By Judie Brown
Dr. Seuss wrote those words, “Today you are you” in his book, “Happy Birthday to You”. As is the case with all his books, it is a perennially favorite children’s book. The entire quote is “Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.”
Only Seuss could get away with language like that, but there is a strong lesson in those words for those of us who struggle to focus attention on the value of a single person, an individual, an unrepeatable you.
Placing those words in the context of the pro-life worldview, we could say that if one is honest, certain people and institutions are killing more human beings now than ever before. The culture is denying the tragedy of these deadly acts at an alarming rate not only in our nation but around the world.
I think particularly of a young Australian named Lily Thai, who died under the protection of Australian aid-in-dying laws.
Lily suffered from AAG—autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy—and the pain was too difficult for her to bear. The disease is very rare and treatment options are limited, but there are ways to handle the disease that do not require killing. Unfortunately, Lily’s situation came to the public’s attention because she wanted to die not because physicians ran to her aid to help her live.
But why should they when such medical professionals are killing people right and left? Whether they are unwanted, inconvenient, or simply the “bad” result
of a one-night stand, erasing their lives is protected by law. Life is cheap and getting cheaper around the world.
This ghastly view of so-called inconvenient people applies to little babies who are residing in the womb or in fallopian tubes, people the world has suggested would be better off never to be born! These children are, as Lily was, simply too much of a challenge in a utilitarian world that focuses on pleasure and rejects pain or discomfort at any cost.
What if Lily had been surrounded by unfathomable love like Christ’s love for her rather than the ethically flawed people who opted to do as she desired? We will never know. You see Lily died “peacefully” within seconds after the lethal IV drip was administered. A tragic story but not uncommon in our faithless world.
When St. John Paul II recalled this quote from the Vatican’s Declaration on Euthanasia, he was reminding us of a teaching that will never change:
Nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying. Furthermore, no one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly. Nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action.
It is in those last few words that we acknowledge the truth in the words of Dr. Seuss: “Today you are you.” Every person is precious; Lily was precious, an unrepeatable miracle, and yet the world concurred in her request for death in exactly the same way medical personnel agree to kill preborn children every day by any method requested. These are not legitimate practitioners of ethics but human beings who have devoted themselves, whether they realize it or not, to being the snake oil salesmen within the culture of death.
When the question is asked, Would you entrust your life to them? the answer should be a resounding no. “Today you are you,” thanks be to God.
