Bill Text: WV HCR74 | 2024 | Regular Session | Introduced
Bill Title: Defending Life by Rejecting Euthanasia
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Republican 6-0)
Status: (Engrossed - Dead) 2024-02-19 - To Judiciary [HCR74 Detail]
Download: West_Virginia-2024-HCR74-Introduced.html
HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 74
(By Delegates McGeehan, Phillips, Ridenour, Smith, and Winzenreid)
[Introduced February 12, 2024; referred to the Committee on Rules]
Defending Life by Rejecting Euthanasia.
Whereas, Societies should not be judged on the basis of how well they provide for the happiness of their young, healthy, and wealthy members, but on the basis of how well they provide for their elderly, their sick, and their poor, the former group relying, to a greater extent, on their individual strength to carry them through their pursuit of happiness, while the latter group relies on the aid of others; and
Whereas, The happiness of a society's strong members proves virtually nothing about the character of that society, while the happiness of the weak comes to prove that others have helped them, demonstrating that the bonds between family, friends, and neighbors are loving and efficacious, and that the social fabric is strong. In our case, the happiness of the elderly, the sick, and the poor of West Virginia is proof that our people are knit together in a resilient community, rather than thrown together by mere geographic proximity; and
Whereas, For this reason alone, it is necessary that the practice of euthanasia, which intentionally encourages and ultimately enacts the suicide of the elderly and the infirm, remain as foreign to the common life of West Virginia as it is to the health of any just and reasonable society; and
Whereas, Instead of that unconditional commitment to love and service by which individuals transcend their own individuality and begin to live as a community, euthanasia offers only conditionality, which measures each and every person against standards of living that may well find them wanting, and instead of occasions to test and prove the promises we make to "love each other no matter what," euthanasia degrades infirmity, old age, and the compassion these weaknesses can elicit into occasions to care for each other only so much, within a narrow extent, and under only finite conditions of convenience; and
Whereas, Euthanasia, while ostensibly limiting its impact only to the end of life, actually demoralizes everyone at all stages of life, limiting our noblest social impulses by characterizing life itself as only conditionally worth living, while reducing the care for those who suffer to a mere option rather than the sacred duty of those who have to give of themselves to those who have not; and
Whereas, The suffering of those who desire to kill themselves is not a sign of a banal need to be met by the provision of some appropriate technology, but a sure sign of social collapse, and no one with a love for our State could provide such suicidal desire with the means to its destructive end; and
Whereas, Good conscience and common sense urge us to instead eradicate whatever grim causes of suicidal desire afflict our West Virginia community. To do otherwise would be to adopt an unequal and irrational policy by which suicidal ideation in the young and otherwise healthy is treated as an illness in want of a cure, while suicidal ideation in the elderly and infirm is treated as a demand in need of a supply; and
Whereas, Such a two-faced answer to the timeless question of whether life is worth living makes a mockery of good and prudential government, while giving credence to the cynicism that so often sees in the rule of law nothing more than a favoring of the strong over the weak, and ultimately such a dreadful policy forces the state and its representatives to determine between good and bad suicide, thus expanding the state's authority beyond every reasonable limit and inciting it to act as a god amongst men; and
Whereas, To any such apparent "demand" for euthanasia, nothing but a society-wide effort of reform will serve as an adequate response. Such a campaign against the despairing loneliness and lack of meaning in life, spreading from the nihilism of our present age, must include the active encouragement of friendship, intergenerational family life, meaningful work, civic participation, the uplifting of our community with beautiful architecture, festivals and holidays to celebrate our common life together, compassionate medical care, a culture of genuine love and appreciation for the elderly, and the unequivocal affirmation that every human life, no matter what suffering it bears, is never a burden to be done away with, but a gift of infinite and interminable goodness from that which is True and Beautiful; and
Whereas, It is not the case that the technical consent of the infirm and elderly to their own suicide renders euthanasia as something just and good. We are social creatures, apt to act on each other's desires and meet each other’s expectations in order to keep a broad and abiding peace; and
