lifesitenews--2019-12-18--Dutch cardinal: It would be a ‘scandal’ for a priest to be present at an assisted suicid

Dutch cardinal: It would be a ‘scandal’ for a priest to be present at an assisted suicide

December 17, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) -- Days after the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life stated that a Catholic priest could remain at the bedside of a person committing assisted suicide in order to “hold their hand” and “accompany” them, Dutch Cardinal Willem Eijk told Catholic News Agency (CNA) that this was not permissible because of the “scandal” involved.  Cardinal Eijk was responding out of concern that Archbishop Paglia's statement might lead people to believe in certain circumstances assisted suicide or euthanasia are not “morally illicit” according to the teaching of the Church.  Cardinal Eijk, who is the Archbishop of Utrecht in the Netherlands, recalled that the first duty of the priest in such a circumstance is to tell the person who is considering taking his own life that such an act is “a grave sin.”  His statements were picked up earlier Tuesday by the Dutch Christian-orientated daily Nederlands Dagblad, which underscored the difference of opinion between Eijk and Archbishop Paglia while reminding that Cardinal Eijk is himself a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.  As a sign of the Netherlands’ deep involvement in euthanasia and assisted suicide – it has the oldest and one of the most liberal laws in the world on the matter – reader comments in the Dutch media have been very hostile to date, ranging from the idea that a priest can also be present when the death penalty is executed to accusations of narrow-mindedness, hardness and lack of respect for human dignity.  It is true that Cardinal Eijk, in an interview with LifeSite last May, underscored that the majority of Dutch citizens no longer believe in a personal God: “The generation of those who are now grandparents has already received relatively little faith education,” he remarked.  Eijk has expert knowledge of medical and ethical issues, having completed his medical studies before becoming a seminarian in 1979. As a future priest, he studied medical ethics at the Royal University of Leiden and obtained his doctorate after presenting a thesis on euthanasia. He also received a degree in philosophy from the Pontifical University of the Angelicum in Rome. In addition, Eijk is a specialist in moral theology and has taught that subject in seminaries in the Netherlands.  In his interview with CNA, Cardinal Eijk made clear that “a priest must clearly say to those who opt for assisted suicide or euthanasia that both of these acts violate the intrinsic value of the human life, that is a grave sin.” This would be part of the spiritual accompaniment that can be given to all, but without creating any ambiguity about the act of euthanasia or assisted suicide itself.  The Cardinal recalled that in assisted suicide, it is the patient himself “who takes the drugs the doctor intentionally prescribed to him to commit suicide,” while in “voluntary euthanasia,” “the doctor himself gives the drugs to end the patient’s life after the patient’s request.” He made clear that there is no “significant moral difference” between the two acts. “The responsibilities of the patient and the doctor are the same in both cases,” he said. In each instance, it is the patient who takes “the initiative to end his life, and this is the same both of he puts an end to his life or if a doctor does it.”  In both instances, he added, physicians are equally responsible regarding the patient’s life. In euthanasia, the doctor “directly violates the value of his life, that is an intrinsic value. Helping in assisted suicide, the doctor cooperates with the patient’s will, and this means he shares the patient’s intention. For this reason, even mere cooperation is an intrinsically evil act, as grave as if the doctor personally ended the life of the patient,” Cardinal Eijk told CNA.  “Assisted suicide is perhaps less psychologically heavy for the doctor. However, there is not a significant moral difference between the two things,” he told Andrea Gagliarducci of CNA during the interview that took place in Rome.  Asked about the possibility of giving a Catholic funeral or the last rites to people who plan to end their lives through euthanasia, Cardinal Eijk said, “The priest cannot do so.”  He clarified that there are three reasons for this. The first is the obvious lack of “good disposition” to receive the sacrament. “This is not the case when a person wants to oppose the order of creation, violating the intrinsic value of his life,” the cardinal said.  He added that the second reason is the person “who receives the sacraments puts his life in the merciful hands of God. However, who wants to personally end his life wants to take his life in his hands.”  Third, “if the priest administers the sacraments or plans a funeral in these cases, the priest is guilty of a scandal, since his actions might suggest that suicide or euthanasia are permitted in certain circumstances,” he told CNA. It is only when a priest prudently judges that a person who committed suicide took the decision in a state of “diminished freedom” that he can actually “celebrate the funeral” of that person.  “Since ancient times, the priests accepted to celebrate funerals of people who committed suicide or asked for euthanasia in cases of depression of any other psychiatric diseases. In these cases, because of their disease, the freedom of the people is diminished, and so ending the life cannot be considered a mortal sin," Cardinal Eijk said.  The mention of mortal sin has become a rarity: It was completely absent, for instance, from Archbishop Paglia’s remarks, although it is certainly a great charity to warn people who are considering taking their own life or having it taken by the doctor risk eternal damnation.  There are several responses to the present pro-euthanasia trend, said Cardinal Eijk. The first response is doctrinal: The Church must “announce that God made the human being in his image in his totality, soul, and body. The Second Vatican Council constitution Gaudium et Spes described the human being as "a unity of soul and body. This means that the body is an essential dimension of the human being and is part of the intrinsic value of the human being. So it is not licit to sacrifice human life to end the pain,” he said.  On the personal and social plane, Cardinal Eijk remarked that palliative care is an answer to the suffering of patients that the Church must also “do something against loneliness,” the “huge solitude” that leaves people who lack the attention and care from others “less able to bear the pain.”  He also recalled the spiritual meaning of suffering. The Church “announces a Christian spirituality and a lived faith. This implies that you can also join to the suffering Christ and bear the pain with him. So, we are never alone,” said Cardinal Eijk, indirectly drawing attention to the fact that in secularized Western countries, the meaning of illness, pain and death have been forgotten.  His remarks contrast greatly with Archbishop Paglia’s declarations. At a symposium on palliative care, Paglia responded to a recent statement by the Swiss bishops recalling that assisted suicide, which is legal in their country, is “radically against the Gospel message.”  He said he did not believe that “anyone should ever be abandoned.” Paglia added, “We are against assisted suicide because we do not want to do the dirty work of death and because we are all well aware that, for believers, life goes on. To accompany and hold the hand of those who are dying” is therefore the “great task” of every believer, he said, along with fighting the culture of assisted suicide, which represents “a great defeat for society.”  Paglia also said that the issue of the accompaniment of a person undergoing assisted suicide “goes beyond laws:” “I don’t want to give a rule to contradict and so on. I would like to remove ideology from the situations forever and for everyone. For me, those who take their own lives manifest the failure of the whole of society, but not of God. And God never abandons anyone.”  This approach completely ignores the question of sin, the possibility of hell and the chance to obtain forgiveness through confession, which however supposes the firm intention of no longer sinning.  While Cardinal Eijk is very clear on all these issues, Catholic bishops in neighboring Belgium appear to be hiding behind confusing statements. Their official guidelines for end-of-life pastoral care published last June require pastors to remain “close” to the dying person even when the euthanasia has been asked for and is about to be performed.  Although the document itself is not clear about offering the Unction of the sick or the Viaticum – Holy Communion given when death is imminent – the Belgian press immediately understood it to mean that the last sacraments can be given before a chosen death and pastoral care givers immediately went public with the idea that there is no fundamental difference in the approach to a dying person who has chosen euthanasia and one who has not, even though the guidelines did recall that euthanasia is contrary to the Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.”  In Canada, the Catholic bishops of Atlantic Canada quoted Pope Francis and his idea of pastoral accompaniment in November 2016 in deciding to give priests latitude to decide whether to give euthanasia seekers the sacraments before they are killed. “Our concern is pastoral accompaniment. Pope Francis is our model,” said Bishop Claude Champagne of Edmunston, New Brunswick, at the time.  “We must not make judgments about people’s responsibility and culpability,” he said.  With such statements, moral theology becomes largely useless. And the aim of pastoral care, which is to help human beings to reach eternal bliss with God, is reduced to a horizontal task aiming to help them feel good while not being told about the conditions of salvation.


activistpost--2019-08-10--Dad Sued for Slander Because He Criticized The Education System And Other Absurd Weekly News

Dad Sued for Slander Because He Criticized The Education System — And Other Absurd Weekly News

Welcome to our Friday roll up, where we highlight the most absurd and concerning stories we are following this week.  Careful what you say about your kid’s public school curriculum.  The company behind a controversial common core math program in North Carolina is suing a dad for libel and slander.  The parent of a high school student has been on a “crusade,” the lawsuit claims, against the math program. Instead of teacher-led instruction, students are taught through self-discovery.  He and many others see strong evidence that the old methods are better. That’s why he created a Facebook group and website where he lays out his criticism of the program.  We checked out the guy’s website, and it is full of well thought out rational criticism. Whether he is correct or not is irrelevant. He is just expressing an opinion on the type of education his child will receive in public school.  We’ve moved beyond gender-neutral pronouns and triggering micro-aggressions. Now just expressing any old opinion offends people.  Apparently, you can’t do that in the USA, anymore. If you offend someone with constructive criticism, they turn around and sue you.  Click here for the full story.  The Pentagon is currently testing high-altitude surveillance balloons in several Midwestern states.  Flying at about 65,000 feet, the balloons are able to track multiple vehicles at once, in any type of weather, using radar.  The Pentagon says the purpose of the solar powered unmanned balloons is to “provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats.”  The data gathered over broad swaths of the country will be saved so it can be rewound and reviewed after the fact.  Click here for the full story.  In this week’s edition of no good deed goes unpunished…  An Illinois family let a 19 year old friend of their son stay with them when he became homeless. They kicked him out after he stole from them, and burglarized a nearby restaurant.  And then the family got an eviction notice.  But it didn’t come from the landlord, it came from the local cops. They were enforcing an ordinance which requires private landlords to evict all the occupants of a home when any inhabitant commits a crime.  Even though this young man was a house guest who victimized them as well, the family will be punished for his crimes.  The family’s landlord says they are model tenants, and he does not want to evict them. So he joined their lawsuit against the city.  With the help of the Institute for Justice, the family is suing to protect their due process rights, so that they won’t be punished for someone else’s crime.  Click here for the full story.  But the solution is all too simple for Bernie Sanders. He tweeted in response, “We should cancel it.”  That’s the solution, just cancel $1.65 trillion dollars of debt. What could go wrong?  The idea that you can just solve this problem by canceling the debt shows how clueless these people really are.  Student debt is the number one financial asset of the federal government. There is no bigger money maker in the asset column or the government’s balance sheet.  And in case you missed it, the government isn’t in great financial shape. At $22 trillion dollars, the national debt is larger than the entire US economy.  Cancel the student debt, and you’re wiping away a trillion dollars that the taxpayers will have to pay for.  That’s bigger than the direct costs of the Iraq war. It’s bigger than the 2008 TARP bailout.


