Some 20 New Yorkers, all reportedly terminally ill, are said to have chosen death by assisted suicide in the first month since the option became available in the Empire State. But if prominent “right to die” activists have their way, the practice will soon become as easy and routine as ordering a pizza for delivery.
“David Hoffman, assistant professor of professional practice in bioethics at Columbia University, estimated that 20 prescriptions for life-ending medications have been issued so far since the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program was enacted in August,” The New York Post reported Sept. 24. “Hoffman based his findings on conversations with doctors, hospitals and organizations he works with, like the Completed Life Initiative, which has been involved in implementing the law.”
Eligibility is strictly regulated... for now.
“In order to be qualify [sic], patients must be 18 or older, and have been given a terminal diagnosis with six months or less to live,” the paper notes.
As critics strenuously warned when Canada first trod down this gilded road in 2016, promised strict regulations would methodically melt away over time as “assisted death” became normalized. Fast-forward ten years, and you can now get “evaluated” and approved for self-termination at a donut shop.
The Enterprise of Death
This not-so-unknown future is rapidly approaching in the US, and there is even a start-up corporation looking to get ahead of the curve. For a fee, Quiĕtus will “help terminally ill New Yorkers navigate the legal and logistical complexities of the Medical Aid in Dying process, and connect them with the doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists, and others who can provide the care they need,” the company states on its website.
Free with the Daily Briefing
85EssaysUnravel the Constitution
Hamilton, Madison & Jay’s complete case for America, free and searchable in the Publius Reader.
Free with the Daily Briefing. Unsubscribe anytime.
The new company enjoyed splashy publicity via a Sept. 3 feature article in The New York Times. The tacky narrative extolled death assistance much as one writes up a trendy new food joint bursting onto the scene.
“You can think of it as a start-up for better deaths. [Company founders] have created a one-stop shop, Quiĕtus, where people can get help meeting every legal and medical requirement for a death on their own terms,” the paper writes.
A “one-stop shop” for “better death,” but there is no such thing as a slippery slope in the Culture of Death. What would ever make you suspect that?
“Quiĕtus comprises an eclectic crew of nine clinical professionals,” The Times continues, including a palliative care physician who drove her mother-in-law to Vermont to end her life via assisted suicide and is “quietly obsessive about comforting the dying,” as the paper puts it. There is also the “hospice social worker who used to be a Buddhist monk and found that caring for the dying felt like a way of continuing his Buddhist practice.”
Multiple pictures of Buddhists in prayer accompany the article, as if to further accentuate the post-Christian nature of America’s modern views on life and death.
Quiĕtus is indeed a business venture, and the price for the service is not cheap.
“The total cost to die with Quiĕtus is just under $12,000. This covers medical consultations, psychological evaluations, logistical support, drugs and help for the grieving family after the death. The team also says it will care for people who cannot afford the cost,” the article details.
As critics of medical assistance in dying have also long maintained, this new vision of orchestrated death as public or private service crosses the fine line between preparing oneself for a good death and active self-extinguishment.
‘The Final Chapter, Written With Their Own Hand’
Quiĕtus openly touts that it offers customers an opportunity to control how, when, and where they die. “The final chapter of a person’s story, written with their own hand,” a headline on the company website exclaims. The enticement of a home death is also key to the advertising pitch.
“In-home attendance by experienced clinicians on the day of death, to support patient and family,” is one of the services offered by Quiĕtus. No need to make your way to a Soylent Green Thanatorium. We’ll come to you!
From Liberty Nation
News, Trivia, Facts, Check Us Out
Stay informed.
Today’s news, the Constitution and American history, written for young readers.
Visit GenerationLiberty.com
This strikes at the heart of what makes assisted suicide so dangerous. Making peace with an approaching death is replaced by full personal autonomy over one’s demise. When that is the rationale, it doesn’t take long to expand the premise to those not suffering from terminal illness. If you have any doubts on this score, just look to your north. Canada will show you the Pandora’s box that state-sanctioned controlled human death is bound to become in all its ridiculous horror.
The Times’ piece ended with Dr. Tara Shapiro, one of the lead clinical staffers at Quiĕtus, reflecting on her mother-in-law’s assisted suicide death in Vermont several years ago. Once again, control was at the center of the tragic story.
The full details of Janice Shapiro’s final exit were not included in the NYT piece. Tara Shapiro is a long-time advocate of MAiD, and she wrote up the experience in an April 2024 blog article for Compassion & Choices, a leading pro-assisted suicide organization.
Is this the coming face of death in America?
“There is one pharmacist in the state of Vermont who fills aid-in-dying prescriptions. He prepares the medication, hand delivers it to wherever you are in the state, and explains everything to you. It was amazing and helped me feel very confident about the process.
“After he had come and gone, Janice didn’t want to sit around and wait any longer. So each of my sons said some beautiful words and had some private time with their grandmother. I mixed up the medication, brought it in to her, and then the five of us gathered around her, holding her as she drank the medicine. She handed me the empty cup, and then she was unresponsive. She died there with us surrounding her. It was quick, and it was peaceful.”
Surround your loved one in a circle and watch them drink the poison. It’s ancient Greece all over again, only the hemlock is no longer a form of ritualized punishment. Instead, it is mercy, liberation, empowerment. Quick and easy peace. It would be unspeakably cruel for a fashionably progressive 21st-century society to limit such tranquil self-determination solely to the terminally ill, wouldn’t it?