Whereas, When a society enshrines in its law, decrees in its conventional wisdom, and affirms in its practice the possibility of licit suicide, it is a vain pretense to imagine that such validations are not themselves formative of individual desire and that they do not suggest, in morally empowered terms, suicide as a responsible and law-abiding solution to the problem of pain; and
Whereas, The very possibility that doctors, whose authority in our society can be profound, may prescribe suicide as a solution to a terminal disease or disheartening prognosis, presents the act as a medicine rather than as the definitive rejection of all medicine, and so encourages suicidal desire to flourish; and
Whereas, Euthanasia is not a solution to a need, but is rather productive of the very need that it purports to fulfill, and therefore, our great State of West Virginia ought to preemptively reject euthanasia by an amendment to our state constitution, for this accords with our tradition of patriotism; and
Whereas, A healthy commonwealth relies on the virtues of its members, and a well-functioning republic demands that those who participate in it embody a minimum of goodwill, prudence, and fortitude, by which the individual is enabled to love the common good and to sacrifice his own interests for its sake, and a community which does not foster this patriotism is a community in name only, a mere collective mix of individuals unwilling to live as members of a social body that both includes and transcends them; and
Whereas, This patriotism, which sustains and nourishes West Virginia, is a seed sown in the soil of the family and a lesson learned in the school of friendship. These patriotic lessons of love are severely disrupted by euthanasia, which would encourage healthy residents of our State to facilitate the suicide of those whose age and infirmity would otherwise call forth their loving sacrifice, even as it would encourage those in our State who suffer to see themselves as a burden to their friends-rather than as an occasion for their heroic love and virtue; and
Whereas, A people accustomed to euthanizing their fathers are not a people prepared to sacrifice themselves for their fathers’ home, and children raised under advertisements recommending suicide are not children who are being raised ready to suffer and give of themselves for the good of our state, all of which demonstrates that euthanasia destroys the solidarity of the family, and that through this root, it would ultimately help destroy the character of West Virginia; and
Whereas, The rejection of euthanasia as utterly foreign to the spirit of West Virginia is a commitment to keeping our hands free of innocent blood and to professing, in all humility, a limitation to the power of the state, which cannot administer death as a cure for pain without usurping divine prerogatives; and
Whereas, Such a limitation is also a protection against the avarice and cynicism of a wealthy elite, who stand to gain by disrupting the stable and peaceful customs by which families in our State love each other, bear with one another, and care for their sick and dying. Euthanasia suggests that these customs stand in need of new commodities, technologies, professions, and facilities, the development of which cannot be guided by the ideals of care and compassion alone, but must promote themselves for the sake of producing a profit; and
Whereas, By rejecting this redefinition of death as a commodity to be purchased from and administered by strangers, we also reject the bleak and morbid world such a commodification entails, namely, a world in which merchants with a monetary interest in increasing the number of our residents who kill themselves are given leeway to advertise their poisons, promote their products, lobby for their industry, and otherwise invade civic and domestic spaces with the suggestion that we either kill ourselves or facilitate the suicide of our loved ones; therefore, be it
Resolved by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That the State of West Virginia rejects the bleak and morbid world that euthanasia and the commodification of death entails; and be it
Further Resolved, That we recognize that euthanasia destroys the solidarity of the family, and that it would thereby destroy the State of West Virginia; and be it
Further Resolved, That it is necessary that the practice of euthanasia, which intentionally encourages and ultimately enacts the suicide of the elderly and the infirm, remains as foreign to the common life of West Virginia as it is to the health of any just and reasonable society; and be it
Further Resolved, That the State of West Virginia preemptively and decisively rejects euthanasia; and be it
Further Resolved, That against this culture of death, we must offer a vision of a restored and rejuvenated West Virginia, a community whose strength is known by the happiness of the weak, the infirm, and the elderly, who are not only aided and assisted by their family, friends, and society until the day they die, but whose very suffering is the irreplaceable means by which we may transcend ourselves, enter deeply into communion with one another, fulfill our nature as social creatures, and learn the sacrificial love that so often gives life its meaning.
