LIFE MATTERS presented by Yuba-Sutter Right To Life

Vermont- Another Sanctuary State for Assisted Suicide?

The following is a portion of the Publisher’s Note in the National Catholic Register, February 26, 2023 edition.

Legislators in Vermont are pushing for their state to join Oregon as the nation’s second "sanctuary" state for assisted suicide.

The proposed legislation would allow people from states where this lifeending practice remains illegal to travel to Vermont to kill themselves with the assistance of local medical personnel.

The premises underlying the bid to make Vermont the second destination state for "death tourism" are profoundly disturbing. For one thing, the idea that a state can be a "sanctuary" for assisted suicide implies that some measure of "holiness" is attached to killing people off medically - a belief that is becoming prevalent among euthanasia and assisted-suicide proponents.

For another, it transforms doctors and nurses who participate in these legalized killings from healers into death dealers, in direct violation of the "do no harm" principle of the Hippocratic Oath that has underpinned medical ethics in Western societies for more than 2,000 years. Even more fundamentally, assisted suicide is in total contradiction to the foundational moral teaching communicated by God to Moses in the Commandment: "Thou shalt not kill." Instead the message that's now being communicated is: "You're better off dead."

In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), Pope St. John Paul II prophetically described these contemporary moral dynamics as the culture of death. Americans who want to understand where this deadly mentality leads, in the area of assisted suicide and the related moral crime of euthanasia, need look no further than our northern neighbor of Canada.

Canada's national legal framework of so-called "Medical Assistance in Dying'' (MAID) encompasses both assisted suicide, by which individuals kill themselves with medication prescribed by doctors, and euthanasia, by which doctors or other medical personnel directly administer the lethal medication themselves. As elsewhere, the arguments in favor of Canada's legalization of MAID in 2016 were predicated on compassion, with the practice initially authorized to apply only to adults deemed to be suffering unacceptably in the final stages of a terminal illness.

But, instead, Canada which in recent decades has become something of a canary in the culture of death coal mine soon became the international jurisdiction where assisted suicide and euthanasia are most readily available, and with the fewest checks in place. Virtually from its inception, reports surfaced of MAID being offered to patients who weren't terminally ill, and the stipulation that it should apply only in such cases was formally removed in 2021. Currently, any adult with a disability or serious chronic illness qualifies, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government planned to extend MAID even further this year to include people with mental illnesses as well. While that move has been delayed until 2024, due to a strong public pushback, the Trudeau regime clearly intends to press it forward as soon as that resistance has been overcome.

In this ever more permissive context, accounts are proliferating of doctors and other medical officials pressuring patients who didn't request MAID to agree to being killed and pressuring relatives to agree when patients are too incapacitated to make their own decisions.

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Michael came to my office seeking help for the onset of depression in his life. He was a handsome man in his mid-thirties with a wife and two children. Michael seemed to have it all. He reported his family was terrific, he had a dream job, and he attended a church he loved. But Michael felt guilty for not feeling the joy that the Bible promised to those who followed Christ. In fact, over the last three months, he reported not sleeping well, gaining weight, struggling with concentration, and often crying for no reason.

It was clear that Michael was struggling with depression. His first question to me was, “Is this a spiritual problem?”

The guilt that Michael heaped upon himself for having depression was certainly not helping his mental, physical, or spiritual state of being. As we explored all the aspects of his life and his family of origin, it became clear that his onset of depression was due to a series of severe losses combined with the fact that there was a history of depression in his family. Michael shared that his grandmother [on his mother's side of the family] had taken her life. And his dad, who struggled with depression when he was growing up, had been on antidepressant’s for a very long time, but was doing well.

Even though Michael had valid psychological and inherited neurological reasonings for experiencing depression, his greatest concern was that he was doing something wrong spiritually.

Sadly, many believers automatically believe that if they are depressed, they must not be trusting God enough in their lives. After-all, God’s faithful followers should never be depressed, right?

I’m not sure, as Christians, how we came to believe that depression is not a part of a godly person’s life. The Bible is filled with examples of God’s faithful – including prophets – who faced depression at different points in their lives.

Jeremiah was known as “The Weeping Prophet.” King Solomon suffered from deep depression. Elijah suffered great anxiety and depression when Jezebel sought revenge against him. Jacob became depressed at the loss of his son Joseph and Job, after suffering great loss, said it would have been better had he never been born. King David, whom God said was a man after His own heart, was often troubled and battled deep despair. In fact, he wrote of his depression and troubles in the book of Psalms. And there are many others in Scripture that battled this ageold phenomena of depression, including

These biblical figures were all heroes of the faith – they followed God with all their heart, did mighty works, but also experienced failures, losses, and yes, depression.

In the same way today, Christians are not exempt from experiencing depression in their lives.

Though depression can have spiritual aspects, its roots can be biological, psychological, and sociological. Many times, depression is a combination of several factors. And like heart disease or other medical issues, depression can be complex. So, what does it look like to be depressed?

You may be depressed if you are experiencing mood changes, a loss of interest in things you have always found pleasurable, weight or appetite changes, psychomotor agitation or retardation, fatigue or loss of energy, sadness and crying, difficulties thinking or concentrating, feelings of worthlessness, sleep difficulties,