Our culture is obsessed with youth and perfection. In case you missed it, an outright war is being waged on the weak – the unborn, the elderly, the infirm, people with disabilities, and the otherwise vulnerable. Euthanasia in all its forms – including assisted suicide and the withholding of food, water, and other life-sustaining care without consent – is taking on eugenic qualities and normalizing the cultural acceptance of forced death.
In 2016, Life Legal challenged California’s assisted suicide law, the End of Life Option Act. After we filed our lawsuit, we received more vicious hate mail and death threats than ever in Life Legal’s 30-year history. People wished the most horrific calamities upon us as they insisted on the right to “die with dignity.”
“Dying with dignity.” Think about that for a moment. The phrase implies that anyone who chooses to go on living in the face of illness and suffering is less than dignified. It imposes an obligation – especially on the weak and vulnerable – to seek a “dignified” exit from this life.
This obligation has not escaped certain academics who are obsessed with controlling population growth. Recently, several professors have published articles openly proposing voluntary euthanasia (including assisted suicide) as “a morally acceptable way to deal with overpopulation.”
Yale Professor and provocateur Yusuke Narita says the solution to overpopulation could be “mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ [disembowelment] of the elderly.” Narita predicts “the possibility of making it [euthanasia] mandatory in the future will come up.”
As one professor in the UK said, “Unless you really believe that a God exists who intended your existence, you must realise that in the grand scheme of things you and I are hardly essential, and all the more so as population increases.” In other words, we are nothing more than disposable, insignificant eaters.
By the way, over half of all countries – including every industrialized nation – presently have a below replacement fertility rate. By the end of this century, 183 out of 195 countries on the planet are projected to have fertility rates below replacement levels, raising concerns about massive social, economic, and geopolitical crises.
I have had many conversations with committed Christians who are ambivalent about assisted suicide and euthanasia. Unfortunately, their collective silence is tantamount to acceptance of these practices as legitimate forms of autonomy and “personal sovereignty.”
The problem is that in countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are readily available for any reason, people increasingly view death by suicide as a prosaic solution to any form of discomfort. In Belgium, for example, euthanasia is permitted for “unbearable mental or physical suffering.” In its latest report, Belgium’s Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia, comprised of ardent euthanasia advocates and practitioners, admitted that this criterion is “largely subjective” and that even the possibility of mental illness “should not be an obstacle” to killing oneself. At the same time, the Commission’s report included cases where people were euthanized without their full consent.
This is otherwise known as murder.
Euthanasia’s slippery slope – and the fact that we do believe that God exists and creates each person with intrinsic value in His image and for His purposes – is why Life Legal continues to fight against the culture of death. We are currently in litigation over the expansion of California’s assisted suicide law. SB 380, which was signed by Governor Newsom in October 2021, removes nearly every safeguard in California’s end of Life Option Act – and forces physicians to participate in assisted suicide. Last year, we sued California Attorney General Rob Bonta to stop enforcement of SB 380. We won our first battle in this fight and the law is currently enjoined (blocked), pending further hearings. You can read our complaint here.