breitbart--2019-11-26--Muslim Parents Permanently Banned From Protesting LGBT Education Outside British School

A High Court judge has ruled that Muslim protestors will be permanently banned from protesting LGBT relationship lessons outside a school in Birmingham, England.  Today a High Court judge, Mr Justice Warby, upheld the decision in June of this year to create an exclusion zone around the Anderton Park Primary School, making the ban of anti-LGBT protests, by mostly Muslim parents, permanent in the area.  The three main protestors: Amir Ahmed, Shakeel Afsar and his sister Rosina Afsar fought the injunction in court claiming that the protests should be protected as freedom of speech. The Muslim parents also objected to the school not consulting with them over the introduction of LGBT lessons, reports the Birmingham Mail.  A Christian organiser, John Allman, joined the other defendants in condemning the breach of freedom of speech.  The judge in the case said that the protestors had ‘grossly misrepresented’ the content of the LGBT relationship lessons causing harm to the children, teachers and local residents.  The headteacher of the Anderton Park Primary School, Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, described the protestors as ‘toxic and nasty’ and said that there were ample opportunities to discuss concerns about the curriculum with the school.  She said that in a meeting she had with Mr Afsar, he slammed his hand on her desk and demanded that she remove the LGBT lessons from the school.  “It was volatile, it was aggressive. I had never had a meeting like that before in 26 years of teaching. He set up a WhatsApp group that afternoon … trying to whip up a frenzy”, she told the court.  Earlier this year, another school in the area was also targeted by Muslim protestors after the introduction of a programme called ‘No Outsiders’ which taught students about LGBT issues alongside its existing sexual education courses.


instapundit--2019-03-17--HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE At Stanford she said she saw students rely on their parents to s

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:  “At Stanford, she said, she saw students rely on their parents to s…

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “At Stanford, she said, she saw students rely on their parents to set up play dates with people in their dorm or complain to their child’s employers when an internship didn’t lead to a job.”


eveningstandard--2019-01-25--Sex Education is funny filthy and every teen should watch it in a different room from their paren

Sex Education is funny, filthy and every teen should watch it — in a different room from their parents

Why, even as an adult, is watching sex scenes with your parents so cringe-making? I still can’t sit with ease viewing anything close to raunchy in front of my familial elders. So when my son shouted with horror at my suggestion that we watch Netflix comedy Sex Education together, I was quick to give way.  Instead, my husband and I have sat in one room, my teenager in another and we have separately binged our way through each episode. Only meeting afterwards to dissect the best bits — not so much watercooler moments as bedtime hot milk and peppermint tea.  Girls discovering masturbation, boys who can’t masturbate, boys going down on girls, highly sexed virgin pubescents fantasising about “dicks”, vagina-shaming on social media … Blow-jobs, porn, your parents copulating, never mind mums prying into nocturnal emissions, it’s all here, in glorious American high-school technicolour. While also set and filmed in permanently sunny Wales.  Gillian Anderson and Asa Butterfield play the oversharing sex therapist mother and awkward virgin son, Otis, who becomes the school’s oddly-cast unofficial sex counsellor. The series is brilliant, funny, unexpectedly poignant and totally addictive. No wonder Netflix felt confident enough to calculate viewers would hit 40 million by the end of this month. And it helped prevent further damage to my relationship with my son, savaged by puberty, by doing the job of discussing the stomach-churning, toe-squirming emotional challenges the teen years invite. If only there had been viewing like this when I was young.  Naturally, not everything was up for discussion. We didn’t as mother and son deliberate in the kitchen over the scene where one of my favourite characters, the dippy, bosomy Aimee Lou, encouraged by her boyfriend, spends some serious me-time discovering the female orgasm. It’s a warm, explicit, riotous depiction of female sexual pleasure (with a British crumpet joke thrown in) that also cleverly instructs around a still peculiarly taboo subject, that of womanly masturbation. Thankfully another topic I can tick off the list, as teenage boys would definitely have taken note…  He did want to discuss how sad he found the episode where Eric, Otis’s gay best friend, the son of religious African immigrants, is beaten up. Abandoned by Otis, who was chasing skirt, and shunned by his father battling with his repulsion of his son’s sexuality, Eric’s loneliness is moving. Given that two years ago a 14-year-old boy was fatally stabbed outside my local school in north-west London by another boy because he’d taunted him over social media for being gay, it’s not over-dramatisation. Sliding the consequences of this into a popular drama gets my praise.  My stripling juvenile also adored the scene when the whole school stands up in assembly claiming, “No, it’s my vagina!” to save the humiliation of one girl from shaming on social media. Rap artists often glorify grabbing “pussy”, so I for one feel relieved there are other more positive messages getting through.  I’m down to the last episode; my son has already finished. For a happy week it opened communication. Now he’s back to pushing his parents away. Here’s hoping it’s not long until series two.  Literary editor and writer Diana Athill has died at 101. Journalism has some great attributes, a big one being the opportunities it provides in meeting your heroines.  I found Athill serene and friendly when I visited her in an old people’s home six years ago. Her room was tidy, she said she had many friends there and she still wrote every day. Sadly, this assignation for Vogue turned into farce. A young photographer we’d not worked with before had been chosen to take her portrait. Whether it was nerves or obstinacy, he refused to settle on a picture he was happy with. My editor, there to do the interview, began to worry with me that we might actually kill Athill in the process and we’d have to take responsibility for ending the life of one of Britain’s literary greats.  We eventually took over the session so a grateful, exhausted Athill could retire to her room. Fortunately, we kept one polaroid hidden as we never got the pictures — the photographer was so furious that we’d put her well-being over his artistry. And it is that polaroid blown full-page we ended up publishing. Still, it has remained one of my favourites.  *Dry January has been a total disaster. I can admit that to myself now. So, too, my attempt at Veganuary. That lasted three hours, from breakfast — where I mistakenly popped a morsel of sausage into my mouth — until lunchtime, when I clean forgot that I’d gone vegan and ate a chicken kebab.  I’m definitely of the flexitarian variety. The gym sessions have gone slightly better in that I do visit fairly frequently. Though it’s debatable that any exercise actually occurs as the warming pleasure of the steam room takes over. Fortunately, February is nearly here and I can stop pointlessly berating myself over every glass of red wine, revel in the last few days of January and focus on self-improvement next month.  March might work even better.


humansarefree--2019-11-05--Teacher Suspended for Questioning LGBTQP Sex "Education" of Children Without Debate or Consent from

Teacher Suspended for Questioning LGBTQP Sex "Education" of Children Without Debate or Consent from Parents

It is now “homophobic” to express viewpoints that in any way trigger LGBTQPs


instapundit--2019-04-09--DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM AND THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE Parents

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM AND THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Parents …

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM AND THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Parents charged in college cheating scam turn to consultant to understand prison life.


lifesitenews--2019-10-09--Catholic parents must ‘resist’ Pope Francis’ promotion of sex education: pro-family leader

