Member-only story
Opinion: Allowing Death with Dignity is the Christian Thing to Do
Not despite the sanctity of life, but because of it
Some Christians are against all forms of physician-assisted suicide, including death with dignity, saying that enabling this practice legally allows people to play God and “violates the sanctity of human life”. I, however, am not one of them. Rather, I think that control over the process of death allows life to be a right rather than an obligation.
Mary Wurster, an opposer of death with dignity, calls for hospice and other medical workers to “maximize care rather than minimizing suffering, which might eliminate the sufferer”. She cites Romans 5:3 saying that suffering produces endurance and uses James 1:2–4 to drive this point home. Wurster also says that death with dignity and euthanasia “assert a desire to be infinite” by rejecting dependence on God.
Wurster makes a distinction between obtaining a lethal prescription and declining treatment for a terminal illness saying that one causes death while the other merely accelerates it or prevents unnecessary suffering. This highlights a key distinction between doing and allowing. However, some people may argue that prescribing a lethal medication is not an act of doing, but an act of allowing. After obtaining the pill, a person may simply choose not to…
