- Feb 5, 2002
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A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER: Vermont is pushing to become the U.S.’ second destination state for ‘death tourism’ as legislators seek to legalize assisted suicide for nonresidents.
Legislators in Vermont are pushing for their state to join Oregon as the nation’s second “sanctuary” state for assisted suicide. The proposed legislation would allow people from states where this life-ending practice remains illegal to travel to Vermont to kill themselves with the assistance of local medical personnel.
The premises underlying the bid to make Vermont the second destination state for “death tourism” are profoundly disturbing. For one thing, the idea that a state can be a “sanctuary” for assisted suicide implies that some measure of “holiness” is attached to killing people off medically — a belief that is becoming prevalent among euthanasia and assisted-suicide proponents, as New York Times Catholic commentator Ross Douthat recently noted.
For another, it transforms doctors and nurses who participate in these legalized killings from healers into death-dealers, in direct violation of the “do no harm” principle of the Hippocratic Oath that has underpinned medical ethics in Western societies for more than 2,000 years. Even more fundamentally, assisted suicide is in total contradiction to the foundational moral teaching communicated by God to Moses in the Fifth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” Instead the message that’s now being communicated is: “You’re better off dead.”
Continued below.
Legislators in Vermont are pushing for their state to join Oregon as the nation’s second “sanctuary” state for assisted suicide. The proposed legislation would allow people from states where this life-ending practice remains illegal to travel to Vermont to kill themselves with the assistance of local medical personnel.
The premises underlying the bid to make Vermont the second destination state for “death tourism” are profoundly disturbing. For one thing, the idea that a state can be a “sanctuary” for assisted suicide implies that some measure of “holiness” is attached to killing people off medically — a belief that is becoming prevalent among euthanasia and assisted-suicide proponents, as New York Times Catholic commentator Ross Douthat recently noted.
For another, it transforms doctors and nurses who participate in these legalized killings from healers into death-dealers, in direct violation of the “do no harm” principle of the Hippocratic Oath that has underpinned medical ethics in Western societies for more than 2,000 years. Even more fundamentally, assisted suicide is in total contradiction to the foundational moral teaching communicated by God to Moses in the Fifth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” Instead the message that’s now being communicated is: “You’re better off dead.”
Continued below.
The Better-Off-Dead Mentality
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER: Vermont is pushing to become the U.S.’ second destination state for ‘death tourism’ as legislators seek to legalize assisted suicide for nonresidents.