Article Contributed on: 8/26/2008 8:43:25 PM
(Author's Note: In light of the recent protests by anti-Abortion advocates in Denver, I thought that an article asking people to evaluate how our culture values human life would be appropriate,)
In October, 1939, Adolf Hitler issued his infamous 'Aktion T4,' setting in place a system geared towards eliminating 'life unworthy of life.' Midwives and nurses were required to fill out a detailed questionnaire about every child they cared for under the age of three that exhibited signs of deformity, retardation, mental disorders, or paralysis. The questionnaire would then be examined by a panel of doctors who would determine if the child was 'worthy' of life. If they deemed the child's life would be a burden on the state's rescources, the child was sent to a special facility and starved to death or lethally injected.
It was only until the German government began to do this to adults that the people objected, and in 1941 the program stopped murdering adults. However, the assassination of children continued well into the Second World War.
Fast forward 67 years to the present day, when Randy Stroup, a fifty year old Oregon resident who had recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer, applied to his state health care program for fianancial assistance. Stroup could not pay the bill for chemotherapy, and hoped he could attain government assistance. Instead, officials sent him back a letter that said they were not going to pay for his treatment, but they were willing to pay for his physician assisted suicide.
Imagine that! Apparently the Oregon government thinks it can pay for people's voluntary deaths if they are too sick to be treated inexpensively.
In my opinion, suicide, whether it be 'death with dignity' or not, is foolish and unnecessary, however, I do not think that the state should necessarily make it illegal. The government of Oregon, in a fashion that eerily parallels Hitler's, has not only legalized suicide, but has now endorsed it as an acceptable solution for people who can't afford treatment! It is one thing for a person dying alingering death to beg for euthanasia, it is entirely different matter for a government agency to offer to kill someone who wants treatment.
The very fact that something like this could occur in out country confronts us with the chilling possibility that perhaps our nation is headed down the very same road that Germany took in 1939. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we
are, simply that we might be.Some social conservatives have argued, rather persuasively, that we already live in a 'culture of death,' where the value of human life is denigrated or downright ignored. Such accusations hold water, and should give us pause. Are we, as citizens, properly valuing human life? Is our government?
Enviromental groups urge us to value the lives of animals, and the 'life' of our planet. But, if we cannot respect each other's lives, how can we appreciate the worth of a fuzzy baboon or a lobster? 'Respect Life,'is a common motto on our state's license plates. The question that should haunt all of our minds is this; Do we as individuals, as a state, as a nation, as a people, respect and uphold life?
If every man, woman and child in our nation can answer 'yes' to this question with a clean conscience, then we truly are 'America the Beautiful.'
Bibliography:
1
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,392962,00.html
2
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14267
3
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/euthanasia.htm