America’s 21st Century Death Wish

WASHINGTON, DC, Nov 21 — Death is in vogue. The proof is in the desperate efforts to make it easy for women to kill their unborn babies and in the fact that suicide rates are on the rise. The frenzy triggered by the Supreme Court when it overturned the 50 year old Roe vs Wade abortion rights ruling shows that America had developed a taste for abortion over those five decades. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control [CDC] reports that suicide is on the rise among U.S. citizens as young as ten years old and that the rates of suicide have increased by nearly 31% over the past two decades.

These morbid developments suggest that too many Americans have a death wish and it doesn’t help to legalize Physician Assisted Suicide laws. Currently 10 states, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and Montana and the District of Columbia have legalized physician assisted suicide. John Kelly, a regional director for the disability-rights group Not Dead Yet, says “assisted-suicide laws inevitably take the lives of innocent people through misdiagnosis and elder abuse.” He is quoted by the National Institutes of Health [NIH] pointing out that “Given that insurers routinely value their bottom lines over patient treatment, and the health care system devalues the lives of disabled people, these laws reduce rather than expand choice.”

The NIH report noted that the Coloradans Against Assisted Suicide warned that legalization of assisted suicide “leads people to give up on treatment and lose good years of their lives.” And another group, No Prop 106, suggested it puts too much power in the hands of physicians, who sometimes make mistakes, to determine who has six months to live and is therefore eligible for assisted dying.

Meanwhile, the Life Institute points out that abortion “dramatically” increases the risk of suicide, citing a study conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota. The report shows that teenage girls who have had abortions are 10 times more likely to attempt suicide than comparable teenage girls who did not have an abortion. “Other studies have found similar statistical significance between a history of abortion and suicide attempts among women. Thus, the actual data suggests that abortion is far more likely to drive an unstable woman to suicide than is pregnancy and childbirth.”

Chicago’s Ann & Robert Lurie Children’s Hospital chimed in on the discussion recently with a study that found “suicide is the second-leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the U.S. and has increased over 45% between 1999 and 2020, when more than 47,000 adolescents ages 10 to 19 died.  There is a growing incidence of youths seeking emergency care with suicidal thoughts, which relate to the growing prevalence of depression, anxiety and severe mental illness in recent decades. Individuals who experience suicidal thoughts are more than three times more likely to die by suicide in the future than individuals who don’t have suicidal thoughts.”

According to the National Review, the media, doctors and political advocates help promote Euthanasia Assisted Suicide [EAS]. The Review cites studies that show: Rates of EAS increase significantly; Rates of self-initiated deaths (EAS plus non-assisted suicide) increase significantly; The increase in self-initiated death is disproportionately high in women; and Rates of non-assisted suicide also increase, in some cases significantly.

And then there is the impact legalization of physician-assisted suicide might have on promoting suicides.  In addition to the mere fact that the law says it’s okay to commit suicide, there is the potential that a medical suicide assistant might wittingly or unwittingly talk a patient in going ahead. 

Canada legalized suicide in 2016. The New York Post notes that “Canada leads the world in assisted suicides, with 10,064 in 2021. Just a few weeks ago the paper published a story about a man who is suing the Victoria Hospital Health Services Centre in London, Ontario. His name is Roger Foley and he claims that the “Canadian government is encouraging him to end it all.”

As Foley put it, “I’ve been pressured to do an assisted suicide. They asked if I want an assisted death. I don’t. I was told that I would be charged $1,800 per day [for hospital care]. I have $2 million worth of bills. Nurses here told me that I should end my life. That shocked me.”