Mark Davis: Brittany Maynard’s decision to die is her own, but society-at-large should tread carefully

Reactions to the death of Brittany Maynard can be split into issues that are deeply personal and others that are appropriately public.

The 29-year-old California woman diagnosed with brain cancer moved to Oregon for the purpose of very visibly ending her life on her own timing. Oregon is a state with Death With Dignity laws, allowing doctors to concoct a killing broth that will allow their “patients” to kill themselves to avoid the daunting prospects of a difficult death.

Those of us who object should realize that a portion of this trend is none of our business.

The mainstream Judeo-Christian view is that life is not our personal property. To surrender it on our own terms is an affront to the concept of life as a gift from God. That gift can come with great challenges, as we see in various debilitating conditions, crippling accidents and diseases that can feature a long and painful decline.

But scripturally speaking, none of those entitle us to check out before our time. There is a reason for every life and a reason for every struggle contained within it, reasons we might not understand but that most faiths teach we must accept, relying on the earthly technologies of modern care and the power of prayer.

But Brittany Maynard and other people seeking physician-assisted suicide are entitled to whatever faith they wish, or to follow none. People do indeed have a right to seek, and to enact, right-to-die measures.

But is this a road we want to travel? That is everyone’s business.

We can see the motive of someone facing a long, painful decline if they should seek an early exit. But where do we set the bar? Where should laws begin to permit the morbid contract between sick people and the cottage industry of doctors who will edit their Hippocratic oaths to accommodate the facilitation of premature death?

When these prospects first arose, the discussion involved patients nearing death who had lost most of life’s normal faculties. The exploits of Dr. Jack Kevorkian soon moved the goal posts from imminent death to a mere diagnosis of a terminal illness, leading perfectly mobile, functioning people to consume his formulas in advance of predicted declines.

But doctors are sometimes wrong and miracles sometimes happen, two factors foreign to the death advocacy industry and sweetly titled groups like “Compassion & Choices,” which you might have once known as “the Hemlock Society.”

For a moment last week, it appeared Maynard was having second thoughts. I can imagine the stern lecture her new friends would have delivered if she had announced that the prayers of a nation had made her reconsider taking God’s agenda into her own hands. These activists are not objective, respecting whatever choice she might have made. They are actively pro-death in these delicate situations, with an agenda sure to follow the Kevorkian logic permitting death in cases of suffering that are not terminal.

Neuromuscular disorders? Paralyzing accidents? Persistent migraines? What will make the future list of challenges these people of “compassion” will compile in an attempt to promote the “choice” of suicide?

This story has placed me amid several conversations involving people with similar diagnoses who fought, prayed and cherished every moment of life, even under the toughest of circumstances.

A woman told me she is uplifted still by the memory of sharing her husband’s final journey with love and gratitude for every day. I read about a college basketball player who is inspiring her team and her city by playing as long as her condition will allow. Stories like these, not the orchestrated suicides, are the definition of dignity.

A free society might permit the dark partnership of suffering people and doctors willing to show them out. But a wise society will realize that what might sound reasonable at first will surely descend into a devaluation of life leading to suicidal collusions based on far flimsier foundations.

The Mark Davis Show airs from 7 to 10 a.m weekdays on KSKY-AM (660). He can be reached at markdavisshow@gmail.com.