From Life Site News, John Jalsevac reporting, we learn some very sad news:
Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman diagnosed with incurable brain cancer, committed assisted suicide at her home in Portland, Oregon on Saturday evening by swallowing a fatal dose of barbiturates.
She had previously acquired the drugs legally by prescription under Oregon’s controversial assisted suicide law.
Janet Morana, Executive Director of Priests for Life, remarked:
Our prayer is that these people will find the courage to live every day to the fullest until God calls them home. Brittany’s death was not a victory for a political cause. It was a tragedy, hastened by despair and aided by the culture of death invading our country.
Dead solid perfect.
One Quibble: The Culture Of Death’s invasion was successful some time back and, despite strong pockets of resistance, is consolidating it’s rule in America, as we speak.
It must not prevail.
If we value the Way Of Life gifted to us by The Creator, who inspired The Founders, we must continue to the fight to restore The Culture Of Life that was once so vibrant across America. The fruit on The Fruited Plain is rotting from the disease of Leftism. We must be relentless in our efforts, large and small and internal, to change the course we are on.
There is nothing more precious than the gift of Life.
Everything that is decent and true and wonderful comes from a respect and admiration for it. Every Evil originates in the devaluing, diminishing, and scorning of it.
All inalienable rights emanate from The Right To Life — none of the others can exist or survive without holding this, the First Right, sacred and undeniable. Love cannot exist, cannot thrive as it must, true Compassion and Mercy, which are the fruits of Love, cannot survive without consecrating Life. Without this veneration, this dedication to it’s preservation, living truly becomes Solitary, Nasty, Brutish, Short.
As it is a gift and not a choice, Life is not ours to discard, for, if it is, then nothing else can be impermissible. That is the way to Chaos and Misery and Death.
In seeking the deepest roots of the struggle between the “culture of life” and the “culture of death”, we cannot restrict ourselves to the perverse idea of freedom mentioned above. We have to go to the heart of the tragedy being experienced by modern man: the eclipse of the sense of God and of man, typical of a social and cultural climate dominated by secularism, which, with its ubiquitous tentacles, succeeds at times in putting Christian communities themselves to the test. Those who allow themselves to be influenced by this climate easily fall into a sad vicious circle: when the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man, of his dignity and his life; in turn, the systematic violation of the moral law, especially in the serious matter of respect for human life and its dignity, produces a kind of progressive darkening of the capacity to discern God’s living and saving presence.
—John Paul The Great, Evangelium Vitae
UPDATE at 2343…
Shermlaw comments:
It is tempting to succumb to the seduction which is the statement, “It’s her choice; so be it.” However, that yielding to that temptation, leads inevitably to contemplation of a number of premises, which in turn lead to an ominous conclusion. Specifically:
1. Mrs. Maynard confronted a choice. Live to the end or take her own life.
2. Her choice to take her own life was the correct choice for her.
3. If the choice was correct for her, it is not incorrect for anyone.
4. If the choice is not incorrect, then perhaps the choice is better than the alternative.
5. If the choice to take one’s own life is better under those circumstances, then it should be made more often.
6. If the choice should be made more often, it should be facilitated.
7. If the choice should be facilitated, it should be mandated.
8. If the choice should be mandated, then it should no longer be a choice.
Make no mistake, that is where this discussion is headed. While I grieve for Ms. Maynard’s family and do not believe for one moment her motivations went beyond the first two premises above and wanting to make such a choice available for others –in other words, I grant her pure, if misguided, motives– she will be used to pursue an agenda far above and beyond what she ever thought or intended.
Dead solid perfect.
