By: Kavarna Hayek
An affair that shows how little human life is worth still resonates in Canada. Christine Gauthier, a war veteran, and Paralympian there, has repeatedly sent requests to get a wheelchair lift. Finally, the Department of Veterans Affairs told her, “If you are that desperate, ma’am, we can offer you MAID service.” Meaning they would “assist” her in dying. State employees offered her all the necessary equipment for euthanasia. After all, “euthanasia is significantly cheaper than the costs of most patients in hospitals at the end of their lives,” one of the main advocates of euthanasia in Slovenia, philosopher, and professor Igor Pribac, wrote months ago.
The developed world has fallen into a kind of paradox. Western democracies beat their chests and boast that they have abolished the death penalty for the worst crimes, while glorifying a “culture of death” where execution is not a punishment but an expression of “compassion” and “relief”. Such a decadent thinking of a civilisation that grew out of Christian roots and where life is supposed to be sacred means that secularism has completely prevailed, every progressive desire turns into a commandment rule.
It is not only a violation of principles and a trampling of values, but also a path to barbarism under the guise of humanism. Euthanasia, in the name of humanity, ends a person’s life. Where are the much-vaunted ideals of humanity and dignity now? Is life really worth as much as the bill for the last injection? I am afraid that the transgression of the new morality is already knocking at the door of the everyman when the state can euthanise a person without the consent of the patient or relatives in the name of humanity and social justice. This has already happened. Remember the case of 23-month-old Alfie Evans and you will realise that this is a revival of the infamous Operation T4 (Aktion T4).
Anyone who is even slightly interested in the Second World War has certainly heard of Action T4. In German, Aktion T4, short for Tiergartenstraße 4, the street address in Berlin where the six-year operation was based, began in 1939. Certain German doctors were authorised to select patients deemed “terminally ill” and issue an order for “mercy death”. It was a euthanasia programme, supporters claimed that they were “taking a life that is not worth living.” And this is not the end of the similarities between Action T4 and modern advocates of euthanasia. Even 80 years ago, similarly to Pribac today, they claimed that individuals who need constant care, have psychiatric and neurological disorders or a severe physical disability, represent a “financial burden for German society” (later, “genetic” was added to the financial burden).
After two years of the plan to destroy the “incompetent who are a burden”, the euthanasia programme was extended to other categories of ideological (opponents of Nazism) and biological (Jews and Gypsies) enemies. “They adopted radical strategies to eliminate those who did not fit their vision,” the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum wrote.
Postmodernist euthanasia as a means to save a person from, as the Germans would say in 1939, “a life not worth living”, is currently going from the phase (some countries have already legalised euthanasia) of voluntariness (the example of Christine Gauthier) to the phase where the state gets the right, to put it nicely, of a mediator with a final judgment (the Alfie Evans case described above). For now, this type of practice, which violates the laws and values of our civilisation, is limited to those whom medicine judges to be terminally ill and, as they say, are scraping by. Proponents of euthanasia argue that just as everyone has a “right to a dignified life”, everyone has a “right to a dignified death”; as if natural death is not dignified. Especially the elderly, who are said to burden families and the national budget. Now add two plus two and ask yourself why Golob’s government will delay the implementation of institutional care for the elderly? Maybe (like other western countries) they are making room for African and Arab migrants who are supposed to replace Europeans?
Doctors participate in this kind of negation of the human person, who have the duty to help, relieve pain, monitor the person, and respect his life. Therefore, a new plan for palliative care at home or in hospitals is needed. Medical personnel must be able to relieve pain, they must absolutely respect life. It is a question of humanity.
Doctors began to participate in abortions, continue to participate in euthanasia, medical assassinations of political opponents will follow, or what? Have all doctors forgotten the Hippocratic Oath? It is clearly written there: “to please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice which may cause his death. Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion”. It is time for the medical profession to look in the mirror.
To give injections instead of relief and at the same time say that life is no longer worth living because it is not decent, that is the gates of hell. And when they are completely open, we will renounce all ethics. Euthanasia is no longer a matter of medicine; it is no longer a medical requirement. In this millennium, under the influence of awakened ideologies, it became a social demand – to make room for a certain group of uniform ideas. These steps into the future, which the flag-bearers of transhumanism refer to as steps to “ultimate freedom”, will quickly become dirty tomorrow. Just as the Aktion T4 operation had several gradual phases, so do the contemporary images of the culture of death: the misuse of euthanasia for ideological and political purposes. The worst “crimes” are becoming “thought crimes”; to spread ideas and opinions freely. Freedom of speech has already been greatly restricted, and anyone who resists this (and I am afraid that time is not far off) will be euthanised as a “burden to society”. Because it is cheaper than languishing in prison. And they will not call it execution, but mercy death. If you stand up for traditional values, you have to suffer a lot during your life.
Euthanasia is definitely a symptom of a sick postmodern society; death is no longer an existential given, but a requirement determined by the dominant ideology in society. Its legalisation will mean that pharmaceutical companies will no longer develop effective means to alleviate pain and suffering, that there will be no more drugs that effectively help people at the end of their earthly journey. There will only be means that will speed up and ease the path to the afterlife for those who think differently. And this will be a modern virtue.