Do not push gently into that good night

Rosie DiManno, a regular columnist for the Toronto Star, has been spending most of the past 3 weeks in a hospital room watching her father fight for his life.

It is in this context that she reflects upon life, death, pain, euthanasia, and assisted suicide.

"Killing the terminally ill or the dreadfully enfeebled must never become the expedient thing to do, dressed up as pity....

"The moment we condone murder — assisted suicide — even for those just tenuously still attached to life, we set ourselves upon a wicked path, one where the worth of a person is measured empirically. Assisted suicide begets euthanasia and a society that makes intellectual peace with euthanasia is one that puts at risk every human being in it, but most especially the constituency of the vulnerable: The grievously ill, the chronically ill, the mentally ill, the unproductive, the economically draining, the recidivist, the subversive. Maybe you, maybe me."

(Hat tip to Father Rob Johansen)