{"id":300770,"date":"2023-10-28T11:38:28","date_gmt":"2023-10-28T16:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=300770"},"modified":"2023-10-27T13:28:17","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T18:28:17","slug":"medica-aid-dying-euphemism-assisted-suicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/medica-aid-dying-euphemism-assisted-suicide\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018medical aid in dying\u2019 became the euphemism of choice for assisted suicide"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

(National Review<\/a>) The word engineering never stops, does it? When radical policies are proposed, the first step is to change the lexicon to make it seem less extreme, even mundane.<\/p>\n

That has certainly been true in the euthanasia movement. Indeed, as described by Ian Dowbiggin<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0A Concise History of Euthanasia<\/em>, the term \u201ceuthanasia\u201d \u2014 which originally meant a peaceful death, in a state of grace \u2014 was the first word co-opted by advocates of mercy killing or assisted suicide as a tactic to obscure the fact that the practice involves killing.<\/p>\n

But \u201ceuthanasia\u201d no longer obscures, so the current gooey euphemism of choice in the euthanasia\/assisted-suicide movement is \u201cmedical aid in dying,\u201d or MAID. Once the death activists started pushing it, most \u2014 albeit not all \u2014 media adopted that terminology. Science writer Rachel E. Gross describes the purpose for the word engineering in the pages of the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>. From, \u201cHow Aid in Dying Became Medical, Not Moral<\/a>:\u201d<\/p>\n

Many health advocates and medical professionals insist that a terminally ill patient taking medication to hasten the end is doing something fundamentally different from suicide. The term \u201cmedical aid in dying,\u201d they say, is meant to emphasize that someone with a terminal diagnosis is not choosing whether but how to die. . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a significant, a meaningful difference between someone seeking to end their life because they have a mental illness, and someone seeking to end their life who is going to die in the very near future anyway,\u201d said Dr. Matthew Wynia, director\u00a0<\/strong>of the University of Colorado\u2019s Center for Bioethics and Humanities.<\/em><\/p>\n

What poppycock. To \u201cassist\u201d means to provide support or aid in an endeavor. \u201cSuicide\u201d means to take one\u2019s own life voluntarily or intentionally. It describes\u00a0what<\/em>\u00a0is done, not why.<\/p>\n

Hence, the term assisted suicide is both accurate and descriptive. Which, of course, is precisely why assisted-suicide advocates oppose it.<\/p>\n

Moreover, suicide is suicide. There is no difference in the\u00a0consequence<\/em>\u00a0of the act. Life ceases \u2014 whether the deceased is someone who is mentally ill, a grief-stricken mother whose child has died, the humiliated failed businessperson, or a patient with an illness or disability. Well, there is one difference. We now allow some suicides to be facilitated where laws allow it, while seeking to prevent the others (at least for now).<\/p>\n

Also note that the MAID euphemism is deployed ubiquitously for lethal-injection homicides by doctors and nurse practitioners in Canada \u2014 where fatal jabs are definitely\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0limited to the terminally ill, and indeed, next year will be available to the mentally ill.<\/p>\n

The focus on terminal illness as the reason for asking for doctor-prescribed suicide is yet another deflection. True, laws allowing assisted suicide in this country still require a diagnosis of six months or less to live \u2014 although there are several cases of people\u00a0living for years<\/a>\u00a0after receiving a lethal prescription. But once the assisted-suicide beachhead has finally been secured, the terminal-illness requirement will be dropped. At that point, I bet that the MAID obfuscation will continue on because its purpose is to serve as the honey that helps the hemlock go down.<\/p>\n

READ: Canada\u2019s assisted suicide policies are nothing to emulate, scholars tell UK<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

MAID isn\u2019t the only obscuring terminology applied by promoters of assisted suicide, as noted by Gross:<\/p>\n

Since its enactment in 1997, more than\u00a03,700<\/a>\u00a0Oregonians have taken measures permitted by the law, which allows patients with a terminal illness and the approval of two doctors to receive life-ending medication. The practice is now legal in\u00a010 U.S. states<\/a>\u00a0and Washington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n

The drugs used to end life are not \u201cmedications.\u201d They are poisons \u2014 substances capable of causing the illness or death of a living organism. These substances are taken with lethal intent, not to cure, palliate, or heal. Indeed, in some cases, the same drugs used to\u00a0execute murderers by lethal injection<\/a>\u00a0are the ones used by people who commit assisted suicide.<\/p>\n

As Gross notes, the whole point of this lexicon charade is to encourage more assisted suicides by providing a medical imprimatur:<\/p>\n

A phrase like \u201cmedical aid in dying,\u201d [assisted-suicide advocates] concluded, would reassure patients that they were taking part in a process that was regulated and medically sanctioned. \u201cMedicine has that legitimating power, like it or not,\u201d says Anita Hannig, an anthropologist at Brandeis University and author of the book \u201cThe Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America.<\/a>\u201d \u201cThat really removes a lot of the stigma.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe in judging people who commit suicide, whatever the circumstance. None of us knows what our limits might be. But if we ever enter that darkness, shouldn\u2019t we \u2014 including when we are dying \u2014 receive prevention rather than facilitation? Otherwise, we are distinguishing among those we think have lives worth living and those we are \u2014 at least implying \u2014 do not.<\/p>\n

I knew several people who were dying and wanted assisted suicide, who changed their minds and lived the remaining days of their natural lives very glad they didn\u2019t receive it. Besides, if people don\u2019t kill themselves because of concern about stigma, isn\u2019t that good? I mean, shouldn\u2019t we want fewer people to commit suicide?<\/p>\n

Bottom line: Just as when one calls a dung beetle a butterfly it remains a dung beetle, so too advocates who call assisted suicide \u201cmedical aid in dying\u201d are still talking about suicide. If that simple fact keeps people from taking a lethal prescription, the more the better.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Note: This article was published at National Review<\/a> and is reprinted here with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(National Review) The word engineering never stops, does it? When radical policies are proposed, the first step is to change the lexicon to make it seem less extreme, even mundane. That has certainly been true in the euthanasia movement. Indeed, as described by Ian Dowbiggin\u00a0in\u00a0A Concise History of Euthanasia, the term \u201ceuthanasia\u201d \u2014 which originally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":349,"featured_media":279680,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[7077],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow \u2018medical aid in dying\u2019 became the euphemism of choice for assisted suicide - Live Action News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How \u2018medical aid in dying\u2019 became the euphemism of choice for assisted suicide\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/medica-aid-dying-euphemism-assisted-suicide\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How \u2018medical aid in dying\u2019 became the euphemism of choice for assisted suicide - Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How \u2018medical aid in dying\u2019 became the euphemism of choice for assisted suicide\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/medica-aid-dying-euphemism-assisted-suicide\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveaction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-10-28T16:38:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-10-27T18:28:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/GettyImages-1047609220-assisted-suicide.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"650\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Wesley J. 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