Plus-size Victoria’s Secret model and self-proclaimed “self-love coach” Ali Tate Cutler went viral on TikTok recently for posting a disturbing series of videos in which she documented the upcoming assisted suicide of her seemingly healthy grandma, Bubbie.
Cutler combines cutesy music with TikTok trends to repackage and normalize the state-sponsored killing of Bubbie via Canada’s medical assistance in dying program, known as MAID. In the most popular video, which has garnered more than 14 million views, Cutler and Bubbie do an outfit transformation, with Cutler writing in the caption, “My grandmother has chosen Euthanasia for her terminal diagnosis, so this is the last time I can take her out to dinner.”
Euthanasia is instinctively unsettling to humans because it is not a natural death. It is legal murder that allows man to play God while violating natural law. Contrary to what the left contends, the intentional killing of another human is murder, irrespective of whether the victim consents.
The tone of Cutler’s videos is clearly responding to the public’s, and perhaps her own, visceral discomfort with assisted suicide. Cutler attempts to normalize Bubbie’s impending doom by asking her grandmother to talk frankly about her decision. Bubbie discusses how the injection will be relatively painless and says she’s “looking forward” to dying. She also explains that her decision brought her a sense of independence and control.
Similarly, Cutler attempts to frame the killing of her grandmother as a free will and bodily autonomy issue. “We all have our own decisions to make and … we need to respect and not have judgment for anyone’s decisions they make about their own life, especially when they’re not hurting anyone else,” said Cutler.
This line of thinking strikes a chord with Westerners because we value self-determination. If we have self-determination in life, then we can reasonably argue for the freedom to end our lives. After all, our lives are ours — right?
Herein lies why our Founding Fathers believed liberalism detached from Christianity would be so dangerous. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” wrote John Adams. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” James Madison likewise warned that “self-government” without “sufficient virtue among men,” would result in men “destroying and devouring one another.”
Today we are indeed destroying one another. Bubbie’s life is not hers nor someone else’s to take. Neither the Canadian government nor Bubbie herself willed Bubbie into existence. Bubbie’s life was given to her as a gift, and you don’t throw away gifts, particularly when they’re given to you by God.
Cutler does not divulge the reasoning behind Bubbie’s upcoming euthanasia, but it should be noted that Bubbie does not appear to be in debilitating pain. If she is suffering from some sort of illness, it seems unlikely she’s on her deathbed either, given she is living outside the hospital and is well enough to go out to dinner with her granddaughter and make chipper Q&A videos.
If Bubbie chose assisted suicide on account of marginal physical discomfort or depression, that wouldn’t be unheard of in Canada. Generally, proponents of euthanasia argue the killings are merciful and are only provided to those living in excruciating physical pain and whose death is soon forthcoming. Initially, Canada’s MAID program had these qualifications. Over time, however, the program became more lax, and Canada now reportedly kills people who suffer from things like hearing loss and depression.
While we can’t definitively know anything about Bubbie’s health situation, we do know one thing for sure: Cutler is a bad granddaughter. When your loved one is suicidal, you don’t drive them to the store to buy a handgun because you’re “nonjudgemental.” You get them help.
But Cutler’s worldview is indicative of our society’s disordered priorities. The “supportive” TikTok comments reveal how distorted and backward Western culture has become, with young people applauding Bubbie for her “beautiful” and “courageous” decision to die.
Indeed, at the heart of the euthanasia question is societal values, and Cutler knows it, writing in one TikTok, “I have always felt death was taboo and not discussed enough in the West. Death comes for us all. And seeing how triggered some people got on the matter of a stranger’s dying choices, I know it was a heart-centered choice. That video got 11 m people talking about death and MAID. I would say this is one of the more useful cultural conversations I have seen on this app. So I said what I said.”
Cutler is right that death is taboo in the West, and it’s because we have completely rejected faith in a higher power. Without the belief that there’s eternal life after death, two things can happen. One, death becomes terrifying. It means the end of our entire existence. Two, life becomes meaningless. If our lives have no purpose beyond our observably fallen world, what’s the point of living at all?
In Christianity, life is a sacred gift assigned immeasurable and inherent value, which means euthanasia is entirely out of the question. Instead of contradicting Western liberalism, Christianity enhances it. When the founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, one of which is life, they were asserting that all human life is a God-given gift with innate value.
Euthanasia contradicts this idea. MAID promotes the immoral and, as the left would say, the noninclusive notion that the lives of the happy, healthy, and young are more valuable than the lives of those who are disabled, depressed, sick, and elderly.
Assisted suicide is a legal defilement of man’s greatest gift from God: life itself. Bubbie deserves familial love and support in her old age. She needs her granddaughter to care for her, not TikTok-document the lead-up to her execution.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
Comments are closed.