CARDIFF, U.K., October 8, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Catholic parents have a “moral obligation to resist” Pope Francis’ and Catholic bishops’ promotion of “dangerous” teaching on sex education, which constitutes “child abuse,” the leader of the UK’s largest pro-life, pro-family group said in a talk last month.  John Smeaton, leader of The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) in London said that Catholic pastors in Britain and in many parts of the world, including in Rome, are “supporting programmes of relationships education and sex education in educational institutions which constitute child abuse involving immeasurably greater numbers of young people than the cases of clerical sex abuse currently afflicting the Church.”  His talk, titled “Family under attack – how anti-family sex education is corrupting children and targeting families worldwide,” was given at a conference organized by Voice of the Family, an initiative of LifeSiteNews and the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. The Sept. 6-8 conference, titled “Handing on the Deposit of the Faith,” was held at Newman Hall, University Catholic Chaplaincy, in Cardiff, UK.  Smeaton referred to Pope Francis’ statements in support of sex education in schools while on a flight to Rome from Panama in January. Pope Francis said during that flight: “I believe that we must provide sex education in schools.”  During the same flight Pope Francis said that it was “not always possible” for sex education to “begin at home with the parents” but that “the school makes up for this”. Smeaton contrasted this with Pope Leo XIII’s and Pope Pius XI’s clear teaching that such paternal authority should never be assumed by the State.  He also highlighted the global crisis in sex education programmes, saying:  Smeaton continued by providing detailed evidence about the sex education programmes currently operating in both Catholic and non-Catholic schools in Britain, with the support of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales.  He documented a host of disturbing facts about sex education and more in both Britain and other parts of the world, including: • The influence of radical LGBT lobby groups in sex education in both non-Catholic and Catholic schools in Britain with the support of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales • The display of pornographic videos in school to children as young as seven with the support of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales • The presence of obscene and pornographic images in a sex education programme produced by the Vatican and introduced at the World Youth Day in Poland in 2016 • Access to contraception and abortion for schoolchildren, without their parents’ knowledge or consent, in both non-Catholic and Catholic schools in Britain with the support of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales  These are just some of the instances of abuse which were outlined in the speech and can be reviewed in detail in the full text of the speech below.  Smeaton concluded his talk by announcing the launch of a new campaign of prayer and formation to combat these evils. The campaign is called “Perseverantes unianimiter in oratione” (persevering with one mind in prayer). The campaign will meet in Walsingham, England’s national shrine to Our Lady, on 8 December later this year – the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Smeaton said of the upcoming event that:  He concluded his talk by encouraging Catholic parents to resist.  “Catholic parents have a moral obligation to resist Pope Francis’s and British Catholic bishops’ promotion of dangerous teaching on sex education,” he said.  “It will add fuel to the raging fire of child abuse. Parents must say loud and clear to Pope Francis, and to Catholic bishops in Britain: Sex education is not the solution to systematic child abuse and exploitation. Indeed, what the Vatican, the bishops of England and Wales and many other bishops around the world are promoting is child abuse, in the name of relationships and sex education, involving immeasurably greater numbers than the scandal of the cases of clerical sex abuse currently afflicting the Church,” he added.  Family under attack – how anti-family sex education is corrupting children and targeting families worldwide  We must pray for the Pope, and for Catholic bishops in Britain and elsewhere. Catholic pastors in Britain and in many parts of the world, including in Rome, are supporting programmes of relationships education and sex education in educational institutions which constitute child abuse involving immeasurably greater numbers of young people than the cases of clerical sex abuse currently afflicting the Church.  During a flight to Rome from Panama, last January, Pope Francis told reporters that bishops did not know what to do about the clerical sex abuse scandal. He said: “We felt the responsibility to give … catechesis on this problem to the bishops’ conferences”.  Significantly, the Pope went on to say: “I believe that we must provide sex education in schools”.  Pope Francis then mentioned parents in connection with sex education, butin a somewhat negative way. The Pope said “the ideal” is “to begin at home, with the parents.” But, he added, this is “not always possible,” “The school makes up for this,” he said, adding that if sex education is not provided the “void” will be “filled by any ideology.”  The first thing to say about these words of Pope Francis is that they contrast sharply with the teaching of previous Popes:  “Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State; for it has the same source as human life itself.”  And Pope Pius XI taught in his encyclical Divini Illius Magistri [2]  Which Pope is right? Are Pope Leo XIII and Pope XI right? Or is Pope Francis right when he says: “I believe that we must provide sex education in schools” because, he suggests, there are parents who can’t do it? Is he right when he says that “The school makes up for this” otherwise the “void” will be “filled with any ideology”?  Allow me to reflect on the implications of what Pope Francis said:  Firstly, worldwide experience indicates that school sex education is not confined to the children of parents for whom, in the words of Pope Francis, it’s not possible. School sex education is provided for all children regardless of parental wishes or competence.  Secondly, when Pope Francis says “The school makes up for this” otherwise the “void” will be “filled with any ideology”, His Holiness ignores the fact that both Catholic and non-Catholic schools are currently communicating to children, through their sex education programmes, the ideology of the State and the ideology of the international pro-abortion lobby on matters relating to human sexuality, and His Holiness ignores the fact that both Catholic and non-Catholic schools are currently responsible for communicating images or ideas which represent psychological and spiritual child abuse on a worldwide scale.  In countless Catholic primary schools in England and Wales, for example, children between the ages of seven and nine are being shown the video Living and Growing. The video is a cartoon depicting a naked couple chasing each other around a bed and engaging in sexual intercourse in numerous positions. An adult voice-over explains that sex is fun and makes people happy. A young girl’s voice over exclaims that ‘Yes, they do look very happy’. In this video there is no question of introducing the idea of marriage into the presentation of sexual activity. As Antonia Tully put it, the head of the Safe at School campaign run by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children:  Antonia Tully says that the evidence suggests that boys are likely to understand the information as a game or joke, while girls are likely to become distressed.  Thirdly, the call from Pope Francis for sex education must be evaluated in the context of the Vatican’s own sex education programme called The Meeting Point. A few months after the promulgation of Amoris Laetitia, an apostolic exhortation in which Pope Francis called for sex education in educational institutions, the Pontifical Council for the Family introduced a sex education programme called The Meeting Point at the World Youth Day in Poland in July 2016.  This programme, which is intended to be taught in schools, in mixed classrooms, adopts a secularised and secularising approach, and exposes children to obscene and pornographic images.  Serious questions about the programme have been raised by Dr Rick Fitzgibbons, a psychiatrist and adjunct professor of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, at the Catholic University of America. [He writes:]  A fourth consideration arising from Pope Francis’s repeated calls for school-based sex education is the fact that in various parts of the world Catholic bishops and Catholic bishops’ conferences have long been using their power and authority to promote programmes of relationships and sex education the content of which is explicitly anti-life, anti-family and anti-Catholic.  The Catholic Education Service, a department of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, have a long-established approach to sex education which reflects the policies of the pro-abortion lobby, the homosexual lobby and the British Government and which constitutes the sexual abuse and corruption of children.  From 1999 until 2008 the Chair of the Catholic Education Service was Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham (now Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster). Under his chairmanship the Catholic Education Service developed a policy which resulted in providing children in Catholic schools, including adolescents under the legal age of consent, with access to abortion and contraception services without parental knowledge or consent, through a state run confidential advice agency, named ‘Connexions’.  In April 2010 the Catholic Education Service, under the chairmanship of Malcolm McMahon (then bishop of Nottingham, now Archbishop of Liverpool), appointed as deputy director, Greg Pope, a former Labour member of Parliament, who had an extensive anti-life, anti-family voting record. Greg Pope remained in that post until his promotion, in 2017, to be the Assistant General Secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.  In the Spring 2019 edition of Calx Mariae, Dr Tom Rogers, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children’s education manager, takes up the story of the role of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales and of their agency in England and Wales, the Catholic Education Service, in relation to the Children and Social Work Act (2107). Dr Rogers wrote:  “Despite the apparently strong statement with regard to parental involvement”, Dr Rogers wrote,  Dr Rogers went on to explain:  You can obtain a full copy of the article by Dr Tom Rogers from Voice of the Family.  What then do Catholic parents do when Popes disagree on sex education and when bishops throughout Britain promote programmes of relationships and sex education which threaten to corrupt their children?  What a blessing it is for parents, then, to hear the words of Christ in St Matthew’s Gospel (Chapter 11, verses 25 and 26): “At that time Jesus answered and said: I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, because thou has hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them to little ones. Yea, Father: for so hath it seemed good in thy sight.”  Parents today are not for the most part theological scholars – and they never have been since the time of Christ. However, countless unlearned, but faithful Catholic parents both know and can confidently affirm, without fear of being contradicted by any authority in this world or the next, that God’s commandment “Honour thy Father and thy Mother”, reaffirmed by God the Son during his life on earth, establishes for all time that parents are the primary educators and protectors of their children.  Faithful, unlearned, Catholic parents are also fully capable of understanding Christ’s words concerning giving scandal to children: “ … he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea”. Catholic parents know, but must be reminded, that these words provide a terrible warning to those, including Catholic bishops, who allow the showing of pornographic images in the classroom to children of all ages and who encourage false ideas about human sexuality, including homosexuality, to be taught in the classroom.  Catholic parents have a moral obligation to resist Pope Francis’s and British Catholic bishops’ promotion of dangerous teaching on sex education. It will add fuel to the raging fire of child abuse. Parents must say loud and clear to Pope Francis, and to Catholic bishops in Britain: Sex education is not the solution to systematic child abuse and exploitation. Indeed, what the Vatican, the bishops of England and Wales and many other bishops around the world are promoting is child abuse, in the name of relationships and sex education, involving immeasurably greater numbers than the scandal of the cases of clerical sex abuse currently afflicting the Church.  [1] Issued on 15th May 1891.   [2] Issued on 31st December 1929.   [3] For instance, Nick Gibb MP, stated in response to a Parliamentary question (03 July 2017) that ‘we expect schools to ensure that all pupils, whatever their developing sexuality or gender identity, feel that relationships and sex education is relevant to them and sensitive to their needs. As part of our engagement programme, we will consider ways to ensure that our guidance and regulations are inclusive of LGBT issues. We plan to work closely with organisations such as Stonewall and the Terrence Higgins Trust, amongst others’. Prime Minister Teresa May affirmed her support for ‘LGBT inclusive’ RSE in English schools in her speech at the Pink News LGBT Awards 2017.   [4] Catholic Education Service, ‘Catholic Church welcomes move to improve Relationship and Sex Education in all schools’, Press Release, 19 July 2018: http://catholiceducation.org.uk/component/k2/item/1003657-catholic-church-welcomes-move-to-improve-relationship-and-sex-education-in-all-schools   [5] Catherine Bryan, ‘Why Relationship and Sex Education is a must for all Catholic schools’ [online article], Catholic Education Service, 20 June 2018; http://www.catholiceducation.org.uk/component/k2/item/1003652-why-relationship-and-sex-education-is-a-must-for-all-catholic-schools . The same article also appeared in The Catholic Times, 15 June 2018, p.28.   [6] Catholic Education Service, Made in God’s Image: Challenging homophobic and biphobic bullying in Catholic schools, 2018 edn; http://catholiceducation.org.uk/images/CES-Project_Homophobic-Bullying-Booklet_JUN18_PROOF-9.pdf . For comment see, for instance, Deacon Nick Donnelly, ‘UK bishops’ group pushing radical LGBT propaganda in Catholic schools’, Lifesite News, 18 May 2017; https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/uk-bishops-group-pushes-radical-lgbt-materials-in-catholic-schools. Also, Bishop Egan of Portsmouth has commented on the ‘ideological colonisation’ at work in our schools, including the influence of Stonewall and LGBT Youth on the CES’s Made in God’s Image document. Deacon Nick Donnelly, ‘Interview: UK bishop questions LGBT involvement in Catholic schools’ sex-ed program’, Lifesite News, 22 May 2017; https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/interview-english-bishop-questions-lgbt-involvement-in-catholic-schools-sex   [7] CES, Made in God’s Image (2018), section 2, p.5.   [8] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (signed by Cardinal Ratzinger), ‘Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of the Homosexual Persons’, 1 October 1986; http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.html   [9] Scottish Government, ‘LGBTI education: Scotland will lead the way in inclusive education’, Press release 8th Nov 2018; https://www.gov.scot/news/lgbti-education/


