MURDER WITH DIGNITY

We live in a world of two opposing sides to most issues. There are those who understand the issue conceptually and there are those who only go by what they see with their physical eyes, that lack understanding of the issue. However, it is the second view that seems to predominate on most issues. This is because most people do not want to have to think through an issue. They think that if someone wants to do something, let them do it. As long as it does not effect my life, I don’t care is their attitude.

What these people do not realize is that someday, it may be them in a particular situation and they would have voted away their rights and someone else will make their decisions for them. According to an Associated Press article, there is an ballot initiative called the "Washington Death with Dignity Initiative" that is designed to allow a supposed terminally ill person to end their life at their own hands. This is "setting up a fiercely fought and emotional campaign."

Those behind this ballot initiative are relying on emotion to carry the day. This is all that they have because intellectually, they cannot defend their position. They are relying on people looking with their physical eyes at some terminally ill person and seeing them suffering pain and concluding that no one should have to suffer like this. They are relying on the word dignity, but the word dignity does not go with what is really occurring in this situation.

Let us define what kind of death is being proposed with this initiative. For a patient to be allowed to obtain lethal drugs for ending their own lives, "two doctors would have to agree on the diagnosis of a terminal disease–giving the patient six months or less to live–and declare that the patient is competent, is acting voluntarily, and has made an informed decision." No one would be making an informed decision because the patient is not being given all the necessary information in which to make the right decision.

If the patient obtains lethal drugs and ends their lives, they have committed suicide. Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines suicide as, "Self-murder; the act of designedly destroying one’s own life. To constitute suicide, the person must be of years of discretion and of sound mind." Self-murder is murder and is a crime. Worse of all, it is a sin and when successful cannot be repented of and therefore, the actor will spend eternity in the lake of fire.

The word dignity is being used as a cloak to hide the heinousness of the act of self-murder. Webster renders dignity as, "True honor; nobleness or elevation of mind, consisting in a high sense of propriety, truth and justice, with an abhorrence of mean and sinful actions...This dignity is based on moral rectitude; all vice is incompatible with true dignity of mind. The man who deliberately injures another, whether male or female, has no true dignity of soul."

Based on this definition of dignity, how can self-murder be made a dignified act? Self-murder is sinful and therefore cannot be dignified. Suicide is a cowardly act. How can one be a coward and have true honor, nobleness or elevation of mind? Supporters of this horrible initiative will not define their terms. They have to rely on pure emotion and if this initiative passes, it will be not death with dignity, but death to dignity.