In states that have legalized assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, virtually all of the people who have “taken advantage” of these laws by having themselves executed by their doctors are affluent white people. Hardly any blacks or Hispanics want to be euthanized. This has elite opinion concerned and seeking ways to bring diversity to the death hospitals.
In his article Assisted Suicide Is a White Privilege Policy, Wesley J. Smith notes that in California, which has recently legalized assisted suicide, 88% of those who choose to die at their doctors’ hands are white people. He comments:
Assisted suicide has always been an issue of white privilege (to borrow a term I generally disfavor), promoted most actively by liberal, highly educated, and very well-off, Marin County types who are already so empowered in society that they need never fear being pushed out of the lifeboat or deprived from receiving proper medical care.
He goes on to quote from a pro-euthansia California Public Radio piece by Sammy Caiola that tries to figure out why so few minorities want to get killed when they get sick. From California’s Aid In Dying Law Is Mostly Used By White People. Here’s Why:
The skewed numbers are likely due to issues of medical access and philosophical differences. Geriatrician Elana Shpall works at a mostly-Latino senior center called On Lok in San Francisco. She says most of her patients wouldn’t be interested in using the law.
“We talk a lot about their end of life choices and planning for the future, and most of them say something like ‘when God wills it, it will be my time’,” she said. “Based on my population, I would say it’s a big cultural barrier.”
The report suggests that minority groups simply need more information and better culturally-sensitive communication so that “everyone should feel empowered to make their own decisions about death.”
But they do! And they have! But that decision is not to let a doctor “put them out of their misery”! Rather, they are suspicious when white people want them dead instead of giving them health care. And they are putting their trust in God.
The “liberal, highly educated, and very well-off, Marin County types” have no conception of what it means to have to struggle to survive. Nor are they able to fathom the faith that says, “when God wills it, it will be my time.”
Photo: Public Domain, CC0, via PXhere.
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