Culture of death

www.americanthinker.com

When hospitals push DNRs and activists excuse terror, a society is losing its soul.

As a physician, I find the thing we still call “health care” increasingly abysmal. It is not simply inefficient or bureaucratic. It is losing its moral center. My elderly mother was recently hospitalized, and once again I was reminded of a truth I wish were not universal. If you are hospitalized in America today, you must bring an advocate. Without someone present to defend the patient, to question decisions, to insist on basic dignity, the system will roll right over them.

What shocked me this time was the role assigned to the hospital chaplain. He was the point person for discussing a DNR. A chaplain. A man whose vocation is to comfort, to support, to affirm the value of life, now serving as the emissary for ending it. He spoke softly, reassuringly, explaining that checking the box would only prevent extraordinary measures and that a physician would still need to write the actual order. But the intent was unmistakable. He was trying to talk us into the DNR. He was trying to guide us toward surrender.

This is not compassion. This is moral inversion.

A March 2026 article in the New York Post reported on a woman who visited an emergency room for back pain and was offered assisted death as an alternative to treatment. She was not terminal. She was not dying. She was in pain. Yet the physician offered her enrollment in a government death program. The fashionable term for this is Medical Assistance in Dying. If your care is too expensive, we will kill you for free. This is where we are. A medical establishment that once fought to preserve life now increasingly looks for ways to justify ending it.

There was a time when the value of a single life was so great that nothing was off the table to save it. I think of the real events behind the movie “Argo.” Our country risked everything to rescue hostages. Creative, daring, dangerous measures. We valued life. All life. It was part of our national identity. It set us apart from cultures that treated human beings as expendable.

Now we are drifting toward something primitive.

We have an entire generation indoctrinated to believe that the savage behavior of October 7, 2023 by Hamas was acceptable. Hamas is responsible for severe harm, loss of life, and human rights violations. Yet there are young Americans who cannot bring themselves to condemn the slaughter of children and babies, the burning alive of families, the kidnapping of elderly civilians and infants. The fact that we cannot all agree this was monstrous is a sign of our own moral collapse.

I have talked about the Overton window before. What is considered acceptable shifts slowly, then suddenly. Our window has now widened to the point where the once unthinkable is treated as debatable. We have normalized the idea that life is negotiable. We have normalized the idea that death can be a treatment option. We have normalized the idea that barbarism can be contextualized into something understandable or even justified.

This is not progress. It is regression.

The problem is not confined to hospitals or activists. It is a broader societal numbness. It is the erosion of the sacredness of human life. When a society stops believing that every life has inherent worth, it begins to make decisions based on convenience, cost, and ideology. It begins to see death as a solution rather than a tragedy.

As a physician, I see this erosion every day. I see it in rushed conversations about end of life care. I see it in the pressure placed on families to make decisions before they have even processed what is happening. I see it in the way hospitals quietly nudge people toward choices that reduce liability and expense. I see it in the way the elderly are treated as burdens rather than human beings.

We are losing something essential. Something that once defined us.

A society that values life fights for it. It does not disguise death as compassion. It does not ask chaplains to sell surrender. It does not shrug at atrocities committed against innocents. It does not allow its moral boundaries to be stretched until they disappear.

And this is where the responsibility becomes collective. It is imperative that we push back, and push back hard. We must challenge every institution that promotes this corrosive worldview and name it clearly for the evil that it is. We must teach our children, through our actions and our courage, that life has value and that defending it is a moral duty. We must hold those who erode that value to a bright, revealing, shameful light. Shame has an appropriate place in a healthy society. When used properly, it reminds us of the boundaries that protect civilization itself.

If we fail to confront this now, we will lose far more than our health care system. We will lose the moral spine of the nation.

Renée S. Kohanski, MD, is a board‑certified psychiatrist with fellowship training in forensic psychiatry. Her work spans clinical practice, expert testimony, and public commentary. She writes about the intersection of mental health, ethics, and culture, bringing a psychodynamically informed lens to contemporary debates.

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