Suicide Prevention and Dire AI Warnings

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The issues that matter most, right here. The Drew Mariani Show.

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On Relevant Radio.

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Suicide should not be normalized in society, which this bill does.

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A new legal challenge to the state's medical aid in dying law, Cardinal Blay Supich and two orders of Catholic nuns are among those asking a federal judge to block the law before it takes effect later this month.

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This law, the way it's crafted, will compel the health care physicians, the health care personnel, to cooperate with suicide.

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The law would allow terminally ill adults diagnosed by two doctors with less than six months to live to request and administer life-ending medication. A psychological evaluation is required, and the request to opt in must be made both written and orally.

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It's The Drew Mariani Show on Relevant Radio.

Drew Mariani (0:59)

That was CBS Chicago. The Archdiocese of Chicago is suing to block an assisted suicide law from going into effect in Illinois. Good afternoon, I'm Drew Mariani. Do you know what today is?

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. And the message around the world is, I think, very simple and absolute, absolutely right. When somebody believes that life is no longer worth living, you don't abandon that person. You reach out and you listen, you get them health and you remind them that their life has a real value. But there's another questionable, there's an uncomfortable question, maybe is a better way of putting it, that we need to ask. How can a culture say, please don't take your life while increasingly telling another person who is suffering? Well, under those circumstances, we'll help you take it. So there's money to be made in the process. We're going to talk about it all with Wesley Smith. He's going to be joining me here in a minute. He is the chair of the Discovery Institute. It's a center on human exceptionalism. He's also an attorney, a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. And he blogs, I get you plugged into his podcast and a whole lot more. But when I saw the date on the calendar, I realized today's the World Suicide Prevention Day and the World Health Organization. I did a quick search. There's about 720,000 people who died by suicide around the world each year. That number to me seemed low based on what we're seeing, but that's what I came across. This year's though, I think the message is changing the narrative on suicide and the stigma is being reduced.

People are looking at it like it's compassionate care.

And if you're suffering, if you're depressed, if you've begun to believe that life doesn't matter, you know what? People are saying it's okay to take your life. But I want to say quite the opposite, your life has value, your suffering does have meaning. And there's help out there for you. Wesley Smith, he writes, like I said for the National Review, he was raising a deep and uncomfortable issue on World Suicide Prevention Day about what happens when a society's commitment to suicide prevention develops an exception. Because increasingly, the message becomes, if you're young and suicidal, we'll intervene. But if you're physically healthy and you're suicidal, okay, we'll intervene.

But if you are seriously ill or you're disabled or you're approaching the end of your life, you're old, you have other problems, well, in a growing number of jurisdictions, a conversation can be very, very different. So let's talk about it right now with Wesley. He joins us today, he also wrote a book called Culture of Death, The Age of Do Harm Medicine. Follow him online at the Wesley J Smith on X. Wesley, good to have you back, good afternoon.

Wesley J Smith (3:54)

Drew, good talking to you again.

Drew Mariani (3:56)

This is pretty crazy stuff. People have this idea that you can eliminate somebody who's suffering by taking their life. And I would argue you don't eliminate suffering by eliminating the person who suffers. You can relieve pain, you can provide palliative care, you can treat depression, you don't take their life, and yet we've gotten to this point in the culture where the stigma for this seems to have gone.

How can society, Wesley, simultaneously promote suicide prevention and physician-assisted suicide without creating this contradictory message? I mean, how do we get to this point? Why so much confusion around it?

Wesley J Smith (4:33)

Well, they can't. And it's like saying, don't smoke, but if you do, use a filter cigarette.

Drew Mariani (4:38)

Right.

Wesley J Smith (4:39)

I mean, it's like saying some, you see somebody about to jump off a bridge and you say, no, no, life is worth living. Let me help you. And the fellow says, well, I have cancer. And then you say, oh, that's different. Let me hold your coat.