First the unborn, then the elderly - who will be next ?

The goodness of a society can be judged in many ways by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. When the 1973 Roe Vs. Wade Supreme court decision was passed, it sanctioned the persecution of the most innocent, voiceless and vulnerable citizens. It is the groups who that are weak who get persecuted first in a society which is dominated by the strong, wherein 'might is right'. But in a world where might is right, there is no place for love or what the Greeks would call 'Agape'. There is only raw power where those who are on the margins of society are pushed to the outer limits to make way for the relentless march of the well-to-do, healthy, go-getters, jet-setters and people who contribute. So this grim utilitarian picture of human personhood would be seen to make less and less room for the elderly. Being pro-life does not just consist in standing up for the voiceless unborn, but also for the aged. A society which starts to eschew a supernatural and metaphysically important understanding of human life will not see the importance and value of a human being as it nears its time to exit stage left on the stage of life.
So this brings us to the physician-assisted patient suicide H H 1468 bill which is currently pending legislation in MA. A bill of this kind has already been passed in Oregon and it's instantiation in legislatures across the country may follow in an infective invective against the aging elderly (yellow states have passed the legislation like Montana, Oregon and Washington, red have pending bills)):


Now the euphemism-generating language engineers have been playing with the phrase 'death with dignity', the only merit about which I can see is its alliteration, and which serves to establish the exact opposite. The legislation would allow doctors to give elderly patients with terminal conditions, apparently hopeless prognoses or painful quality of life the opportunity to end their own lives with a lethal dose of poison which their doctor can give them. I'm not sure how this con coexist with the Hippocratic oath to uphold the patients well being. Further, I can imagine a person who is heavily dependent on care-givers, relatives, and others feeling far worse about themselves when their doctor presents them with this option. It would lead to a complete eclipsing of their sense of value as human being and their dignity.
As Archbishop Cardinal Sean O' Malley said in an open address to the Boston Archdiocese : "a vote for [this bill] is a vote for suicide". Oregon passed this type of legislation in November 1994, and since then, the overall suicide rate has reached a level 34 %
higher than the national average (see Oregon's state website). Suicide is the number-one metric of human discontent and unhappiness and a clear indicator that we are not at a level of human flourishing that we should want for our future.
A common attempt at justifying physician-assisted suicide is to point out that it puts an end to the pain and suffering which a person might feel, psychological and otherwise, towards the end of their lives. But surely it is not for any of us to put a person out of their misery. When we allow the patient determine it, it's suicide. We put animals out of their misery, and we are not just animals, we are human beings. Today, with pet stores, pet psychologists and pet spas, it seems we are treating the animals we like as humans and the humans we find inconvenient are being treated like animals.