I remember reading this smug op-ed piece written by a woman who was Catholic. She said that suffering was part of God's plan, and that trying to circumvent suffering through euthanasia was evil, weak, morally reprehensible, and Against God's Plan.
I couldn't help but wonder - is anesthesia during surgery Against God's Plan? Doesn't God want us to suffer? I guess her tactic was to say that anything that prolongs life was good, like surgery or antibiotics. So if suffering is the noble and Christ-like thing to do, why not just ban all painkillers and anesthesia and anesthetists and anesthesiologists? (note: does anybody know the difference between these two professions? I should Google it. I've heard people refer to both and I'm curious.)
For someone like her, a person who only has to occasionally pop a Tylenol for the errant headache...I find it incredibly arrogant for her to dictate that terminally ill patients don't deserve respite from pain. And even if she had gone through cancer or something that caused her to suffer - how does she know that her suffering equates to those of folks whose pain is so awful that they wish for death? We don't have an objective scale to measure pain. What I want to know is...how can she compare her suffering to that of other people?