Sanctity of Life

Suicide Culture: The Netherlands Shows That It’s’ Never Enough

First Things | by Wesley J. Smith | Nov. 13, 2009

The Netherlands has the world’s most liberal euthanasia law, which is even more radical in practice. Its doctors assist the suicides of the depressed and the grieving, a practice long since approved by the country’s Supreme Court. Some “terminate” patients “without request or consent.” Babies born with serious disabilities are subjected to eugenic infanticide. Doctors whose patients may not qualify for euthanasia refer patients to an on line “auto euthanasia” how-to-commit suicide” site. Doctors who decide it is too difficult to kill patients directly, put them into terminal sedation so they don’t do the deed directly and in person. [Read more…]

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Warning: Obamacare May Be Hazardous to the Unborn

Center for a Just Society | Ken Connor | Sep. 18, 2009

President Obama attempted to allay the concerns of pro-life advocates last week by assuring Americans that federal funding for abortion will not be included in “his” health care reform plan. […]

What’s going on here? Either President Obama has experienced an epiphany regarding the sanctity of human life at every stage of development, or once again his Administration is attempting to pull the wool over the American people’s eyes with a rhetorical bait and switch. A review of the facts may provide insight as to which is the case. [Read more…]

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Taking on Goliath

InsideCatholic.com | Deal W. Hudson | March 25, 2009

If you think the pro-life movement has run out of energy and new ideas, you should meet Lila Rose. You may not know her name, but you very likely have seen the media coverage of her various sting operations at Planned Parenthood clinics around the country.

Rose is 20 years old, but she is already entering her fourth year of covert operation, as it were, exposing the underhanded — and, in some cases, potentially illegal — practices at abortion clinics run by Planned Parenthood. [Read more…]

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“Right to Die” Can Become a “Duty to Die”

OrthodoxyToday.org | Wesley J. Smith | Mar. 1, 2009

Imagine that you have lung cancer. It has been in remission, but tests show the cancer has returned and is likely to be terminal. Still, there is some hope. Chemotherapy could extend your life, if not save it. You ask to begin treatment. But you soon receive more devastating news. A letter from the government informs you that the cost of chemotherapy is deemed an unjustified expense for the limited extra time it would provide. However, the government is not without compassion. You are informed that whenever you are ready, it will gladly pay for your assisted suicide.

Think that’s an alarmist scenario to scare you away from supporting “death with dignity”? Wrong. That is exactly what happened last year to two cancer patients in Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal. [Read more…]

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‘Freedom of Choice Act’ nightmare for bishops, pro-lifers

Why is the Orthodox Church silent on this? Why aren’t the Orthodox bishops taking a public stand against FOCA and Obama’s abortionist policies?
NCR | JOHN L. ALLEN JR. | Nov. 13, 2008

America’s Catholic bishops have been talking about abortion and politics at least since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, but their discussion this week in Baltimore had a special sense of urgency – driven by what many bishops and their pro-life advisors regard as a looming nightmare scenario under the new Obama administration in the “Freedom of Choice Act,” or FOCA.

Candidate Obama pledged to support the Freedom of Choice Act, which was first introduced in congress in 2004 but to date has not made it out of the committee stage. It acknowledges a “fundamental right” to abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy and at subsequent stages for health reasons. It would also bar discrimination in the exercise of the right “in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services or information.”

In effect, FOCA could undo most, or even all, of the existing restrictions on abortion under a patchwork of state and federal laws. Experts say that around the country there are currently some 300 such restrictions, including parental notification laws, waiting periods, requirements of full disclosure of the physical and emotional risks inherent in abortion, and limits on partial birth abortion. [Read more…]

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Stojan Adasevic, Another ‘champion of abortion’ becomes defender of life

CNA.com | Nov. 14, 2008

The Spanish daily “La Razon” has published an article on the pro-life conversion of a former “champion of abortion.” Stojan Adasevic, who performed 48,000 abortions, sometimes up to 35 per day, is now the most important pro-life leader in Serbia, after 26 years as the most renowned abortion doctor in the country.

“The medical textbooks of the Communist regime said abortion was simply the removal of a blob of tissue,” the newspaper reported. “Ultrasounds allowing the fetus to be seen did not arrive until the 80s, but they did not change his opinion. Nevertheless, he began to have nightmares.” [Read more…]

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Dr. Phillip Nitschke and the Reinvention of Assisted Suicide

OrthodoxyToday | Michael Cook | Nov. 13, 2008

Euthanasia is back in the headlines. The US Supreme Court has reviewed Oregon’s assisted-suicide law. The UK’s House of Lords is debating a private members bill for euthanasia. And the Dutch government has approved a plan for the involuntary euthanasia of terminally ill infants. Shocking? Perhaps it depends on your point of view. In some places euthanasia is looked upon as a “progressive” cause. [Read more…]

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Tired of Life?

TouchstoneMag | editors | Nov. 2008

There has been a steady campaign by some Christians who regard themselves as orthodox and conservative to persuade the rank and file of their Christian brothers and sisters to rethink their predictable support for political candidates who are pro-life. They bring other issues to the fore—war, torture, taxes, education, health care, and poverty—in an attempt to undermine the claim that conscientious Christians must always support pro-life candidates. They imply that such “single-issue” pro-life voting is unsophisticated, often in lockstep with the mostly uneducated “religious right,” and perhaps not even very moral in the long view. [Read more…]

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Washington voters approve assisted suicide initiative

The Seattle Times | CURT WOODWARD | Nov. 5, 2008

Voters approved Initiative 1000 on Tuesday, making Washington the second state to give terminally ill people the option of medically assisted suicide. The ballot measure, patterned after Oregon’s “Death with Dignity” law, allows a terminally ill person to be prescribed lethal medication, which would be self-administered. [Read more…]

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