Dear Doctor,
I can hardly bring myself to write these words, but a dark reality requires it. I am referring to legalized assisted suicide.
Should I ever request assisted suicide, I want you to refuse to help me. On this point I am emphatic. Presume that I am speaking out of depression or that multiple sclerosis has begun to affect my mental state. I would not make such a request in my right mind.
If, in your judgment, I am suffering from depression, please get me the counseling I need. Protect me from myself, or others, who would take my life before my natural death.
I have such a deep respect for you and for the proper application of your profession (in its Hippocratic tradition), I would not ask you to stop being my healer and become my killer, unless my mental state and faculties were impaired by depression or disease.
Sincerely,
Mark Davis Pickup
Writer, Blogger, Speaker
HumanLifeMatters.org
In 1984, Mark Davis Pickup, a Canadian, developed degenerative and aggressive multiple sclerosis, after which he shifted much of his energy to working against the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide. His articles on life and disability issues are widely published and he speaks wherever he is invited.
Mark states, “I am convinced that, if a society does not embrace the sanctity, dignity, and equality of all human life (and North American society does not), any barbarity is possible. A truly civilized society includes in its tender embrace every human life—every child developing in the womb, every person with a mental or physical disability, those with terminal conditions, derelicts, the old, and people who are not wanted or even loved by anyone. Impossible, you say? Perhaps, but I’m a sucker for hopeless causes. Maybe it comes from having what many consider a hopeless disease. Love is what defines enlightened and civilized society. But love needs the divine. The brotherhood of man needs the Fatherhood of God. Love without God becomes selective, coercive, and arbitrary—turning the lives of the weakest and most vulnerable into hell on earth. Yes, I am convinced that human enlightenment is impossible without God.”
