Saturday, February 16, 2008

"No honey, we can't just kill people"

A friend was sharing his very sad family situation where an elderly uncle had to be moved from his home to a care center, no longer able to care for himself or his home. (neighbors had called the authorities who found him fallen and sick in the house). Unfortunately his uncle no longer recognized anyone, even my friend, who is the only surviving relative. So, the poor uncle finds himself abruptly in a new environment with literally
no one he knows or recognizes and his health is not good.
I encouraged my friend for the compassionate way he attended to the situation, having
literally saved the uncle's life from a precarious balance, alone in that house.
My friend agreed reluctantly, and noted in passing that his young son had asked about the seeming hopelessness of the situation.
"Can't someone do something in these situations?" the youngster asked.
"What else could we do?" my friend asked.
"Well, isn't this where people consider assisted suicide?" came the answer.
My friend handled the question appropriately and explained the slippery slope of "assisting" someone who no longer has their mental reasoning faculties. "It's not 'suicide' in that case," he rightly explained, "we'd have to use a different word for doing that..."
My friend was right--a different word indeed. I sense that we don't share the same Spiritual worldview, but my friend's innate sense of morality is correct. We  can't just kill ("assist in the transition of") people because we feel sorry for their situation or reason that they--or we as care givers--would be better off.
But take note, the baby boomer generation will be facing this reasoning test up close and personal
in the course of the next 20 to 30 years...and the 'adults' who will be helping to decide our 'time of transition' have been raised in a culture that has no problem doing away with inconvenient pregnancies; no problem manufacturing and killing embryos (babies, pre-born humans) to grow spare parts for someone else; and no problem 'selectively reducing' the 
body count of multiple child pregnancies to make the economics more manageable.
"We'd have to use a different word for that..."

What do you believe?