Editor: Isn’t it ironic? As a society, we are very concerned with the trend of increased suicide among our teenagers. We send teams of counsellors to aboriginal communities where the suicide rate is very high.
While those suicides are ones we cannot accept, and struggle to reduce, the move for assisted suicide is being pushed. How do these two opposing views fit together?
Why is the suicide death of a teenager so upsetting, and the taking of one’s own life in aboriginal communities so disturbing? Yet the same value is not put on the life of our elderly, our disabled, or those who have terminal illnesses.
Assisted suicide is held out to them as a dignified and honourable solution to life’s problems and challenges. One suicide is to be fought against, the other is to be desired? It makes no sense.
Assisted suicide is wrong.
Ginny VanderHorst,
Langley
