What aid-indying prevents

Re “When aid-in-dying is illegal, predictable tragedies will follow,” Opinion, Jan. 26

As a thanatologist (one who scientifically studies death), I read with interest Nicholas Goldberg’s column. I would have preferred him to specify “when medical aid-in-dying is unavailable,” because that is actually more the issue.

Without medical guidelines and laws, people take matters into their own hands — often with guns, as both of his stories recount, and statistically speaking, most often in Florida.

As it was, the juxtaposition of his column with articles on the recent mass shootings in California made its own commentary on gun violence.

Brad DeFord Whidbey Island, Wash.

The tragedy is not what might ensue where “aid-indying” — the new euphemism for assisted suicide — is not legal, but that we as a society now consider suicide a legitimate answer to the suffering that is an inescapable part of our human experience.

In our increasingly secular world view, as more and more of us become religious “nones,” we have lost our understanding of, and faith in, the meaning of suffering in our lives.

Rather than search for that meaning, we take the easy way out, avoid suffering and, perhaps even more importantly, spare ourselves the discomfort of watching others suffer.

Our brave new post-Judeo-Christian world is one of hopelessness and despair.

Robert Rakauskas Winnetka

Abortion is a personal choice — don’t have one if it violates your theological or philosophical beliefs.

So too is the decision to end one’s life if living has become unbearably torturous. The choice must be left to the person who is facing the terminal condition.

In a free country, choices such as terminating a pregnancy or ending one’s life in the shadow of morbid suffering must be left to the individuals who are confronted by such life-and-death dilemmas.

Ben Miles Huntington Beach