There was a time it was believed that rich countries have the most humane laws. Not anymore. Last week, a female doctor was formally cleared by the Netherlands medical board for killing a 74 year old woman with dementia on the grounds that she acted in good faith.
Euthanasia or medically assisted suicide is legal in Netherlands, and anyone who so wishes can request and be helped to die. It was reported that the woman sometimes requested for it, and sometimes did not.
The doctor got tired of the waiting and decided to do it. She had made all the arrangements, paid all the right people. But according to the telegraph.co.uk, when the day came, the old woman refused to take a cup of coffee containing a sedative that would put her to sleep so that they could kill her. In fact she fought desperately not to be killed and the doctor had to ask her husband and daughter to hold her down so she could insert a drip containing the lethal injection.
When the incident came to light, social media shrills spurred the medical board of the Netherlands to investigate the incident and just recently released a report clearing the doctor of all wrong doing, and proclaiming that she acted on “compassionate” grounds.
Really?
Who would push a woman off a cliff edge out of compassion?
As mother Angelica, founder of the Eternal Word Television said, “The greatest tragedy of this world is misdirected compassion.” There was a time true compassion was about doing good to others. Now compassion is a euphemism for masking violent and selfish acts.
The doctor’s actions were still not as treacherous as that of the husband and daughter who actively cooperated in her death.
It is not uncommon that when people get older, they need more attention. This can often be a huge burden to family especially, the children. This is one reason why having lots of children helps. With plenty of siblings to help out, the burden of caring for aged parent is carried on many shoulders. Thus the temptation to put a parent away in a nursing home or to permanently take care of her through euthanasia is reduced. Thankfully, Africans have lots of children and will not easily buy the deceitful ideology of euthanasia nor subscribe to putting their parents in nursing homes. A nursing home no matter how neat or decent, is never truly a home where familiar faces and things deeply loved are ever present. I recently read an article about a particular nursing home where most of the inmates spend the whole day looking at the entrance door, hoping for the arrival of a beloved child or spouse.
When children begin to kill their parents to free themselves from the responsibility of caring for them, then something is wrong with society.
That’s why I was so moved when someone sent me the video below, of a man caring his old and invalid Dad.
A compassion that seeks to eliminate not just suffering but truth as well is no compassion at all but cowardice. By killing the sufferer, pain is eliminated at cost of life. How absurd!
I think the real problem is the worship of pleasure, beauty and self indulgence by society. A culture that shies away from anything unpleasant will breed individual ready to kill to escape unpleasant duties.
Parents need to teach their children about the joy of doing thing they find unpleasant.
As St. Josemaria Escriva said, “We shouldn’t think that the only work we can do joyfully is what we find pleasing. We can carry out joyfully—and not reluctantly—what we find hard, what doesn’t please us, if we do it for and with love, and therefore freely.”
This is true compassion. When children take care of their elderly parents at sometime huge personal cost in time and money, they are being truly compassionate.
The Netherlands has handed its most vulnerable citizens the death sentence. Vulnerable people in society: the elderly, the poor, the mentally ill, and the disabled are fast being killed of by a euthanasia law that is spiraled out of control.
Worst, the elderly are suffering intolerably because they know that everyone expects them to kill themselves or risk being seen as selfish. It is a subtle and cruel pressure. The mental anguish is sufficient to destroy anyone. In Africa, the old are still venerable, held in high esteem, and the young yearn to learn from their wisdom and experience. There is no doubt that the old, infirm and weak, as they are, still have a lot to contribute to society.
Below is a video of Dr. Melisa Friedman, who at 92 yrs old and still contributing meaningfully to society and practicing medicine.
Article by Chinwuba Iyizoba
Editor
