In Canada, Justice Lynn Smith of the B.C. Supreme Court is considering an attempt by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association to overturn Canada’s ban on euthanasia and assisted suicide and the public debate is heating up. Last week, Canada’s Campaign Life Coalition launched a month-long national media campaign expected to reach over 3.2 million viewers with 60-second TV ads running … Read More
Charges Dropped Against Man Accused of Helping Father Commit Suicide
Last year a Connecticut trial judge rejected a lawsuit by “right to die” advocates seeking to overturn the Connecticut ban on assisted suicide. While their lawsuit technically wasn’t successful, it seems their public campaign to normalize suicide for the sick may have still had an impact. This week prosecutors in Connecticut dropped all charges against a Massachusetts man who was … Read More
The Eyeless “I” of Assisted Suicide
Check out this excellent article from one of my favorite pro-life writers, Mark Pickup, over at Catholic Lane on something I have talked about many times here on my own blog: the selfishness that fuels the culture of death. The push for assisted suicide is the natural conclusion of personal autonomy gone amuck. Gloria Taylor wants assisted suicide for herself … Read More
GA Supreme Court Hears Challenge to Assisted Suicide Law
In 2010, four members of the assisted suicide advocacy group the Final Exit Network (FEN) were indicted in the state of Georgia for helping 58-year-old John Celmer kill himself two years after he had been diagnosed with cancer, though at the time his cancer was in remission. Celmer died by asphyxiating on helium gas on June 19, 2008. The defendants … Read More
The Task of Life
Earlier this month, the UK Daily Mail ran what is truly one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read. It’s one woman’s first-hand account of how she helped her mother dehydrate to death. At the age of 88, paralysed, incontinent and unable to speak following a series of small strokes, her mother had had enough. She wasn’t dying. She … Read More
There is Beauty in Human Weakness
At the National Right to Life Convention I went to several presentations that dealt with euthanasia, assisted suicide, and society’s view of people/life with disabilities. It got me thinking about a post I did a while back on the beauty of human weakness, which I sort of re-visited in a post for Creative Minority Report last week: G. K. Chesterton … Read More
The Danger of Legal Assisted Suicide
Here is another excellent presentation from last week’s National Right to Life Convention in Jacksonville, FL. It’s Burke Balch, J.D. again on the danger of legal assisted suicide and the hypocrisy of the “right to die” movement. It was one of my very favorite presentations. If you can spare a half an hour, it’s well worth your time: Related: ‘Safeguards’ … Read More
Authentic Love
“Authentic love is not a vague sentiment or a blind passion. It is an inner attitude that involves the whole human being. It is looking at others, not to use them but to serve them. Love, in a word, is the gift of self.” – Blessed John Paul II In today’s culture it is considered “loving” for families to end … Read More
Right to Die? Watch Out. Another Forgotten Holocaust Fact
William Oddie has a must-read post at the Catholic Herald UK blog responding to a program that ran on the BBC’s this week which featured fantasy author and campaigner for assisted suicide Sir Terry Pratchet, watching the physician-assisted death of Peter Smedley, badly afflicted by Motor Neurone Disease. Hundreds of complaints have been filed since accusing the BBC of running … Read More
Suicide, Abortion and a Kevorkian Round-Up
Ross Douthat has a couple of good pieces at the NY Times. First, is his op-ed on death of Jack Kevorkian and the public’s approval of his deadly profession: If participating in a suicide is legally and ethically acceptable, in other words, it can’t just be because cancer is brutal and dementia is dehumanizing. It can only be because there’s … Read More