Last week, the Vermont state legislature legalized assisted suicide for out-of-state residents. Becoming the first state to permit “assisted suicide tourism,” Vermont will now become a haven for any American seeking to end his or her life. Motivated by false compassion, this grave injustice perpetuates the “culture of death” against which Pope Saint John Paul II prophetically warned. In his encyclical “Evangelium Vitae,” the Holy Father cautioned: “While it is true that the taking of life not yet born or in its final stages is sometimes marked by a mistaken sense of altruism and human compassion, it cannot be denied that such a culture of death, taken as a whole, betrays a completely individualistic concept of freedom, which ends up by becoming the freedom of ‘the strong’ against the weak who have no choice but to submit.”
Rhode Island is not far behind Vermont. The “Lila Manfield Sapinsley Compassionate Care Act” (a bill seeking to legalize assisted suicide) now sitting before state legislators deceives the public by its seemingly innocuous title. Compassion literally means to suffer alongside another. This abominable piece of legislation would eliminate all true compassion by coaxing doctors to accelerate a person’s death. A person’s innate dignity demands that others see in his or her suffering an invitation to love more deeply, and care holistically for body and soul. Only a wicked society could permit those who vow to “do no harm” to inflict the grave injustice, which is intended death, upon a terminally ill person, whose own spiritual state might be burdened by fear and guilt. All people of good will — and Catholics especially — must fight this legislation, defending true compassion from the imposter which stole its name.
