A Medieval devotion alive and well for a handful of modern Romans

Pamplona, Spain, Jun 28, 2018 / 10:32 am (CNA).- Outrage has been sparked in a town in northern Spain over the botched renovation of a 16th-century wooden sculpture of St. George, which was repainted by a local arts and crafts teacher.

The Church of S… […]

CNA Staff, Sep 15, 2020 / 01:00 am (CNA).-  

In response to an assisted suicide bill that could soon be passed in Spain, the Spanish bishops’ conference called Monday for a palliative care law, saying that “there are no patients that cannot be cared for, even if they are incurable.”

“It’s bad news, because human life is not a good anyone can dispose of,” the bishops said in a Sept. 14 statement, of a bill to offer broad legal protections to some forms of euthanasia and assisted suicide, now under debate in the Spanish legislature.

The statement noted that “insisting on” the right to euthanasia “is typical of an individualistic and reductionist vision of the human being” and a concept of  “freedom unrelated to responsibility.”

Proponents of euthanasia affirm “a radical individual autonomy and at the same time call for ‘compassionate’ intervention by society by means of medicine, stemming from an inconsistent anthropology.”

“On the one hand, the social dimension of the human being is denied, ‘saying my life is mine and only mine and I can take it myself’ and on the other it puts others in charge, organized society, of legitimizing the decision, or appropriating the decision for itself ‘to eliminate suffering or its senselessness,’ thus ending the person’s life,” the bishops said.

“The epidemic that we continue to suffer from has made us realize that we are responsible for each other and has relativized proposals for individualistic autonomy.”

“So many patients dying all alone and the situation of the elderly challenge us” the bishops said, adding that during the pandemic ”Spanish society has applauded their dedication and has called for greater support for our healthcare system to increase the level of care so that ‘no one is left behind.’”

They stressed that ”the legalization of forms of assisted suicide” will not help when trying to persuade those who are tempted to commit suicide that death is not the right way out” of their problems.

The bishops emphasized that the law, which should be guided by ethical criteria, “cannot propose death as a solution to problems,” because “it belongs to medicine to cure, but also to provide care and relief and especially to console at the end of this life.”

“Palliative medicine,” they said, “aims to bring humanity to the process of dying and accompany the person to the end.” The prelates pointed out that “there are no patients that cannot be cared for even if they are incurable.”

The bishops’ conference advocated for “appropriate legislation on palliative care that responds to current needs that aren’t being fully met.”

“The fragility of life that we are experiencing during this time constitutes an opportunity to reflect on life’s meaning, fraternal care and the meaning of suffering and death,” they said.

“Proposing a law to put in the hands of others, especially doctors, the power to take the lives of the sick” does not make sense, the bishops said.

“Saying yes to the dignity of the person, even more so during the moments of greatest defenselessness and fragility, obliges us to oppose this law which, in the name of supposed death with dignity, denies the dignity of every human life at its very roots.”

A version of this report was initially published by ACI-Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Bern, Switzerland, May 10, 2018 / 05:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Botanist and ecologist David Goodall ended his life May 10 in Switzerland by assisted suicide, a procedure which he had long advocated legalizing in his home country of Australia.

Goodall, 104, told journalists that he “looked forward” to ending his life and regretted not having ended it sooner, though he is not terminally ill. He also said he regretted that he had to travel all the way to Switzerland commit suicide.

Australia’s Victoria state has passed an assisted suicide law that will go into effect in 2019, but it only allows for terminally ill patients to end their lives – Goodall would not have qualified under the law.

Critics have said that Goodall’s death was not simply a personal choice, but a political one that could have devastating consequences on vulnerable populations such as the elderly, the poor, and the disabled.

“It was clear he wanted to go out while getting a lot of attention,” said Stephen Drake, a research analyst with the advocacy group Not Dead Yet, a disability rights group which opposes the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia “as deadly forms of discrimination.”

“If someone acts as he does, for people to call it a personal act is a lie; it was a political act,” Drake told CNA.

Only a handful of countries have legalized assisted suicide or euthanasia, including Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. In Switzerland, while assisted suicide is technically not legal, it is allowed under certain circumstances.

In the United States, assisted suicide is currently legal in Colorado, Vermont, Washington, California, Oregon, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia. The State Supreme Court of Montana decriminalized assisted suicide for physicians in 2009.

Currently, most legislation that allows for assisted suicide or euthanasia does so only in the cases of terminally ill patients.

However, Goodall’s case demonstrates that this is only the beginning for assisted suicide advocates, Drake noted.

Terminal illness is “the wedge issue that most people can agree on, that opens the door,” he said.

“Once you open the door, then the campaign becomes to kick it open as far as you can, and it shows that opponents in Australia who’ve been fighting to prevent the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia are right on target when they say that this will begin to expand in very short order,” he added.

“Now the cause will be: why are we preventing poor old people from ending their lives?” he said.

Other vulnerable and undervalued populations, such as the poor and disabled, will be similarly at risk, he noted.

Matt Valliere, executive director of Patients Rights Action Fund, told CNA in e-mail comments that it would “be a mistake” to use Goodall’s death as an example in advocating for legalized assisted suicide.

“We know that legalizing assisted suicide only places the vulnerable at greater risk. Mr. Goodall himself had no terminal illness and yet was given lethal medication,” Valliere said.

“That is why many sick, poor, elderly and persons with disabilities oppose these laws – they will be the first to suffer from them.”

What concerns disability and advocacy groups most about legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia is the potential for coercion and corruption – that suicide will become a “rational choice” for some undervalued populations, and their deaths seen as a duty rather than an unpreventable tragedy, Drake said.

“They will no longer be viewed as preventable tragedies but rational (ways) to end a life of suffering,” he said.

“But if you talk to people with disabilities, the suffering they will cite is not the disability itself, but the barriers and discrimination and open hostility they encounter in the culture they live in.”

Studies have shown that the majority of patients who request assisted suicide will withdraw that request when they are treated for depression. There have also been several cases of botched deaths in Oregon, in which a patient’s doctor was not present during the assisted suicide. Oregon has seen many abuses since since its legalization of assisted suicide, such as cases of pills changing hands, either intentionally or unknowingly, with lethal results.

Another concern is that suicide for vulnerable populations will be seen as a smart economic choice, Drake said.

Derek Humphry, founder of the Hemlock Society (now two organizations – Compassion and Choices, and Final Exit Network), wrote in 2000 about the “unspoken argument” for assisted suicide – that it would be cheaper to let the elderly and disabled die than to keep them alive.

“As technology advances, as medical costs skyrocket out of control, as chronic diseases predominate, as the projected rate of the eighty-five-and-older population accelerates, as managed care seeks to cut costs and as Medicare is predicted to go bankrupt by 2007, the impetus of cost containment provide impetus, whether openly acknowledged or not, for the practicalities of an assisted death,” Humphry wrote in his book Freedom to Die: people, politics, and the right-to-die movement.

Drake noted: “It’s one thing for me to say that, it’s another thing for Derek Humphry, who embodies the assisted suicide movement, to say it.”

Drake said that advocates for assisted suicide “either discount those concerns or frankly they don’t care, they figure the people who might be hurt by this won’t be them, and I think that’s what it boils down to.”

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