Recently, news reports have carried stories about Brittany Maynard. She was a 29 year-old woman terminally ill with brain cancer.

What has drawn the attention of the media is that Brittany moved from her home state of California to Oregon. She did so, so that on a day she chose, Nov. 1, she could take her own life to escape the ravages of the disease. That is allowed by the laws of the State of Oregon, as well as four other states.

Brittany was very clear about the fact that she was frightened by the future she faced fighting the disease. She said she feared the disfigurement that could result from treatments as well as the suffering and loss of what she called her quality of life while in hospice care.

She wrote in an essay that she made this decision not just to spare herself this ordeal. She also wished to spare her family the agony of watching her drawn out suffering. Instead, Brittany planned and ultimately took a lethal dosage of medication in the presence of her mother, stepfather, husband and her best friend.

Everyone’s heart goes out to Brittany and to people in her position. Illness and pain as well as the inevitability of death are among the deepest challenges that all of us face in life. They shape not only our lives, but the lives of those around us. As Brittany has written, her suffering would be shared by her family and friends.

All of us have our own personal pains and fears, but we share as well in the sorrows of those most closely entrusted to us by God through family, love and friendship.

There have been numerous news reports and social media commentary about Brittany taking her own life. Because many of these reports and comments are being used to call for expansion of assisted suicide, we should think deeply about the issues raised by this story.

It’s important to recall that there are deep and compelling reasons why the choice she says she has made should not be made. There are reasons why our faith and human reason tell us that innocent human life should never be taken, even to relieve suffering.

For us as people of faith, human life is the highest gift of the created world. Because God has stamped on every person His own image and likeness, we bear something of Him in ourselves by our very lives.
In short, human life is a precious gift entrusted to us and we must respect that gift. We neither choose the moment that it begins for us, nor do we have the right to return that gift to God in death at a time of our choosing.

Further, as hard as it might be for us to see in the midst of pain, suffering has a mysterious spiritual value. It was given to Jesus on the cross by His Heavenly Father. Suffering somehow unites us to Christ.
That does not mean that we need to seek suffering, seek to maximize it or refuse medical assistance to alleviate pain. But it does mean that the acceptance of suffering and of God’s will for our death is part of our recognition that we are the creation, but God is the Creator.

We entrust ourselves to Him by accepting the whole experience of life, both the joys and the final sorrows.

Additionally, many of us know the pain of standing by a bedside and watching the final suffering of a loved one.

Such a moment is not just a moment of tears. It is an invitation to deep charity. Even in our helplessness at such a moment, we must call up the courage and love to help the one who is dying. And we are better for it. How often has that been a moment of beauty, of spiritual growth and even of forgiveness in the final hour?

Finally, even apart from faith, human reason has always resisted assisted suicide. It opens a door that is hard to close and leads inexorably to a lessening of respect for human dignity.

If our society were to approve of assisted suicide to relieve a certain level of pain and suffering, what if the pain and suffering were slightly less? And then slightly less again?

Would old age also qualify? At what point?

What about those who suffer from life-long disabilities, or those who simply have faced reverses in fortune in life that make it seem no longer worth living? Could society suggest or even pressure individuals that perhaps it is time to go now?

We know well the slippery slope that would result in a world that discards people and things judged to be no longer useful.

In an age where traditional value judgments are routinely challenged, we do well to examine why those judgments have become traditional. In faith and reason, they have often developed for good and deep purposes.

In this case, I will offer my prayers for Brittany and her family as they mourn for her. But I will offer my prayers, as well, that others not follow the path she has chosen.