"It will never happen," they scoffed.

In 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the right of unborn Americans to live, thoughtful people warned that such a low attitude toward life would eventually lead to societal acceptance of euthanasia, the killing of people deemed unfit to live. The prediction so widely scoffed at has become reality.

One might have expected Holland--the land of tolerance of drugs, pornography, and prostitution--to be first in the world to legalize euthanasia. Indeed, Dutch doctors kill approximately 10,000 patients each year, many without the patients’ consent, even though it remains technically illegal to do so. Despite "regulation" of euthanasia that began in 1993, the Dutch government and medical association look the other way as physicians circumvent the law. In Holland, it has essentially become a crime punishable by death to be born handicapped or to be terminally ill.

Although Holland has plunged headlong into the culture of death, it is the State of Oregon that has become the first jurisdiction in the world officially to legalize euthanasia. Oregon’s medical establishment has shrouded procedures in secrecy and closed records to public access, to allow doctors who skirt the regulations to avoid public scrutiny and accountability. Measures intended to protect patients’ rights are, by and large, ignored.

Officially, patients suffering from clinical depression are required to be treated first for the depression, in case they decide to change their minds about wanting to die. In practice, patients who are not even terminally ill are being killed because of decisions they made while in a state of depression. Also, decisions to commit suicide are supposed to be made only in the counsel of medical professionals with whom the patient has a long-standing relationship. In reality, if a patient's physician recommends treatment instead of suicide, the pro-death groups readily produce a doctor who has no compunction about killing patients.

Advocates of euthanasia masquerade behind pleasant words and images such as "compassion," "dignity," and "relief from suffering." Fortified with such language, these groups claim to hold the moral high ground. The movement is undergirded, however, by selfish motives: convenience, cost containment, and a genuine lack of compassion. How compassionate is it when a person suffering from advanced cancer cannot obtain treatment for the cancer, but can be put to death at public expense? Such is the case in Oregon, and such will one day be the nationwide, unless this murderous movement is stopped.

If you think I am overstating the case, think about this: Already, 5-8% of American doctors admit to having intentionally killed patients. In other words, tens of thousands of American doctors are murderers. In Texas, instead of trying to halt the killing, the state legislature voted to grant physicians a "license to kill" patients against the patients’ will. Fortunately, Governor Bush vetoed that reckless, heartless measure.

As a nation, we are guilty of exterminating nearly 40,000,000 people in the name of "reproductive choice," eliminating any possibility of choice for the victims. In the process, we have lowered our view of human life, to the point that in many cases animals have more rights than people. Let us not usher in a holocaust of the handicapped and ill under the rubric of "choice in dying" or "compassion in dying." True compassion requires love and sacrifice, and a physician knowledgable in the treatment of depression and severe pain. The process can be costly and inconvenient, but it is the least we can offer our fellow human beings.