thedailycaller--2019-11-10--Here Is What Parents And Activists Say About Austin’s Progressive Sex Education

• The Austin Independent School District plans to implement a progressive sex education curriculum in 2020. • Parents and activists expressed concerns over the curriculum’s sexually explicit nature to the Daily Caller News Foundation. • “A lot of people will say that abstinence isn’t a reality,” a candidate for the state’s House of Representatives said. “Well in third grade, I hope it is.”  An Austin, Texas, school district plans to implement explicit sex education in 2020, but parents and activists warned that this is an agenda-driven curriculum they fear sexualizes their children as young as 8 years old.  Texas state law requires that educators emphasize abstinence in public schools if they are going to teach sex education — a conservative policy in a state where 52% of Texans voted for President Donald Trump in the 2016 election. The law also mandates that parents have the ability to opt their children out of these lessons.  But the Austin Independent School District (ISD), located in liberal Austin, where about 66% of Austin residents voted for Hillary Clinton, drafted a curriculum that takes sex education to another level, parents told the Daily Caller News Foundation. These parents said the new curriculum teaches children sexually explicit material, how to obtain abortions, and how to get to an abortion clinic without a parent’s help, among other topics.  The New Human Sexuality and Responsibility Curriculum  The new Human Sexuality and Responsibility curriculum is an updated version of Austin’s former curriculum, which had not been updated since 2009, spokesman Scott Thomas from the Austin ISD told the DCNF.    Thomas said the Austin ISD board unanimously voted to pass the curriculum Oct. 28, following a survey that “overwhelmingly” showed support for the update. (RELATED: Here Are The Details On California’s Sex Education)  However, the survey shows that only 10.5% of family student primary contacts responded, leaving about 90% of family student primary contacts who did not weigh in on the curriculum.  Thomas told the DCNF the ISD stands by its statement on the overwhelming popularity of the survey and is “very confident the survey is representative of the population.”  “Instruction of the new curriculum will be taught in May 2020,” Thomas said. “Parents will be able to opt their children out of one, several, or all lessons.”  He did not respond to a request for comment as to how the survey was representative of the population if 90% of family student primary contacts did not respond to the survey.  The curriculum was originally based on Planned Parenthood’s sex education curriculum “Get Real,” but a recent bill signed by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott prevented this, vice president of Texas Values David Walls told the DCNF. Abbott signed Senate Bill 22, a bill prohibiting government transactions with abortion providers.  “Essentially what they ended up doing was cobbling together a bunch of curriculums from some Canadian Abortion Providers,” Walls said, adding that the ISD board compiled the first draft so hastily that they forgot to update the age of consent listed in the curriculum from the age of consent in Canada, which is 16, to the age of consent in Texas, which is 17.  “It was literally a hodgepodge of stuff that we are still looking into,” he said. (RELATED: ACLU Told CA Teachers To Help Students Obtain Abortions Without Parental Notification, Video Reveals)  Dan Quinn, spokesman for the Texas Freedom Network, which tracks sex education in the state, said opponents’ stance of the updated curriculum is “hair-on-fire extremism,” according to The Texas Tribune.  “This is just a rerun of what we’ve seen over and over again for years,” he said. “At the same time, the state continues to have one of the highest teen birth rates in the nation.”  From Emphasizing Abstinence to Teaching about Oral Sex  The curriculum will tell children as early as the third grade that their doctor assigned them a gender at birth — and these children will be told that this gender is not necessarily the sex that they are, Walls said.  Elementary school children will be taught that “most of the time” a doctor who sees that a child has male genitalia will assign that child as a boy, he added.  The gender ideology and sexually explicit material emerge in the curricula primarily in fifth grade, Concerned Parents of Texas advocate Karole Fedrick told the DCNF. Fedrick has two grandchildren enrolled in Austin ISD.  Fedrick said the curriculum instructs teachers to administer a worksheet to 11-year-olds that explains what health services are offered at certain clinics in the area.  “And then they’re asked to figure out how they could get there if they had to go by themselves,” Fedrick said. The point of this is to help children understand how to get abortions on their own, without parental help, she said.  “We’re supposed to be a district where there is no place for hate,” Fedrick added. “It’s supposed to be a bully-free environment. Well, they don’t have any trouble bullying us. It’s oppressive. Discriminatory.”  There is a political agenda behind this sex education, said Jennifer Feck, a candidate for Texas state House of Representatives. Part of the district Feck is running for overlaps with South Austin, and Feck learned of the Austin ISD’s updated curriculum through friends in the area and Texas Values.  Feck has dealt with progressive sex education programs before, but she said Austin ISD’s curriculum is the worst she has ever seen. What makes this curriculum so insidious, Feck said, is that about 50% of the curriculum essentially sexualizes children through its teaching material.  “It’s not just about teaching children about sex,” she told the DCNF. “I always say I’m for optimal health of the student. What is the healthiest way we can teach a young child? That should be our goal.”  Texas law requires that teachers emphasize abstinence in sex education for young children, Feck said, and this program seeks to sneak around the requirement by briefly mentioning abstinence before dwelling on topics like condoms and birth control.  “A lot of people will say that abstinence isn’t a reality,” Feck added. “Well in third grade, I hope it is.”  Some Austin parents look at their fight against the sex education curriculum as a moral issue, Feck said. The curriculum instructs teachers to steal primary terms from children, she explained, and replace these primary terms with more gender-fluid identification.  “Teachers will teach children, ‘Instead of mom and dad, what are some other words we can use? Instead of girl and boy, what are some other words we can use?'”  Lisa Williams, a mother of two elementary school–aged children in the Austin ISD, said the most alarming part of the situation is that the process was noncompliant with Texas law.  “I don’t feel that the curriculum stresses abstinence enough,” she told the DCNF. “I feel it introduces things way too young. It’s teaching kids things that go directly against my religious beliefs.”  Williams said under the updated curriculum, her children will be taught and encouraged to utilize contraception and abortion, and told that having sex is fine for children as long as everyone consents.  “This process has really demonstrated that the school board does not care what the parents think,” Williams said. “They are just pursuing their own objective despite a lot of feedback that this is what people want. They are refusing to take a more moderate stance on this. There’s a lot of parents that aren’t even aware that this is going on. That’s the really sad thing. This is going to be taught to their kids unbeknownst to them.”  It makes her lose trust in the school system in general, Williams said.  “What else are you teaching our kids?” she asked.  Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.


liveaction--2019-01-01--7 reasons New Mexico assisted suicide bill is most dangerous yet

