Here’s a contrast in outlook: even as the Schiller Institute convened its international conference dedicated to the subject of how to secure the right to a human life for every person now on the planet and those in generations to come, the City of London’s flagship weekly magazine, The Economist, launched a renewed campaign to ensure as many people as possible all over the world have the “basic freedom” to be assisted in dying.
The Economist’s Nov. 13th editorial call is chilling: “A Final Choice: The Welcome Spread of Assisted Dying.” The kicker: “But too many are still denied this basic freedom.”
“The Economist first made the case for assisted dying in 2015.... Since then, it has become more widely available. Assisted dying is now legal in one form or another in a dozen countries, and the trend seems likely to continue…. The number of people who die this way is increasing, though still small. In the Netherlands it rose from roughly 1,800 in 2003 to nearly 7,000 in 2020, or 4% of all deaths. As more countries liberalize, the global total will rise further,” the editors celebrate.
Sound like euthanasia? Oh no, it’s unproven “that families exhausted by the demands of caring for sick, elderly relatives will place undue pressure on them to end their lives, or that cash-strapped states will encourage the most expensive terminally ill patients to hurry up and die.”
