Euthanasia cuts short more than a life, it telescopes the process by which a dying person comes to terms with death and the ways families handle it. As Wesley Smith of Discovery Institute's Center on Human Rights and Bioethics points out, it makes death seem tacky, even banal.
Death is natural, euthanasia (and assisted suicide) unnatural. One supposedly gains a momentary feeling that he is in control, when, in truth, we never are fully in control, especially at death. There is dignity in giving in to Death, but only bathos in trying to force Death's approach.
Worst of all, euthanasia often leaves scars on the living. They will not have had the kind of tender death bed scene I witnessed recently with a family member, nor, therefore, the kind of memory that, frankly, gives great comfort and consolation. Instead there may well be shooting pangs of recollection, guilt and perhaps even the horrifying sense that something perverse and absurd was done with one's own passive or active involvement.
In time one reconciles to the inevitable death of a family member or friend. There is completion in it. But death by assisted suicide or euthanasia hangs around. It haunts.
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