re: "What Euthanasia Has Done to Canada"

re: "What Euthanasia Has Done to Canada" (The New York Times, December 4, 2022)

The short, correct answer to Mr. Douthat's question, " What if a society remains liberal but ceases to be civilized?" is that Canada has only become more civilized by allowing 10,000 people to control the end of their own lives. At the moment, that is 3% of deaths, which proves that many sensible adults want this option. 

Mr. Douthat is also wrong to falsely suggest that death is not a cure for suffering. It very plainly does end suffering. There is nothing dystopian about making it easier for informed adults to decide to opt out of meaningless suffering before inevitable death. There is nothing inherently ennobling or wonderful about such suffering, and civilized societies do help their members escape it. 

The root of Mr. Douthat's error-strewn understanding of euthanasia is his rejection of the insight that "The idea that human rights encompass a right to self-destruction" as he emotively loads his portrayal. This objection reeks, as he concedes, of some religious ideology that claims, with no evidence or good reason whatsoever, that humans are the property of a creator god and that as his playthings, they must not seek to live freely according to their best assessment of what makes their own lives, including the ends of their lives, meaningful and valuable to them. 

Similar fake claims are used to justify denying abortion rights.

It might be the conservative way to so deny the right to choose how we live our own lives; it is not the just, liberal, or honest way. 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/opinion/canada-euthanasia.html#commentsContainer&permid=121823436:121823436