7 reasons New Mexico assisted suicide bill is ‘most dangerous’ yet

A new bill being considered by New Mexico lawmakers has some opponents saying that it’s so radical, it’s the most dangerous bill yet. Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, and Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism and consultant for the Patients Rights Council, are both ringing alarm bells about New Mexico House Bill 90. Typically, assisted suicide bills have requirements to ostensibly prevent abuses, such as a terminal prognosis of 60 days or less to live, and barring people with mental health disorders from eligibility. New Mexico plans to do away with much of those safeguards.  According to Schadenberg and Smith, there are a number of concerning facets to this bill.  1. It does not require a prescription from a doctor.  A nurse, physician’s assistant, or even an osteopath can prescribe the fatal drugs. This is likely not something chosen cavalierly, as in countries with assisted suicide already legal, it’s not uncommon to find physicians unwilling to facilitate patient requests to die. By allowing non-doctors to participate, it makes it more likely that people seeking to kill themselves can find someone willing to cooperate.  2. It does not specify the length of time a patient has left to live needed to be eligible.  Typically, the requirement is 60 days, yet this bill merely requires a patient to be diagnosed with a terminal illness, “a disease or condition that is incurable and irreversible and that, in accordance with reasonable medical judgment, will result in death within the foreseeable future.” This leaves eligibility completely open; anyone could choose to take advantage of assisted suicide so long as they have any kind of illness that will persist for their entire life, from HIV to a progressive disability.  3. It requires providers to lie on the death certificate.  Rather than truthfully say that the person died of assisted suicide, the condition which made them eligible for assisted suicide will instead be listed. For example, if a woman with liver cancer chooses assisted suicide, her cause of death will be recorded as cancer, not suicide. This is concerning for more issues than just a desire to be truthful. “It would be impossible to determine if abuse of the law occurs,” Schadenberg pointed out.  READ: Most people don’t know what ‘assisted suicide’ actually means  4. It shortens the window of availability to just 48 hours — so a patient could get their first consultation and have their lethal prescription filled just two days later — and requires physicians to give patients the option of assisted suicide at the time of diagnosis with a terminal disease, even if the patient isn’t yet dying.  This is troubling, because as others battling terminal illnesses have pointed out, knowing suicide is available during their lowest moments is akin to an encouragement to stop fighting and choose death instead. Kristen Hanson, whose husband J.J. famously fought brain cancer and spoke out against assisted suicide until his death, talked of how even he wanted to die in his lowest moments. Hanson said he “felt such despair that he may have taken a lethal prescription had it been legal in New York, where we lived, and if he had it in his nightstand during his darkest days” and that he thought at times “ending his life would relieve the burden on his caretakers and allow him to bypass the experience of illness-induced disability that the disease would otherwise cause.”  5. It essentially erases the need for a second consultation, allowing telemedicine.  A second examination by a different physician is usually required, but with New Mexico’s bill, telemedicine is allowed. The bill also obliterates conscience protections, so any doctor unwilling to participate in assisted suicide is required to refer the patient to another provider who will. It also gives protections for providers who participate in assisted suicide, so if someone is misdiagnosed or the provider is otherwise neglectful, they cannot be held accountable, so long as they were “acting in good faith.” Smith noted, “[A] treating doctor could be sued for malpractice under the same circumstance under the more rigorous ‘reasonable practitioner’ standard of care that normally applies.”  6. People with mental health disorders and intellectual disabilities would be eligible for assisted suicide.  A licensed psychiatrist, psychologist, master social worker, psychiatric nurse practitioner, or professional clinical mental health counselor would need to approve, andapproval via telemedicine is allowed.  There is no residency requirement, so essentially, if the bill is passed, it allows anyone in the United States to kill themselves. All they have to do is travel to New Mexico for a few days, and death is within anyone’s grasp.


liveaction--2019-01-10--Assisted suicide is legal in Hawaii but most doctors unwilling to participate

Assisted suicide is legal in Hawaii, but most doctors unwilling to participate

Last year, Hawaii became the sixth state to legalize assisted suicide, with the law officially going into effect earlier this month. But for assisted suicide advocates, there has been a bit of a snafu: most Hawaiian doctors and pharmacists are not willing to participate.  While health care facilities themselves are willing to provide the fatal drugs to allow patients to kill themselves, it is doctors and pharmacists that must prescribe and dispense them, and these health care providers are able to decide if they want to do so or not. Most appear to be refusing. “There are a number of health care providers, nurses and others who are really uncomfortable about this, so asking anybody to participate as a patient ends their life is a really tough thing,” Melinda Ashton said in an interview with KOAT. Ashton serves as the chief quality officer for Hawaii Pacific Health, one of the largest health care providers in Hawaii. “The most recent barrier does seem to be we haven’t yet located a pharmacy willing to provide the medication.”  READ: Most people don’t know what ‘assisted suicide’ actually means  While CVS Pharmacy, for example, has said they will comply with the law, they also said they will allow individual pharmacists to decide whether or not to fill the prescriptions. Hawaii Pacific Health and The Queen’s Medical Center both said their pharmacies will not fill the prescriptions, nor can hospitalized patients take the fatal drugs in the hospital. Dr. Daniel Fischberg, medical director of the Queen’s Medical Center Pain and Palliative Care Department, was not surprised. “There’s definitely diversity of opinion. A minority of physicians feel prepared to actually participate in terms of writing a prescription,” he said to KOAT.  It’s not surprising that so many doctors and pharmacists are not willing to be complicit in the killing of their patients. As assisted suicide spreads, more and more doctors have been speaking out, re-affirming that their goal is to care for their patients, not help them die. Australian doctor John Obeid wrote a scathing criticism of assisted suicide in the Daily Telegraph, saying, “Assisting dying patients by providing pain management and emotional and psychological support is exactly what health professionals already do but assisting a dying patient is altogether different from deliberately ‘assisting’ that patient to die by administering or prescribing a lethal substance.”  Likewise, Washington, D.C. doctor Gracie Pozo Christie has warned against assisted suicide, writing in The Hill, “Some of the most ardent opponents of physician-prescribed suicide are doctors and nurses with plenty of experience accompanying patients through the shock of a terminal diagnosis and the struggle of the last months of life. Becoming an agent of your own patient’s death is directly at odds with a vocation designed to prolong and enhance lives.” The American College of Physicians has recently affirmed their opposition to assisted suicide as well.  Most people who go into the medical profession do so because they want to help people, to heal. Very few would have any enthusiasm for being paid to kill. It’s not altogether surprising, then, that there is reluctance among Hawaiian health care providers to participate in assisted suicide. The question then becomes, how long before euthanasia advocates move to force them to do it anyway?


liveaction--2019-01-28--Assisted suicide proponents renew push to legalize it in New York

On the heels of New York’s Reproductive Health Act, which allows for abortions at any time under reasons of the mother’s “health” — broadly defined to mean emotional, mental, physical, familial, etc., according to Roe v. Wade’s companion case, Doe v. Bolton — comes a new push to legalize physician-assisted suicide in the state.  According to the Associated Press, “The proposal before lawmakers would require two doctors to sign off on the use of life-ending medication. It has been proposed for years, without a vote.” The AP adds, “Supporters say the proposal is carefully crafted to prevent abuse while giving people with terminal illnesses the choice to die with dignity. Opponents worry such a law could be misused.”  No proposal can guarantee protection against abuses by family members or others who may pressure patients into choosing assisted suicide, or prevent a patient from choosing it based on reasons not related to a terminal condition. A previous Live Action News article by Cassy Fiano-Chesser noted, “Multiple… studies, including some published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the British Medical Journal, found that people pursue assisted suicide because they feel hopeless, are struggling with depression… are afraid they are a burden on their loved ones, or don’t have support. When these issues are addressed, the request for assisted suicide is often withdrawn.”  READ: When assisted suicide was legalized, her insurance stopped paying for treatment  According to the same Live Action News article, “Studies show that assisted suicide increases the number of suicides. A 2015 study published in the Southern Medical Journal found that ‘legalising assisted suicide is associated with a 6.3 per cent increase in the total suicide rate – including both assisted and non-assisted suicides. For the over-65 age group, the increase is 14.5 per cent.'”  A study from New Zealand showed that many people don’t actually know what assisted suicide entails, mistakenly believing it includes removing life support or even Do Not Resuscitate orders.  Seven states and Washington, D.C. currently allow physician-assisted suicide.


liveaction--2019-02-21--Doctor says assisted suicide leading insurance companies to deny treatments

Brian Callister is a practicing physician and medical school professor with more than 30 years of experience. In his article in the Las Vegas Review Journal, he writes about the dangers of physician assisted suicide.  He complains about the “sugar coated” phrase used by assisted suicide supporters, “physician aid in dying.” Supporters claim they are giving patients another option. In reality, Callister says, doctors and insurance companies have incentives to pressure patients to kill themselves. Callister writes:  When insurers and our government are faced with skyrocketing health care costs, PAS gives them the real and inexpensive alternative to deny you care and provide you with a deadly prescription instead. It’s a lot cheaper to give you a bunch of pills to kill you rather than pay to treat you. Sadly, such real abuses are already being witnessed in states where PAS is legal. Since PAS became legal in California and Oregon, I have experienced firsthand the abuses that PAS incentivizes.  He then goes on to describe his experiences:  I cared for two patients in my hospital in Northern Nevada who were seeking transfers to their home states of California and Oregon for lifesaving treatments. With these particular treatment options, both patients had an excellent chance of cure. Without the treatments, both would likely die from their diseases.  When I spoke with the medical directors of the patients’ insurance companies, both of them told me they would cover assisted suicide but would not approve coverage for lifesaving treatment. Neither the patients nor I had requested assisted suicide, yet it was readily offered. Instead of the best treatment options, my patients were offered the cheapest option — a quick death through lethal medications. This was perfectly legal to do in those states but certainly unethical.  In the United States, insurance companies can — and often do — choose to deny coverage for expensive treatments. The assisted suicide “option” allows insurance companies a way to reduce the money they pay out by giving them a cheaper “treatment” to offer patients. And as Callister says, nothing can be done about this — an insurance company turning down an expensive cure and paying only for assisted suicide is legal.  Assisted suicide isn’t just a threat to the disabled and chronically ill, it is a threat to everyone. Anyone can develop a life-threatening disease such as cancer and could be faced with assisted suicide presented to as the sole option. The push to legalize assisted suicide must be fought.  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!


liveaction--2019-03-27--VICTORY Assisted suicide bill fails to pass in Maryland Senate

