of last year, 2018, in a very popular newspaper “USA Today” a comment was published, that sums up to the following message: plan your death, so that, when you’re old and decrepit, you do not loose your money and you don’t bring your family to bankruptcy, and you are not left with no choice.
Even in our Serbian mythology there is euthanasia – lapot. It is said that the elderly and the helpless were killed so that the daily bread was shared among less hungry mouth. To our consolation is the fact that Bojan Jovanovic proved in 1999 that these stories were just myths, and that old ethnologists, of the German anthropology school, just got the facts mixed-up.
I have talked to many young, educated individuals on topic of this misdeed. Such intense brain washing shows results, and people are addlebrained. They say there is two types of euthanasia: “passive” and “active”. And I tell them: there is only one, and one thing only: God gave us life and He is the only one who can take it.
There is, however, a more meaningful question before all of us: are we Christians or are we not. If we are Christians, through our martyr Lord, and His forever, and in all ages of ages, valid commandments, we should look at this foolish world, and ordain and answer all the challenges set before us. If you suffer, that is for your own salvation. God loves you and He didn’t let you slip out of His divine hands. “For the Lord disciplines the ones He loves and chastises every son He receives. If you endure discipline, God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” (Hebrews 12:6-7) If someone in your vicinity, your neighbour, suffers, it is your responsibility to show them your love, and your patience, and Christian mercy to the sufferer.
We can not be saved by ourselves, even if we make holes on the floor with our heads while we bow and mumble prayers all day long and throughout dark nights. We save ourselves through those whom God had sent to cross our life path as a challenge in love. “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him,” (Matthew 25:31) and when judging all earthly tribes, He will ask us why we rejected Him through all the hungry, the thirsty, and the ill. “Depart from Me, you cursed! For I was hungry and you gave Me no food, I was thirsty and you gave Me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome Me, I was naked and you did not clothe Me, I was sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.” (Matthew 25:41-43)
What awaits those present-day murderers on Judgement Day?