Judgement Saves Lives

My work week is gruelling because I am always writing--and rewriting--sad stories. It's meaningful, though, because freedom from the Culture of Death isn't free, and if any of my readers have suffered catastrophically from the Sexual Revolution, it may be because our parents and grandparents and their priests and ministers and rabbis didn't fight hard enough.

This week I was fighting against the day your child or grandchild goes to a euthanasia clinic after a spell of depression and is put down like a dog because he doesn't believe he'll ever be happy again.

Believe it or not, my battle did not meet with universal applause, and I got a rare piece of hate mail. I get surprisingly little hate mail, but I've had enough over the years--plus column cancellations and rejection letters---to toughen me up about it. Well, when it comes from people I've never met, or never met in person, I'm pretty tough.  When it comes from good friends and old colleagues (even rarer), I'm a wreck.

The great thing about this piece of hate mail, however, is that it showed how my (heavily edited) op. ed.  about a now-dead Dutch woman (about whom you can read about at LSN) made at least one person REALLY MAD. S/he was just appalled that I had the temerity to say that the now-dead euthanasia-demanding Dutch woman had done a terrible thing and enjoyed doing it.

Having coped with clinical depression myself (though not, thank heavens, psychosis), I don't automatically give the mentally ill a total pass on their/our behaviour. Freedom is usually impaired, not totally wiped out, by mood disorders and mental illness. However, I gave the departed the benefit of the doubt, expressing my opinion that very little guilt attached to her,  and saved my choicer remarks for the complete strangers who typed sentimental versions of "Jump, jump" on the deceased's Facebook page.

I suspect my critic was one of those complete strangers although s/he didn't lay into me for insulting them. Nope, the anger was directed towards my refusal to see the departed as the brave and noble freedom-fighter against oppressive Dutch euthanasia regulations her fans told her she was. And that's good because that means I may have saved some lives.

Why? Because people seem very frightened of the negative judgement of complete strangers. They even think it is a kind of weapon, which they now use in return by telling Mrs Judgey what a b**** she is, etc. But I don't think sending an angry message is enough to assuage the discomfort of having felt judged for egging on a suicide. I think such an email writer may now think hard before lazily writing "You'll find comfort in your mother's arms, sweetheart" (or whatever) to the suicidal daughter of a widower who (by the way) didn't want his child to die.

Even better, my critic may also be stopped in his or her fantasies of also becoming a noble hero of the right-to-euthanasia because, look out, there will be Mean People somewhere in the world who will JUDGE, and in THEIR minds he or she will not be a hero but someone who has done a Bad Thing.

And suicide is a bad thing. Even if you put aside the metaphysical reasons why this is so, it is still so because it is CONTAGIOUS and causes utter anguish for those caught up in it. For this reason, I seriously hope the deceased's father and friends are in therapy.

Suicide is also incredibly ugly, and one of the most powerful things I was ever told in high school was that when you die, your bowels relax, so that if even you get yourself up as Juliet, maybe putting on a white nightie and lying down in on clean white sheets, you will be found in a smelly puddle of excrement.*

God alone knows how many lives were saved by that image.

Assisted suicide removes some of the ugliness of suicide, so I can see why the suicidal would rather leave the dirty work to a professional. However, this still does not solve the problem of people expressing their judgement that suicide is wrong. Of course suicide is bloody wrong--we're born with "Thou shalt not kill" tattooed on our hearts---and managing to repress that thought is so hard, it's no wonder people are furious when people like me pop up saying "The suicidal woman did a bad thing."

Yes, I will continue to judge the actions of suicides. I may even, depending on the circumstances, judge the person. The time I was more depressed than I ever had been, my best friend--who isn't a believer or even pro-life--tore a strip off me when I mentioned the S word. She told me what she had said at a suicide's funeral in her rage at her dead friend: it was basically (and mysteriously) "I would have preferred if she had murdered other people."
   
Well, if I had needed a bucket of water over my head--I didn't, for as I explained to a dubious therapist, my faith forbade suicide and, besides, I couldn't do that to my family--that would have been it. My super-gentle, self-effacing, generous, leftist pal was totally judgey in defence of my life, and that, dear readers, is true love.

I had another communication a few weeks ago. This communication was a bit scary because it came from the Scottish government in response to one of the emails I had sent them about ab*rtion. It was also scary because it told me the government wanted to remove the stigma of ab*rtion.

Well, you can't remove the "stigma" of ab*rtion. First, "stigma" is Greek for "wound", and even if the poor mother isn't wounded, physically or mentally, the embryo or fetus sure is.  Second, there are millions upon millions of people alive today who think ab*rtion is wrong, and even if they are afraid to say so, they are not afraid to think it. They might conquer any temptation to judge the women who get them and even the people who do them, but they will still judge their actions as WRONG.

They will do this because the actions ARE wrong, and it really takes some mental effort to hide this fact from oneself. Hence the public's terrible discomfort with pro-lifers and the over-the-top rage against our witness.

And that is the scary part because a government that wants to eradicate a "stigma" that can't be eradicated might come down hard on those who point that out. I will not be voting SNP again, that's for sure.

To stop the inevitable, yes, I have friends who have attempted suicide, and a high school pal who is often in my prayers succeeded in committing suicide, and at least one post-abortive friend, whom I admire very much, despite our opposed views on almost everything. I think what she did is wrong, and she knows that, but somehow we're still friendly, for which I am grateful.

*The deceased revealed before her death that the information that she would turn blue gave her pause. She didn't mention excrement. I wonder if the counsellor mentioned excrement.