Sr Constance Veit, l.s.p.
As a resident of Washington, D.C. I have been closely following the campaign to legalize assisted suicide in our Nation’s Capital. At the same time, my siblings and I have spent the last two weeks at my mother’s bedside in a hospital intensive care unit in my hometown. For days I’ve been watching the physicians and nurses tending to my mother, who is unconscious, with incredible focus and professionalism. No clinical sign has been left unexamined; no potential treatment option left undiscussed. Witnessing all of this has given me a lot to think about.
Such attention to detail; so many resources spent on a single life — and the lives of each of the other critically ill patients in this and so many other hospitals — how can we explain such an intense level of financial and human investment in the sick and elderly?
For me the answer to this question is obvious: Each human life is worth our care and attention because every person has been created in God’s image and likeness and is thus endowed with inviolable dignity and worth. As Pope Benedict XVI often said, “Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary” in God’s plan.
At Life’s End Your Last, Best Gift