(LifeSiteNews) — Another celebrity has chosen to die by assisted suicide, continuing the glamorization of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide.

This time it is acclaimed artist and sculptor Jackie Ferrara, who died on October 22. She was 95 years old but in “good health.” She had simply decided that she was ready to go, and that she wanted to die before she would need to depend on anybody.

“I don’t want a housekeeper,” she told the New York Times in a recent interview. “I never wanted anybody. I was married three times. That’s enough.” Ferrara, who is American, did not qualify for assisted suicide or euthanasia anywhere in the United States because she was healthy. So instead, she traveled to Pegasos in Basel, Switzerland, and died there by suicide.

Ferrara is famous in New York art circles and beyond; her work is featured in the Museum of Modern Art, and she was famous for her wood plank sculptures. According to People magazine, her estate and legacy advisor, Tina Hejtmanek, has confirmed her death.

I noted that the tabloid was now using the Canadian acronym “MAID” (medical aid in dying) to describe Ferrara’s suicide, despite being an American publication. The acronym is used to avoid the word “suicide,” which has emotional implications for many people. Assisted suicide sounds dramatic; “MAID” does not.

The coverage of the string of celebrities opting for assisted suicide or euthanasia seems like a deliberate attempt to mainstream and glamorize death by lethal injection. On September 23, almost precisely a month before Ferrara’s death, renowned Holocaust survivor Ruth Posner died with her husband at the same Swiss suicide center. Posner, who survived Treblinka, was a dancer, actress, and memoirist.

As I noted at the time, the Posner’s double suicide is part of a disturbing trend in which healthy couples die together. The press has covered these suicides in glowing terms.

The same month, one of Canada’s most famous authors made international news when he told the New York Times that he’d been approved for euthanasia. Robert Munsch, author of children’s classics such as The Paperbag Princess and Love You Forever, stated that he is planning to die by lethal injection before his dementia renders him unable to make the decision. He wants to be killed before his wife is “stuck with me being a lump.”

Celebrity suicides were once treated as lurid tragedies. Anthony Bourdain’s suicide by hanging in a French hotel room in 2018 was widely mourned; documentaries on his career emphasize a life cut short. A horrifying surge in celebrity suicides in South Korea recently has prompted soul-searching about the pressures of public life.

Why are these deaths tragic and the assisted suicides of other celebrities a matter of public celebration? Is it because they are not elderly? Or is it because they were not sick? In short, is it merely ageism or ableism shaping the response? Celebrities are not only committing suicide, they are being assisted by the government and by nonprofit suicide organizations. Yet these stories are covered with approval or careful neutrality.

If Ferrara, like Bourdain, had hung herself in a closet; if Munsch, who has thankfully not yet gone through with assisted suicide, was found overdosed on pills; if Ruth Posner had been found slumped over a desk with a gun in her hand, we would all recognize that these were tragedies. But once we introduce the government—which is far, far more sinister—or men and women in white coats using soothing acronyms, suddenly it doesn’t see like suicide anymore. In fact, we can even deceive ourselves into pretending that this is “healthcare.”

The glamorization of celebrity suicides is grotesque, and it is dangerous. We must call it out wherever we see it.