The people who suffer around us deserve our compassion and care. They shouldn’t be told that their lives aren’t worth living or made to think that they’re somehow a burden on us or that they’re taking resources from those who need them. They aren’t Hitler’s Untermenschen just because they don’t live lives of perfect heath and prosperity. They are God’s image bearers, wholly deserving of life’s blessing amid life’s hardships.

A recent story out of the Netherlands reminds us, as the adage goes, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. According to an article in the New York Post, the country, which has long led the world in legalizing and promoting euthanasia, has now expanded the reach of its angels of death to include those suffering from mental illness and even autism. Other countries are falling in line. 

Two years ago, a World magazine article described how the practice of euthanasia is being embraced in Australia. Similar measures were expanded last year both across the Tasman in New Zealand and across the globe in Spain. Canada’s death laws are also being expanded to allow the mentally ill to die. Here at home, 10 U.S. states have “death with dignity” laws. Still, Holland and Belgium are at the front of this race to see how far a culture of death can go. 

Every one of these laws is advanced by an appeal to compassion. We are told it is merciful to allow the ill to end their pain in death. Denying death to those who suffer robs human beings of their innate dignity and our future of “a happier world.” Death can be, the rhetoric goes, a gift of love. Couched in explicitly moral terms, euthanasia is offered as the only ethical choice, with any opposition portrayed as heartlessness and cruelty. 

The word games played in the euthanasia debate would be impressive if they weren’t so evil. Words such as “illness,” “pain,” “compassion,” “mercy,” and “dignity,” are moving targets. It’s the same game played by some of the worst villains in history. 

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