The Culture of Death's Love Story?

It's maddening to watch a movie trailer resplendent with engrossing and alluring screenshots projecting a terrific flick, only to learn after paying the price of admission that you'd watched the totality of the movie's value. That's not misleading; it's good advertising.

The new movie "Me Before You" looks to be an inspirational love story. A lower-class woman in England is hired to take care of a young man who recently became a quadriplegic after being hit by a car. He inspires her to live a fuller life; she inspires him to find the joys he can still realize from his wheelchair.

That's the commercial, but that's not the actual plot. Spoiler alert: This isn't a love story; it's a story of a man's self-love leading to assisted suicide. Girl meets boy, girl falls in love with boy, girl holds boy's hand as he kills himself.

As Eric Henderson wrote in Slant Magazine, "'Me Before You' is some kind of twisted reversal of those expectations, punking its impressionable audience into believing the lie and then punishing them for their foolishness."

Before the accident, this man was impossibly wealthy and handsome, debonair and athletic. And then came tragedy, and he couldn't accept his new situation. He could only pine hopelessly for the "old me." The title is very apt. He puts himself before everyone else, but imagines his death is a grand act of selflessness.

Advocates for the disabled have been revolted by the plot, which implies that life really isn't worth living from a wheelchair. "Make no mistake: Quadriplegia is hard, and it can be tempting to give up," wrote Ben Mattlin in the Chicago Tribune. "It's a good thing I'm positively bursting with self-confidence and know I do want my life to continue. But how many of those who are struggling to maintain self-esteem, who feel unsure of their right to exist, possess the courage and sheer chutzpah to withstand the invidious message that they're better off dead?"

Mattlin wrote that what he fears about the spread of euthanasia isn't the "angel of mercy" who pulls the plug at the hospital, or the HMO that declines to pay for medications. He fears what happens to the newly disabled person "who will be unduly seduced into relieving their relatives -- and themselves -- of the burden of living with a chronic condition" by movies like this one. It "romanticizes and glamorizes an early exit for those who already feel marginalized, who feel they are living on borrowed time."

The so-called "right to die" movement never takes responsibility for its very real and very dangerous ethics slippery slope, building a cultural expectation that "useless" people will have the dignity to remove their burden from our lives. They're now trying to invent a new word to sell it: "dignicide."

Catholic News Agency blogger Jenny Uebbing pleaded that "Telling clinically depressed, chronically ill, and paralyzed people that their lives are not worth living is a tragedy." She recalled Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning movie "Million Dollar Baby," in which a "gruff but well-meaning" trainer grants a paralyzed female boxer her wish with a fatal shot of adrenaline. It "sent a depressing message about the value of an elite athlete's life post-major-trauma, but the confused message of 'loving someone enough to kill them' at least wasn't mixed in with romantic love."

For the opposing point of view, see Richard Lawson, the film critic in the appropriately named magazine Vanity Fair. He argued that "Me Before You" "approaches this thorny issue with an honorable maturity and forthrightness" and praised it for "giving us something cozy and romantic -- and, in its own weird way, aspirational."

I for one have no patience for people trying to codify their religious beliefs in U.S. law.

All US law is religious belief codified.

Assisted suicide is trying to get someone to murder you for yourself, most likely cause you're too much of a coward to do it yourself.

It's not *assisted suicide*. It's murdering someone with their permission.

I believe it to be self-evident that nobody should suffer needlessly and that if somebody is terminal and wants to spare themselves and their family and their friends the painful throes of death, that is absolutely their prerogative.

Then they can do it themselves and not drag anyone else into the fray.

And just like all the gay rights stuff, it's a slippery slope. How long before the *right to die* becomes the *duty to die*?

And how long before the decision is taken out of the hands of the individual and placed in the loving hands of a federal government bureaucracy. Heck, national health care is already in place.

All US law is religious belief codified.

Nonsense. There is, to be sure, a close relationship between the two, and many laws have religious underpinnings, or at the very least are informed by religious beliefs, but it's not even in the neighborhood of correct to say that all US law is religious belief codified. For example, it is the fondest desire of many a believer to have their conception of the divine prayed to in public schools in an organized, state-sponsored fashion. This cannot happen legally.

Assisted suicide is trying to get someone to murder you for yourself, most likely cause you're too much of a coward to do it yourself. It's not *assisted suicide*. It's murdering someone with their permission.

This is essentially an argument over semantics. You can call it "murder" all you wish, and I don't doubt for a second that you believe this fervently, but it seems to me to be something of a non sequitur to say that somebody who wishes to be assisted in their death, or the person who carries those wishes out, could possibly be involved in a "murder."By definition, murder requires "malice aforethought." Whatever you may think about this issue, I think you'd have to concede that there's no malice involved. Also, you strike me as the kind of person who believes that ALL suicide is "cowardly." If that's true, then calling this "cowardly" is mostly just a fig leaf, no?

I had an uncle who developed cancer in the late 80s. He survived and was in remission for about a decade. When the cancer came back in the late 90s, he wanted so badly to end it. He didn't want to put my aunt through any more difficulty and didn't want to suffer again, being 10 years older and weaker. His fight was just gone. Still, he couldn't bring himself to end it. He had great admiration for Kevorkian and wished that such people were everywhere. Even under the direst of circumstances, it was still too much for him to do the deed himself. I understand this completely. It's not "cowardly" to seek help, it's like anything else in life - sometimes you need a helping hand in getting started and dealing with complexities.

And just like all the gay rights stuff, it's a slippery slope. How long before the *right to die* becomes the *duty to die*?

I suspect there's probably some truth to this. If euthanasia becomes more widely accepted throughout society, it will likely bring some kind of pressure to bear on the terminally ill. There are surely people who, as of right now, wouldn't dream of ending their lives but who may if the laws and mores are different. Maybe their families will feel that pressure, too.

But there are many millions of people RIGHT NOW who wish for assisted suicide to be legal. Some polls have it as high as 70 percent (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/05/california-legalizes-assisted-suicide-amid-growing-support-for-such-laws/) and I'm unable to find any poll in which it fails to reach a majority. Statistically speaking, it's literally impossible that some of these people aren't Christians. So as always, even people who share your religious views wish to have the freedom to make their own decisions with their doctor and family without interference from the state. Which some people would tell you is the foundation of conservative belief.

For example, it is the fondest desire of many a believer to have their conception of the divine prayed to in public schools in an organized, state-sponsored fashion. This cannot happen legally.

Oh, nonsense. It happened lageally in this country at the time of its inception, at the time of the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

It happened and was practiced legally in this country for hundreds of years before the whining thin skinned atheists threw their temper tantrums and demanded that everyone live by their beliefs.

It's hypocritical to a degree that escapes those very same atheists they they complain and whine about not having someone else's religious beliefs imposed on them and yet they are perfectly find imposing their beliefs on other, even to the point of abusing the authority of the courts to enforce what they had no legal grounds to enforce otherwise.

If people wish to off themselves, they can do it on their own without the *help* of others.

The slippery slope of the gay rights movement is the PERFECT example. In the beginning, they just wanted to *be left alone*. Now they are demanding total acceptance of their lifestyle as normal to the point of controlling what people can even say about it.

They denied initially that they would be pushing for legalized gay marriage and yet here we are.

The very same thin will happen with the *right to die*. It WILL become the duty to die and then the choice WILL be taken away from the individual and the family. That's already happening in some cases, the Terri Schiavo case being the most infamous.

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