LIFE DIGEST: Assisted suicide for healthy promoted
- Apr 6, 2009 - 1
The Swiss assisted-suicide organization Dignitas plans to help a healthy woman die with her terminally ill husband, and a pro-life bioethics specialist says this development should have been expected.
Ludwig Minelli, found of Zurich-based Dignitas, announced his plans to go to a Swiss court to seek permission to aid in the suicides of the Canadian couple, The Times of London reported April 2. Dignitas says it has assisted in the suicides of more than 100 people from Britain, where the practice is illegal.
Also in this edition: Abortion a ‘good decision’ in recession, columnist says and Too many people on earth, U.S. adviser hints and Court: Missouri must issue ‘Choose Life’ plate and Kansas legislators OK late-term abortion bill and Georgia approves first embryo adoption bill
The “marvelous opportunity” of suicide should not be reserved for the terminally ill or severely disabled, Minelli said, according to The Times. Anyone with “mental capacity” should be able to experience assisted suicide, he said.
“It is not a condition to have a terminal illness,” Minelli said, The Times reported. “Terminal illness is a British obsession. As a human rights lawyer I am opposed to the idea of paternalism. We do not make decisions for other people.
“We should have a nicer attitude to suicide, saying suicide is a very good possibility to escape,” he said.
Bioethics specialist Wesley Smith said of this expansion of the assisted-suicide movement’s pool of potential victims, “I don’t know why anyone would be surprised by this story.
“Assisted suicide advocacy rests on two fundamental ideological premises: First, that we own our bodies and it is the ‘ultimate civil liberty’ to decide on the time, manner and place of our own demise,” Smith wrote on his weblog. “Second, that killing is an acceptable answer to the problem of human suffering. Once these values are accepted, preventing death on demand becomes logically unsustainable.”
Abortion a ‘good decision’ in recession, columnist says
Killing your unborn child during a recession is a good thing, national news commentator Bonnie Erbe says.
In her April 1 commentary for Scripps Howard News Service, Erbe ridiculed the news media’s portrayal of the reports of an increasing number of abortions because of the economic downturn as tragic.
Responding to an Associated Press report of a mother of three who had chosen abortion, Erbe said the decision by the woman and her boyfriend was not a tragedy but a “fact-based, rational decision that in the end benefits the three children they already have and society as well.”
“One may assume this family of five is struggling just to maintain its basics: housing and food,” she wrote. “Add one more child and those costs rise as income drops. It’s no tragedy; it’s a good decision. The decision benefits society in two ways. It allows the couple to focus more time, energy and resources on their three children, giving each child a better life and a better chance of growing up to become a contributor to society. It also reduces the chance the family will have to rely on scarce public resources to raise their children.”
So in Erbe’s world view, it is expedient for a child to die for her siblings and society.
Erbe is a contributing editor for U.S. News and World Report and the host of a weekly Public Broadcasting System program.
Too many people on earth, U.S. adviser hints
The earth probably has too many people, a leading science adviser in the U.S. government says. Meanwhile, a leading British environmental organization contends its country needs to slash its population in half.
“We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can’t support many more people,” said Nina Fedoroff, science and technology adviser to the U.S. secretary of State since 2007, British Broadcasting Co. News reported March 31. “There are probably already too many people on the planet.”
The Optimum Population Trust (OPT), which describes itself as the “leading think tank in the [United Kingdom] concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment,” has recommended Britain cut its population from about 61 million to 30 million.
Jonathon Porritt, a top “green” adviser for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and an OPT patron, said, according to The Times of London, “Population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure. Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one way to reduce that impact.”
In February, Porritt said families should be restricted to two children in order to protect the environment. Abortion and contraception should be promoted in policies to combat global warming, Porritt said.
Court: Missouri must issue ‘Choose Life’ plate
The state of Missouri must issue pro-life automobile license plates, a federal court of appeals has decided.
A three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled March 26 in favor of supporters of the “Choose Life” specialty plate and ordered the Missouri government to issue the automobile tag. The appellate court upheld a federal judge’s opinion that the “Choose Life” plate is private speech and the state did not sufficiently protect against viewpoint discrimination in its guidelines for approving specialty plates.
“The court has sent a clear signal to Missouri and other states that a pro-life message on license plates cannot be censored merely because it is pro-life in nature,” said Mailee Smith, staff counsel for Americans United for Life, in a written statement. “That kind of state action is clearly discriminatory and will not be tolerated.”
Kansas legislators OK late-term abortion bill
The Kansas legislature has approved a bill strengthening requirements for late-term abortions. The measure would increase the amount of information a doctor must provide to explain the reason for such an abortion, and the form given to a woman before her abortion would now include this message, according to The Wichita Eagle: “the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being.”
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, D., an abortion-rights supporter, has not indicated whether she will sign the legislation into law. She vetoed a bill with similar provisions last year.
Each house was two votes short of the two-thirds majority required to override a veto, The Eagle reported. The Senate passed the bill 25-11, while the House of Representatives’ vote was 82-43.
The votes came April 3, the same day the Kansas Department of Health and Environment released its preliminary statistics on abortion for 2008. Though the total number of abortions dropped by 2 percent from 10,836 in 2008 to 10,642 last year, the number of abortions at 22 weeks or later into pregnancy increased about 10 percent, from 293 to 323, according to The Eagle.
Georgia approves first embryo adoption bill
The Georgia legislature has passed what is being described as the country’s first embryo adoption bill.
The House of Representatives voted 108-61 April 3 for the Option of Adoption Act, according to the Associated Press. The Senate previously had approved the measure. It goes to Gov. Sonny Perdue, R., who is expected to sign it.
The bill would protect the parental rights of couples who adopt embryos in frozen storage after their creation for another couple by means of in vitro fertilization. Supporters of the legislation hope it will increase the number of stored embryos adopted. It has been estimated there are about 400,000 embryos in storage in the United States.
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission works to protect the sanctity of human life. If you would like to learn more about this issue, additional resources are available here. If your church is interested in purchasing bulletin inserts or other materials on the sanctity of human life, please visit our online bookstore and erlc.com.
Further Learning
Learn more about: Life, Abortion, Suicide, Citizenship, , National
Comments are closed. Please use our contact form if you have any thoughts or questions.
comments
1 On Apr 8th, 2009, at 7:59am, Leo wrote:
Why, as I read this, did the movie “Logan’s Run” pop into my mind?
What’s next - do we start “evaluating” the productivity quotient of each person at various levels in school to determine if they would be additive to the well-being of the world…and if not, well…