VICTORY: Assisted suicide bill fails to pass in Maryland Senate

Suicide is generally seen as something to be prevented, an awful tragedy — unless the person is disabled, poor, elderly, or ill, and then, it suddenly becomes an act of compassion and dignity. Even as other states are poised to legalize assisted suicide, an assisted suicide bill failed today in Maryland in a tie vote. Having previously failed three times before in the Maryland General Assembly, assisted suicide proponents in the legislature will now need to sponsor the bill again.  Had it been passed, the bill would have allowed some adults with a terminal illness, with less than six months to live, to request a lethal prescription from a doctor with which they could commit suicide. Some who oppose assisted suicide have pointed out the problem with this kind of vague language, however. Many people with chronic illnesses or disabilities would die in less than six months if they stopped taking their medications or treatments, but with treatment, can live for years. Would these people then also fall under the “terminal illness” category?  In order for the bill to advance for a final vote in the Senate, it needed 24 votes out of 47. Instead, it was tied at 23-23, thanks to Democrat Ohio Patterson, who refused to cast a vote. “I did not cast a vote simply because I could not bring myself to move right or left on the bill and therefore I didn’t vote at all,” he told the media afterwards, and then affirmed that he had done his job as a senator the best he could. “I researched it, I talked with folks and my decision today was not to cast a vote. But I think I did my job,” he said. “I did not relinquish my responsibility to thoroughly review all of the concerns I had about the bill. At the end of the day, I felt I could not cast a vote.”  Some of the other senators pointed out that several years ago, the legislature voted to abolish the death penalty, under the view that every life — including a criminal’s — is worth protecting. Still others were concerned about the possibility of a mistaken diagnosis leading someone to choose to kill themselves. “There are no do-overs in this type of law,” Sen. Bryan Simonaire said to the Baltimore Sun. “Doctors have and will continue to make mistakes and miscalculations. They are humans. Once a life is taken, it is final.”  The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Will Smith, said he plans to sponsor the bill again in the future, and noted that progress has been made legalization. “I’m proud of the work we did. I’m proud of the product that I brought to the Senate,” Smith said to the Baltimore Sun. “And I’m proud of my ‘Yes’ vote today.”  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!


liveaction--2019-03-30--New Jersey is on the brink of legalizing assisted suicide

New Jersey lawmakers have approved a bill that would legalize assisted suicide, meaning the Garden State could potentially join Colorado, Montana, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Vermont, and the District of Columbia in legalization if Governor Phil Murphy signs it into law. Previously, Murphy promised that he would. “Allowing terminally ill and dying residents the dignity to make end-of-life decisions according to their own consciences is the right thing to do. I look forward to signing this legislation into law,” he said in a statement.  The bill passed with 21 votes in the state Senate, and 41 votes in the state Assembly. Under the proposed law, people who are terminally ill and mentally competent would be allowed to receive a fatal prescription after requesting it three times, with one of those times written down in the presence of two witnesses.  While assisted suicide in and of itself is bad enough, what is especially horrifying about the New Jersey legislation is that the lethal medication will be covered by the state’s Medicaid program — so taxpayers will be forced to fund the assisted suicides of their neighbors.  Advocates of assisted suicide call it “death with dignity,” but the reality is, there are growing abuses in states that have already legalized it, and assisted suicide merely preys on those who are extremely vulnerable, including people with disabilities, who are frequently pressured to die.  READ: Study: Assisted suicide can be painful, prolonged and inhumane  And though assisted suicide is said to be the kinder, more compassionate option for people struggling with terminal illnesses, it actually encourages people with life-limiting diseases to choose death in their low moments, as Kristen Hanson, wife of J.J. Hanson, explained. She said her husband sometimes “felt such despair that he may have taken a lethal prescription had it been legal in New York, where we lived, and if he had it in his nightstand during his darkest days,” and that he sometimes felt that “ending his life would relieve the burden on his caretakers and allow him to bypass the experience of illness-induced disability that the disease would otherwise cause.”  It’s also not altogether surprising that the number of suicides increases when assisted suicide is legal. It’s because people don’t choose to kill themselves because they are afraid of their disease, as multiple studies show. People instead often resort to assisted suicide because they feel hopeless, don’t have support, are struggling with depression, or fear being a burden on their loved ones. When these issues are treated, the request for suicide is often withdrawn.  It is shameful that suicide is seen as something to be avoided and prevented at all costs, unless the person is sick, elderly, or disabled — and then, it’s something to be embraced and accommodated.  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!


liveaction--2019-04-03--Connecticut assisted suicide bill fails to gain support a second time

For the second time in two years, Connecticut’s assisted suicide bill – HB 5898 — has died in Committee. On Monday, the legislature’s Public Health Committee realized they simply couldn’t garner enough support to advance the bill which would have allowed doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication to terminally ill patients.  Assisted suicide failed to make it out of Committee in Connecticut last year as well. The bill states patients who are in pain and have just six months or less to live would be able to submit two written requests for a lethal dose of medication in order to kill themselves. Doctors would have to inform these patients of alternatives and risks but would be able to prescribe a dose intended to kill. Two doctors would need to confirm the diagnosis in order for the request for assisted suicide to be accepted.  “It fails every year because there is no way you can ever make this right,” Peter Wolfgang of the Family Insitute of Connecticut told the CT Mirror. “It is never right to license doctors to prescribe suicide as a treatment and to grant immunity to the people that help you kill yourself.”  This year, proponents of the so-called “aid in dying” bill in Connecticut were hopeful that the bill would pass because the Connecticut State Medical Society changed its stance against assisted suicide to take a neutral opinion on the issue. The group now says that it will let doctors decide whether or not they are willing to help people commit suicide. But that dash of support ended up offering no help.  “This is as close as we’ve ever gotten,” said State Rep. Jonathan Steinberg (D), co-chair of the Public Health Committee. “You could argue it was nip and tuck for a while. But we didn’t have the votes.”  Since the legislature remains the same until 2021, Steinberg said success in passing the bill in 2020 is unlikely as well. He plans to wait until 2021 to bring it up again. He cited strong morals among the current legislature along with the voiced concerns from people in the state with disabilities as major contibutions to the bill’s failure.  “It is really not a left versus right issue,” Wolfgang told The Waterbury Republican. “It is not religion versus secularism. It is not pro-life versus pro-choice. on our side, we have the ideologically broadest coalition on this issue of any issue I’ve ever worked on.”  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!


liveaction--2019-04-14--People with disabilities and terminal illnesses speak out against assisted suicide

For now, assisted suicide is illegal in New Zealand, although lawmakers in the island nation are closer than ever to legalizing it. While assisted suicide is said to be the remedy needed for people with terminal illnesses and severe disabilities, many of them are speaking out against it, insisting that their lives are worth living.  When she was 17, Claire Freeman was in a car accident that broke her neck, and paralyzed her arms and legs. She now is a tetraplegic model, and speaks out against assisted suicide — even though she once considered killing herself at a euthanasia clinic. Despite her disability, Freeman got a college degree and was working as a designer in Christchurch, and thought she was happy — until the 2011 earthquake, which she said revealed “a whole lot of grief that I had been holding deep inside.” She then attempted to kill herself four times, once landing in the hospital for a week in a coma. But instead of trying to address her psychological pain, the psychologist at the suicide outreach clinic referred her to a Swiss euthanasia clinic.  “I said I’m thinking about an assisted suicide. He said, ‘That could be an option for you,'” she told the New Zealand Herald. “So I started putting things together to do that. I was in constant pain, while still trying to work and build a house and all sorts of things.” But after suffering another medical emergency, she ended up even more disabled — and it ended up saving her life. She had to scale back, rest more, and work less, and started pursuing her doctorate degree. During her education, she began to see things differently.  “She [her professor] started talking about quality of life, and I realised that a lot of the advice I had been given, like from the psychologist and from a psychiatrist who saw me after an earlier suicide attempt, was because they were looking at me and just seeing the disability,” Freeman said. “They were not saying, ‘Hey, what’s going on in your life? Are you working too much? Are you in too much pain?’ None of those questions were asked, it was just, ‘Of course she wants to die, she’s in a wheelchair, she’s in pain.'”  Freeman now advocates for other people with disabilities, counseling them when they struggle with suicidal thoughts. She also has become a model. And she has appeared in a mini-documentary called #DefendNZ.  READ: Study: Assisted suicide can be painful, prolonged and inhumane  Also featured in the #DefendNZ series is Kylee Black, a New Zealander with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a terminal condition affecting her joints, ligaments, tendons, skin, blood vessels and internal organs, making her heavily reliant on others. Yet she still opposes assisted suicide, and worries about what it would mean for people like her if death was available.  “I have difficult days and those days I don’t need to be confronted with easily accessible death,” she said to the New Zealand Herald. “If assisted suicide is legal it would be legal to promote it. I don’t want to be triggered by assisted suicide ads or flyers. I have multiple specialists and go to hospital many times a year. I know my care costs a lot of money. But I also know I contribute to society.”  For Black, the idea that assisted suicide is a “choice” is a lie — and she argues that people like her would feel pressured to choose death, due to how much it costs for her to receive treatment and medical care.  Black has good reason to fear that her life will come with a price tag, considering people with disabilities are barred from entering New Zealand because of the supposed cost of their health care. And it’s easy for people battling terminal illnesses or disabilities to feel that they are a burden on those around them or on their communities, especially when ableist messages are so common and people are told it is better to die than live disabled. Indeed, multiple studies from reputable medical journals have found that people do not choose assisted suicide due to pain or fear of death; they do so because they feel depressed and hopeless, lack support, and fear that they are a burden to the people around them. When these issues are addressed, the request to die is often withdrawn.  Assisted suicide directly targets the most vulnerable in society — the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the sick; while those who are healthy and able are told that their deaths are something to be avoided at all costs, people whose lives are deemed not worth living are told that suicide is an acceptable choice. And there’s nothing dignified about it.  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!


liveaction--2019-04-19--UK physician ethics committee chair resigns over assisted suicide change

