Several years ago I remember one of our local newspapers featuring a story about a man who had been watching his wife dying of cancer. Wanting to spare her the ravages of this terrible disease, the husband shot his wife, ending her life.
I was surprised by the tone of the story. Rather than shock or any hint of condemnation, there was a sense in which the reporter was trying to portray the husband as noble for his actions. I wrote a letter to the editor expressing my dismay and stating that it is far more noble to care for the terminally ill than to shoot them and that we have an excellent hospice system that allows for death with dignity.
Recently, our state senator, Edward Meyer, introduced a bill (SB 48) with the stated goal of allowing physician-assisted suicide in the state of Connecticut. His purported reasons for suggesting this is that this is a matter of compassion as well as an issue that he says many of his constituents do support.
It would be inaccurate to say that there is a crying need for this bill or a groundswell of opinion supporting it.
In a state with a huge deficit, high unemployment and a multitude of other problems, is this really the highest priority of Senator Meyer?
To call this bill compassionate is completely deceptive. A truly compassionate society does not invite its terminally ill patients to kill themselves, but instead makes provision for the loving care of that patient by their family. With hospice care, the pain of those last days can be minimized, and many families find that those last days and hours are filled with meaning.
The idea of such a law passing should concern all of us. Legalized suicide in any form cheapens our society’s view of life in general. It puts doctors in the position of being executioners rather than healers (those who do no harm). It will cause many who are in their last days to choose an end to their lives in order to avoid being a financial or emotional burden to their families.
When this type of legislation has been passed in other countries it has inevitably led to a broader use of euthanasia in that country. The government is not the grantor of rights nor of life and therefore should not and cannot give the right to an individual to terminate their life or anyone else’s.
The Rev. Stephen E. Chamberlain
Branford