Million Dollar Death

NOTE: Since I moved my blog from MSN to Blogspot, I have archived here some popular posts from the old MSN blog. Here is a post from August 2, 2005:

I just rented the movie, Million Dollar Baby, from Clean Films, which edits out all profanity, graphic violence and nudity. What Clean Films cannot edit, however, is the pro-death message of this film. It is about a female boxer whose injury causes her to be permanently paralyzed, living on a ventilator. She has no relationship with her family, and her trainer (played by Clint Eastwood, who also directed the film) is the only person who really cares for her. The injured boxer is like a daughter to him, especially since his own daughter rejects him and returns all of his letters. When she asks her trainer to take her off the ventilator, he says he cannot do it, so she bites her tongue and tries to bleed to death until the nurses bandage her tongue. Finally, the trainer goes into the rehab center while the nurses are away, takes her off the ventilator, injects her with a syringe, and takes her life. Then he leaves, never to be heard from again, with the strong implication that he took his own life, as well.
What Clint Eastwood is promoting in this film is against the law in all 50 states. Even in Oregon, which has a physician assisted suicide law, a man would be arrested for murder who did such a thing. Yet the audience is supposed to believe that it was merciful and good, since the boxer's life was no longer worth living. Who says that a life is only worth living if a person can be athletic? This is an insult to wheelchair-bound people, paralytics, the blind and Deaf and all other people with physical and mental handicaps. Let's not forget that Beethoven wrote the 9th Symphony while Deaf, and many other handicapped people have full and meaningful lives, despite their handicaps. Scripture teaches us that human life is created by God, in the image of God. As Job said when he refused to commit suicide, "The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away..." (Job 2:21, HCSB). Nobody else has the right to take away life. Nobody.