It is not only pain control that is needed for the terminally ill, however. What is needed is loving acceptance and support for a human being facing the awesome mystery of death. What the terminally ill person needs more than anything else is compassion. In a usurpation of the term which is nothing short of obscene, one of the plaintiffs in the Ninth Circuit Court was a group calling itself Compassion in Dying. In reality, however, the rich and hallowed virtue of compassion is drained of meaning when it is invoked as a basis of destroying human life.
Ideas have consequences.
An idea, however monstrous, which finds itself institutionalized in law, spins out its inexorable logic in the most horrible of ways. If we want to see where physician-assisted suicide leads, all we need to do is study the Netherlands. I base these observations on the study by Herbert Hendin, M.D., titled Seduced by Death. In a country of about 5.5 million people, the acceptance of physician-assisted suicide has led to 700 to 1,000 deaths annually of terminally ill, mentally competent adults who did not consent to the lethal action of their physicians. They were killed against their will.