The chairman of the ethics committee for the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), originally founded in 1518, has stepped down, along with several other members, over the change of the British medical group’s official position on assisted suicide. Before, the RCP formally opposed the idea of doctors helping their patients kill themselves; now, the group has shifted to merely neutral.  Albert Weale, a professor specializing in political theory and social policy, resigned and slammed the position change, calling it incoherent and unfair. Two other members likewise left with him. “There seems to be no chain of coherent reasoning leading to the council’s own position – a situation I regret deeply,” Weale said to the Telegraph.  The position change came after a survey of doctors, the majority of which said the RCP should remain opposed to assisted suicide. Yet the organization had already decided to take a neutral stance, unless there was a super-majority vote of 60% of more outweighing their decision. So, even though only one in four doctors agreed with its decision, the RCP changed its stance to neutral.  READ: Study: Assisted suicide can be painful, prolonged and inhumane  Weale also complained that the council had already made up its mind, even as the ethics committee was giving them expert advice, leading him to feel as if the committee had been wasting their time. “There is simply no point in the committee offering reasoned positions if they are ignored by council,” Weale wrote in his resignation letter.  A doctor who opposed the position change, David Randall, told the Telegraph, “These resignations from the RCP’s ethics committee add to the concern that the college has rushed into a position of neutrality on assisted dying without proper process, and without fully considering the implications of neutrality.”  Assisted suicide is growing in popularity and is being increasingly legalized throughout the world — yet the people it affects most are not people who are actively dying, but the most vulnerable in society. Assisted suicide targets people who are elderly, sick, disabled, and poor, and those who seek it out are not doing so because they are scared of dying painful deaths. Study after study, including from reputable medical journals like the New England Journal of Medicine and the British Medical Journal, report that people choose assisted suicide because they are depressed, hopeless, without support, and afraid of being a burden to loved ones.  Health care does not mean helping desperate people who think they have no other options to die — and that’s exactly why so few doctors are willing to get on board.  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!


liveaction--2019-05-14--After he was paralyzed he considered assisted suicide Now hes running

After he was paralyzed, he considered assisted suicide. Now, he’s running.

In June 2016, Steven Dowd was in a life-changing accident that left him paralyzed from the neck-down. Metro.co.uk reports that as he struggled to come to terms with his injuries, Dowd considered assisted suicide. However, during his hospital stay, doctors said he was a candidate for experimental spinal surgery at a nearby hospital. Today, less than three years after surgery, Dowd is walking, cycling, and even running to raise money for the charity that funded his surgery.  The accident occurred when Dowd was cycling the 10 miles from his home to his work, which he did often while training for a cycling event. Dowd says after the accident, “I thought I would never be able to move again. I was paralysed from the neck down.”  Immediately following the accident, Dowd saw no reason for hope. He says, “The doctors said my injury was devastating. They said they didn’t know what my prognosis would be. They said some people make some recovery and other people never get any sensation back.” Dowd explains that he and his wife, Helen, had a “very stark conversation” in which he decided that he would not want to live the rest of his life in a power wheelchair. While he says he understands “some people lead very full lives in that situation,” he says, “it was not what I wanted for me or my wife.”  READ: Study: Assisted suicide can be painful, prolonged and inhumane  Still reeling from the shocking impact of the accident, Dowd says on that day he told his wife that if he had to live the rest of his life in a wheelchair, “I wanted to go to Switzerland and end my life there.” Euthanasia is legal in Switzerland, and people from the UK, where Dowd lives, travel to assisted suicide clinics in Switzerland to end their lives.  Dowd’s difficult discussion points to the unmet needs of patients considering assisted suicide. While doctors focus on the physical needs of the patient, the psychological are often not addressed. Understandably, the shock of a debilitating illness or condition may prompt someone to consider suicide, but his or her life is still valuable and meaningful. A culture that says some people can legally be assisted in ending their lives is one that endorses suicide.  There are many other examples of patients deciding against assisted suicide when experimental treatment becomes available. Other patients found more supportive and successful treatment. Still others continue to suffer with life-limiting or even fatal conditions but found meaning in their life that prompted them to reject assisted suicide.  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!


liveaction--2019-05-25--Dangerous Oregon legislators push to allow same-day assisted suicides

Dangerous: Oregon legislators push to allow same-day assisted suicides

Oregon legislators are currently considering two bills that would radically expand the state’s physician-assisted suicide laws. House Bill 2217 would allow patients to take lethal medication through self-injection, while Senate Bill 579 eliminates waiting periods required for those who wish to end their lives.  Currently, patients wishing to end their lives must ingest lethal medication through pills or a feeding tube. HB 2217 is meant to accommodate those patients who wish to commit suicide but are too weak or ill to self-administer pills, by allowing the medication to be provided via syringe or IV. As proposed, the bill would further blur the lines between suicide and euthanasia, since health care providers would be required to help a patient load the syringe with deadly medicine or insert a needle in their arm, thereby becoming more active participants in the act of suicide.  “Oregon’s Death with Dignity law carves patients away from the health care delivery system when they want to commit suicide and doesn’t make us complicitly involved with this,” Dr. Bud Pierce, a Salem oncologist told the Bend Bulletin. “This bill makes us actors in the death of patients. I think it’s morally wrong for physicians to kill their patients.”  Opponents of the bill warn that it would make it easier for doctors to administer lethal medications without a patient’s knowledge or consent. “The problem with this setup is that very easily, another person could administer the drugs without the patient having any knowledge of what is going on,” said Dr. Kenneth Stevens, a radiation oncologist.  READ: People with disabilities and terminal illnesses speak out against assisted suicide  While pro-life groups like Oregon Right to Life are vehemently opposed to this bill, it is also seeing opposition from some other surprising fronts, including Death with Dignity National Center and Compassion & Choices, two groups which advocate for physician-assisted suicide.  “I can’t imagine that we want to risk botched deaths because we have allowed a law that would have patients administering medications through equipment they have no training to use. This is a risky proposition. The law, as written, does not protect patients from those risks,” wrote Sam DeWitt, Oregon Access Campaign Manager of Compassion & Choices.  HB 2217 is currently pending in the state Senate.  The state’s Senators pushed through another radical bill Monday, passing SB 579 with a 16-11 vote. That bill eliminates waiting periods for those wishing to commit suicide if a physician determines that the patient would die before the waiting period is up. These waiting periods are designed to prevent abuse and same-day suicides.  “What is most alarming about SB 579 is that it permits on demand, same-day assisted suicide for people who are in a very fragile state of mind,” said Lois Anderson, ORTL executive director. “Every person has a right to be valued and treated ethically, especially during their last days of life. These people deserve the same protections under the law.”  SB 579 next goes to the House of Representatives.  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!


liveaction--2019-06-16--As Maine legalizes assisted suicide governor hopes it is used sparingly

As Maine legalizes assisted suicide, governor hopes it is ‘used sparingly’

On June 12th, Maine Governor Janet Mills signed a bill legalizing assisted suicide. Maine is the eighth state to legalize a doctor-ordered lethal dose of pain medication for select patients who request it. Similar measures were previously brought up no less than seven times in Maine’s state Legislature and once as a statewide referendum — the process of allowing voters to decide whether a law that has passed in the Legislature gets upheld or repealed — but each time they failed. Gov. Mills said, “It is my hope that this law, while respecting the right to personal liberty, will be used sparingly.” Given the trends of other states, this seems unlikely.  Maine joins California, Colorado, Washington, DC, Hawaii , New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington (Montana does not have a law on the books, but a Supreme Court ruling in 2009 essentially allows for it) in legalizing the practice, with similar measures being considered in Arizona, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Utah, and New York. New York is considered likely to vote before the end of this legislative session, in the next week and a half.  The law is supposed to apply only to patients considered “terminally ill,” i.e. those having an illness that is incurable and likely to cause death in the next six months, even though many people have outlived medical estimates by months or years. Furthermore, a previous report on Oregon’s assisted suicide law found a loophole stating that being unable to pay for life-saving treatment could make a patient’s condition legally “incurable” in that state. Does Maine have such a loophole? Time will tell.  In addition, the law isn’t supposed to apply to patients suffering from depression, which can cloud judgment. Sadly, a 2007 study done in Oregon, which legalized assisted suicide in 1997, found that none of the 47 patients who died by swallowing a lethal dose of pain medicine that year were evaluated for depression by a psychologist or psychiatrist.  Critics of assisted suicide laws worry that patients with life-limiting, incurable diseases will be seen as a financial drain on society. They have reason to fear, as patients in Oregon and California have already been told that chemotherapy and other potentially helpful medications would not be medically covered, but pills to end their lives would be.  What’s more, research suggests that the whole rationale for assisted suicide, the alleviation of unbearable pain, is a sham. Corinne Carey, an employee of the euphemistically-named Compassion & Choices (a euthanasia advocacy organization which led the campaigns to legalize assisted suicide in both New Jersey and New York), argues that assisted suicide is necessary because being able to die this way “could mean the difference between unbearable suffering and having the peace of mind to know that (the sick person) can die a peaceful death.” Rather than citing pain, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine claims people primarily seek assisted suicide because of 1) loss of autonomy due to their illness 2) fear of being a burden on others, especially family or 3) fear of no longer being able to enjoy life due to their illness, i.e. untreated or inadequately treated depression.  Sickeningly, assisted suicide laws target vulnerable populations already at-risk for receiving inferior care: the poor, the depressed or otherwise mentally ill, the elderly, the disabled. Assisted suicide communicates to these people that suicide is unacceptable, except in their cases, because they are a burden.  Maine’s new law comes mere days after the death of a 17 year old Dutch girl from anorexia following sexual assault and rape. Her story made headlines because assisted suicide is legal in the Netherlands, though her request for euthanasia was reportedly refused. Responding to her story, Pope Francis tweeted, “Euthanasia and assisted suicide are a defeat for all. We are called never to abandon those who are suffering, never giving up but caring and loving to restore hope.”  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!


