Wesley J. Smith: New York Times Op-Ed Pushes Assisted Suicide for the Mentally Ill


(NRO) – The phony argument that legalized assisted suicide will permanently be limited to the terminally ill took a big hit today by a New York Times op-ed in which an oft-suicidal Canadian philosophy professor, Clancy Martin, argues that mentally ill people who are suicidal should receive help from doctors to die.

Martin’s first paragraph makes clear why his thesis should be rejected out of hand:

My first attempt to kill myself was when I was a child. I tried again as a teenager; as an adult, I’ve attempted suicide repeatedly and in a variety of ways. And yet, as a 55-year-old white man (a member of one of the groups at the highest risk for suicide in America) and the happily married father of five children, I am thankful that I am incompetent at killing myself. CONTINUE