Well said....

Every now and then you read a line that begs a wider distribution and makes you jealous that you had not written it.  This is the line:  ...there is something more painful than physical suffering, worse even than death: Being told, and believing, that your life is worthless, and that you would be better off dead.  It was penned by Jeffrey Wald, writing from West Saint Paul, Minnesota, to legislators in that state considering End-of-Life Option Act SF 1813/HF 1930. It is another version of the popular MAiD  (medical aid in dying) legislation designed to hasten the death of the suffering, either at their instigation or a choice made on their behalf by family and physicians.  It is a terrible idea.  You can read what Jeffrey Wald wrote here.  I will let his words speak for him.

What kind of world have we come to in which we banter about the idea that there are things worse than death?  What kind of world have we come to in which we make death the better end of those whose lives we (or they) deem not worth living?  What kind of world have we come to in which we make this choice devoid of any religious foundation whatsoever and as a cardinal principle of our modern morality -- empty of such faith?  If we cannot make the choice, maybe we could leave it to the Artificial Intelligence means around us to decide on our behalf.  This is not offering a painless out to those who suffer but about the surrender of our very humanity.  When the worth of life is defined by its quality, no one is immune from such judgment and such an outcome.  When the worth of life is a temporary value without any real or lasting purpose or meaning, it can be surrendered by any and by all whenever it becomes a burden.  The problem with that is that life is a constant burden, a mess we must bear with even as we struggle to clean it up.  Love is a burden.  Marriage is a burden.  Pregnancy is a burden.  Children are a burden.  The problem is not that they are burdens but that we have decided that they are to burdensome to endure.  We must have an out.  But what about regret?

I am purposefully writing this without reference to the Christian faith.  It is my conviction that the Christian faith is not required to see the fallacy in this thinking and to realize that it places upon us a curse from which our lives may not escape.  All around us we are suffering from the violence of those who inflict pain and death upon others at a whim.  All around us we are struggling we are living with painful divisions in neighborhoods, the electorate, politics, race, wealth, etc.  All around us we are struggling to define basic truths and concepts that were once unchallenged.  It has left us as a culture and as a world more fragile than ever before.  And now we want to make the choice of death easier?