liveaction--2019-07-26--Oregon governor signs bill removing assisted suicide safeguards for certain patients

As previously reported by Live Action News, Oregon has continued in its attempts to further remove safeguards when it comes to assisted suicide in the state. And this week, Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed Senate Bill 579, removing waiting periods for assisted suicide for certain patients, into state law. According to ABC News, “The law allows those with 15 days left to live to bypass a 15-day waiting period required under the Death with Dignity Act, something proponents say will reduce bureaucracy and bring relief to gravely ill people.”  But Oregon Right to Life Executive Director Lois Anderson stated in a press release, “By signing this bill, Governor Kate Brown shirked her duty to protect Oregon’s citizens. Oregon’s ‘Death with Dignity’ law already lacks important safeguards to protect vulnerable Oregonians. Removing one of the only safeguards that does exist is both unnecessary and incredibly ill-advised.” Anderson also points out that Oregon “has a significant elder abuse problem” and says the governor ignored the testimony of many medical professionals who believe this law will put vulnerable citizens at greater risk.  ABC News notes that prior to the new law, “Those seeking life-ending medications had to make a verbal request for physician-assisted suicide, wait 15 days and then make a written request. They then had to wait an additional 48 hours before obtaining the prescription. Under the new amendment, doctors can make exceptions to the waiting periods if the patient is likely to die before completing them.”  Another bill being considered in Oregon, as previously reported, is HB 2217, which passed the House and is currently in committee in the state senate. This bill, according to its webpage, “[p]rohibits anyone other than patient from administering medication to end patient’s life in humane and dignified manner.”  As Live Action News previously noted regarding HB 2217, the bill “is meant to accommodate those patients who wish to commit suicide but are too weak or ill to self-administer pills, by allowing the medication to be provided via syringe or IV. As proposed, the bill would further blur the lines between suicide and euthanasia, since health care providers would be required to help a patient load the syringe with deadly medicine or insert a needle in their arm, thereby becoming more active participants in the act of suicide.”  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!


liveaction--2019-07-28--Puzzled officials say minorities are shunning assisted suicide Heres why

Puzzled officials say minorities are shunning assisted suicide. Here’s why.

In California, where assisted suicide became legal three years ago, officials have noticed something puzzling: most of the people taking advantage of the ability to have so-called “death with dignity” are white, with minorities refusing the opportunity to take their own lives. And it’s not just in California; the same effect has been seen in other states as well, leaving advocates questioning why.  The California Department of Public Health has been tracking the demographics of people who take advantage of assisted suicide since the law was passed in 2016, and found that 88 percent of people using it are white. Jill Weinberg, a sociologist at Tufts University, said the same thing has been happening in other states with legalized euthanasia, like Vermont and Oregon. But she expected California to be different. “California is the first state in which we’re starting to expect to see more diversity,” she said in an interview with Capital Public Radio. “And in fact, we’re not seeing that.”  READ: Justice Clarence Thomas gives epic history lesson on abortion and eugenics  According to geriatrician Vyjeyanthi Periyakoil, minorities trust doctors less and get diagnosed with serious illnesses later, which Periyakoil says means they have less time to think about their “options.” But Elana Shpall, another geriatrician, told Capital Public Radio that it comes down to philosophical differences as well. “We talk a lot about their end of life choices and planning for the future, and most of them say something like ‘when God wills it, it will be my time’,” she said. “Based on my population, I would say it’s a big cultural barrier.”  Meanwhile, assisted suicide advocacy organization Compassion and Choices — formerly known as the Hemlock Society — claims that it just needs to be sold better so minorities can kill themselves, too. “The information that’s written right now is written primarily for a white audience,” executive director Kim Callinan told Capital Public Radio. “We need to have messages and materials that will resonate given the culture and the community we’re trying to reach, from credible messengers in that community.”  If people truly want to understand what makes minorities less likely to undergo assisted suicide, Washington, D.C. would be a good place to start looking. Black residents vocally opposed the bill, which passed anyway. Leona Redmond, a community activist who fought against the legislation, didn’t mince any words.  “Because of Jim Crow laws . . . we didn’t have the opportunity to have the same jobs, to have the same insurance, the same retirement benefits,” Redmond said to the Washington Post. “It’s really aimed at old black people. It really is.” She likewise pointed out that the advocates pushing for it “are not people who look like me.”  Rev. Eugene Rivers III, a black minister from Boston who helped a group called No DC Suicide, was more explicit, calling assisted suicide “back end eugenics.”  READ: Could the funding of abortion by wealthy Americans be rooted in eugenics?  The exact concerns these residents have had proven to be valid, looking at places where assisted suicide is legal around the world. In Belgium, for example, a father of four children who suffers from a rare blood disorder is planning to be euthanized because he cannot afford the expensive medication he needs in order to live. In the United States, in both California and Oregon, insurance companies have refused to pay for people’s treatment, while offering to pay for assisted suicide instead, even though the patients had not requested to die or shown any interest in it. “As soon as this law was passed, patients fighting for a longer life end up getting denied treatment, because this will always be the cheapest option,” Stephanie Packer, a California resident who has been fighting a terminal illness and opposes assisted suicide, has said.  Black Americans live below the poverty line at a rate more than double that of white Americans, and they suffer poorer health care outcomes than white Americans. According to Families USA, a non-profit health care advocacy organization, Black Americans get lower quality care in numerous areas, including “pain management, asthma treatment, and even getting a simple aspirin in the ER when they present with angina.”  Given this information — the poverty rates, the poorer health care, the injustices black Americans have faced in the past and still face today — it’s not difficult to figure out why black Americans and other minorities are not willing to jump on board the assisted suicide bandwagon. Assisted suicide inherently preys on people at their most vulnerable, people who are poor, elderly, disabled, and ill. It’s disturbing to know that the assisted suicide lobby’s next move is to learn how best to manipulate vulnerable people into thinking death is their best and only option.  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!


liveaction--2019-07-30--Law student argues that prison inmates should have access to assisted suicide

A law student has written an article in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology arguing that prison inmates should be allowed to undergo assisted suicide, with evidently no concern for the ethical problems such a scenario proposes. Noting that assisted suicide is becoming increasingly acceptable across the country, Kathleen Messinger argued that terminally ill prisoners should be allowed to kill themselves too.  Created in 1910, the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Northwestern University School of Law, and it is the second most widely subscribed journal published by a law school in the United States. In Messinger’s article, she drew a comparison between prisoners having the ability to refuse medical treatment, but not having the ability to kill themselves.  “Aid in dying is often supported by notions of autonomy and dignity in choosing the conditions of if, when, and how to end one’s life, however, there is one noticeable segment of the population entirely left out: incarcerated individuals,” she wrote in the introduction. “The incarcerated population is particularly relevant to the aid in dying conversation because, as the justice system continues to balloon and incarcerate more people, prisons are overcrowded, underfunded, and ill-equipped to support terminally ill and aging inmates. This leaves the aging incarcerated population vulnerable.”  READ: After he was paralyzed, he considered assisted suicide. Now, he’s running.  Messinger then positively framed an example of a patient who was allowed to starve himself to death. “The ability of prison officials to force feed inmates is another example of how courts treat incarcerated and nonincarcerated individuals’ autonomy differently. Based on the holding in Cruzan—that a competent person has a Fourteenth Amendment liberty interest in withdrawing medical care—prisoners should be able to starve themselves under the Fourteenth Amendment and autonomy principles,” she wrote. “While the Supreme Court has not weighed in on a constitutional right to starve, several state court cases are informative on the issue.” She noted that while the state of Georgia wanted to force-feed one prisoner who starved himself, the Supreme Court disagreed, and then bemoaned that other states did not follow the precedent set in the case, Zant v. Prevatte.  Messinger then moved on to complain that while assisted suicide is being legalized in more and more states, prisoners cannot take advantage. “While aid in dying is available in states that permit it, the same compassion is not extended to prisoners with terminal illnesses,” she said. “Prisoners over the age of fifty represent the fastest growing prison population. The aging and terminally ill prison population poses unique health care challenges such as chronic illness, heart disease, and diabetes that prisons are ill-equipped to manage. Incarcerated individuals age faster than their nonincarcerated counterparts. Research has shown that a prisoners’ physiological age averaged ten to fifteen years older than their chronological age. Furthermore, medical care is woefully inadequate for the aging and terminally ill prison population.”  Because prisoners don’t have access to adequate health care, denying them the right to assisted suicide, Messinger argues, is “cruel and unusual punishment,” while also pretending that assisted suicide is health care.  What Messinger fails to acknowledge at all is that prisoners are a uniquely vulnerable population, and it’s for that very reason that assisted suicide for inmates is a horrible idea. Someone who is imprisoned is literally incapable of giving consent freely. And, as Messinger points out, inmates often do not have access to quality health care, but that does not mean the answer is to kill them. The answer is to provide them with better health care. And the fact that the prison population is becoming older and sicker than the general population only means that, were assisted suicide available for them, they would be even more susceptible to coercion and pressure.  As it is, numerous studies from reputable medical journals have found that people who want to undergo assisted suicide don’t do so because of fear of pain or a long, undignified death; they want to die because they are depressed, hopeless, have a lack of support, and fear they are a burden. When these issues are addressed, the request is withdrawn. All of these issues — hopelessness, a lack of support, feeling they are a burden — easily apply to inmates. How, then, could it ever be considered a good idea to allow such people to take their own lives? It’s profoundly unethical, and everyone, even someone in prison, has the right to life.  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!