The next frontier of pro-life activism

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

Colorado briefly considered becoming the fifth state to legalize euthanasia this year. Earlier this week, sponsors of the legislation withdrew it from consideration in the state House, saying they didn’t have enough votes. Though Colorado is safe for now from laws allowing physician-assisted suicide, John Stonestreet says the issue is a new frontier for pro-life activism in the United States.

“We’re kind of behind the curve of some countries in Europe that have enacted it, and that also allows us to see what has happened in those countries,” Stonestreet said.

In places like Belgium and the Netherlands, physician-assisted suicide has expanded to include not just patients with terminal illness, but also those with conditions deemed “hopeless.”

“How many of us deal with a condition from which we’ll never recover? And then the impetus for allowing this moves to the idea of something that becomes unbearable. Unbearable for one is not unbearable for another,” Stonestreet said.

The euthanasia movement espouses a worldview that believes suffering is meaningless and individual autonomy is the ultimate good.

“From a Christian worldview, we know that’s not the case,” Stonestreet said. “It was actually the suffering of Christ that brought the restoration and redemption of the world. And many people who have lived through suffering themselves or the suffering of a loved one have found great meaning and purpose in suffering.”

The stories of those who have sought relief from suffering via physician-assisted suicide are compelling, but “there’s no lines, really that can keep this out of the realm of assaulting and attacking human dignity,” Stonestreet said.

Listen to “Culture Friday” on The World and Everything in It.