Was it that they did not have a doctor there to administer the cause of death?
Canada's Supreme Court has just struck down a ban on physician-assisted suicide. There's lots of reasons and analysis floating around out there on both sides of this issue. But this is what I think it means.
Depression is a terminal illness. It ends life.
Cory and Robin, who brought joy to millions but could not touch joy in the right way at the right time to keep them with us, could cross the border, apply to a doctor, and have the doctor administer a lethal injection after today.
Would our grief be any less? Would our outcry, our compassion be any less called for? Would the world be less robbed, if that doctor was there and offered death instead of healing? Would the world have been less dark and difficult for Cory and Robin?
Is our complicit condemnation of the sick and dying in their hour of need serving dignity or betraying it? When the most stricken and pained of our brothers and sisters cry out heartbreakingly for death, is it our compassion for them or our own comfort that we seek by silencing them?
I cannot kill and call it mercy. Then mercy means nothing.