Free Republic

ROME, November 24, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The father of Eluana Englaro (known in the press as "Italy's Terri Shiavo"), Beppino Englaro, is making a name for himself as a euthanasia activist, and is continuing to claim justification for his successful decade-long court battle to have his daughter's food and hydration removed last year.  At the same time, according to a report commissioned by the prosecutor of Udine, the town in which she died, Eluana was in an "irreversible coma" at the time of her death.Eluana Englaro was an Italian woman from Lecco in northern Italy, who was diagnosed as being...

The Liverpool Care Pathway, a NHS programme for terminally ill patients close to death, has been at the centre of a storm of controversy. Now patients are demanding answers. Jean Cutler knows precisely how she would like to die. Alert and free of pain in the familiarity of her light-filled, home, she would glance one last time at her lovingly-tended garden, with its whispering trees and the stream winding into the bluebells, and kiss her husband Richard goodbye. But she knows, too, that this happy dream of death can never be. She is in the late stages of mesothelioma –...

A car crash victim has spoken of the horror he endured for 23 years after he was misdiagnosed as being in a coma when he was conscious the whole time.Rom Houben, trapped in his paralysed body after a car crash, described his real-life nightmare as he screamed to doctors that he could hear them - but could make no sound. 'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,' said Mr Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegatative state.'I dreamed myself away,' he added, tapping his tale out with the aid of a computer. Doctors used a...

My friends, I ran into Sarah Palin a week or so ago. Well, not the Sarah Palin — and not comedian Tina Fey, either. Temporarily away from my mission work and visiting old friends at an Irish parish, I was enjoying the (rare) sunshine after Mass, greeting parishioners as they left church, when I noticed a young mother pushing her daughter in a baby carriage. Her child — like all children — was radiant to me, with a shock of orange hair and a smile of beautiful wonderment at just about everything. Her head rolled back and forth as if...

Kudos to the Black&Right blog for finding this. You tell me we don't have political militants who are eerily vindictive. "In response to the Wall Street Journal piece, “Palin’s Book: The Overview”, a commenter added this example of liberal tolerance…"

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

This week, the Quebec College of Physicians and Surgeons tentatively approved euthanasia. That means it's essential that we look, specifically, at the impact that euthanasia would have on physicians and the profession of medicine, in order to understand why this approval is a very bad idea. In mainstream media, and therefore in the general public forum, the euthanasia debate has been focused, almost entirely, on the impact that legalizing euthanasia (a term I use in this article to include physician-assisted suicide) would have at the individual level. But we must also consider the impact legalizing it would have at institutional,...

In the end the young father could fight no longer. For more than a year he had made daily visits to the hospital bedside of his chronically-disabled son. For six emotional days in the High Court he had battled against the hospital - and the baby's mother - who were reluctantly seeking the right to withdraw life support. Finally, faced with overwhelming evidence, he made the 'agonising' decision to let his beloved son go. Both parents wept as the court was told he no longer opposed the hospital's application. They said later they wanted to spend 'what little time remains...

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, November 5, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pro-lifers must be clear about the nature of euthanasia and assisted suicide, insisted Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, during an address at the Canadian National Pro-Life Conference last weekend in Saskatoon.  "If we allow confusion about what euthanasia or assisted suicide is then we lose!"The pro-life conference was held as the Canadian Parliament considers Bill C-384, which seeks to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide.Schadenberg stressed the importance of properly defining euthanasia and assisted suicide, which he said are commonly misunderstood.  Contrary to the popular understanding, they are not...

The international assisted-suicide movement has many faces. America's "Dr. Death," Jack Kevorkian, probably comes most readily to mind. The activist groups, Compassion & Choices and Final Exit Network, are also well known. Then there is Australia's "Dr. Death," Philip Nitschke, who travels the world teaching people how to commit suicide with helium or animal-euthanasia drugs obtained from Mexico. On Sunday, Nitschke will bring his suicide seminar to the Buddhist Center in San Francisco, where he will teach attendees how to kill themselves. Shouldn't there be limits to assisted-suicide permissiveness? Not according to Nitschke, who bluntly takes assisted-suicide advocacy to its...

 Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. David Janda has a blistering commentary on the newest House version of Obamacare that succinctly and powerfully illuminates the danger to all of us–well, not the elite who never are bound by the same rules–if this monstrosity passes. From his column “Obamacare versus the Hippocratic Oath (all emphasis within the text): The sad fact is that the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Administration’s 1990 page health care reform bill (HR3962) and supplement(HR3961) violate The Oath by stripping  freedom from every person, family and business in Our country . This 19 ½ pound pair of documents, entitled ”Affordable Health Care For Americans...

Doctors want to take the one-year-old, born with a rare neuromuscular condition, off the ventilator which allows him to breathe. Their application is supported by the child's mother, who is separated from his father. On Monday, the hospital will take its application to take the boy off life support to the High Court, where lawyers for the father will fight the case. The one-year-old, known only as Baby RB, was born with congenital myasthenic syndrome, a muscle weakness which severely limits the movement of his limbs and the ability to breathe independently. Lawyers for the father say the baby's brain...

WASHINGTON – A proposed revision to the directives that guide Catholic heath care facilities would clarify that patients with chronic conditions who are not imminently dying should receive food and water by “medically assisted” means if they cannot take them normally. “As a general rule, there is an obligation to provide patients with food and water, including medically assisted nutrition and hydration for those who cannot take food orally,” says the revised text of the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” proposed by the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine. “This obligation extends to patients in chronic conditions...

The Canadians may put up with bureaucrats telling them what medicine they can and cannot receive–but we in the US are not so passive.  Alas, we could become so if Obamacare passes and we let centralized rationing boards to take control of our entire health care system.  If we do, in about ten years, we will begin to see stories such as on reported  in today’s Globe and Mail that tells the terrifying story of young women, who need a combination of drugs to fight pulmonary disease, being told–Nyet! And now, as a direct consequence, one woman is close...

Patients with terminal illness are being heavily sedated by doctors before their deaths in a form of “slow euthanasia”, research suggests. A poll of nearly 3,000 doctors found that almost one in five had administered infusions of drugs to keep patients unconscious for hours or days at a time. In appropriate doses, sedatives and strong painkillers are considered a valuable way of easing the pain and anxiety of patients who are dying with conditions such as cancer. But 18.7 per cent of British doctors polled said they used drugs to invoke “continuous deep sedation” in a dying patient, a practice...

Doctors who support the legalisation of assisted suicide are more likely to withdraw or withhold treatment from dying patients, a study has found. Actively helping someone to die remains illegal in Britain but more than a third of GPs and hospital doctors report making decisions which they expected would accelerate the death of a terminally-ill patient. A significant minority — 7 per cent — said that they had taken steps such as withdrawing medications, foods or fluid, with the intention of hastening a patient’s death. But doctors who actively support a change in the law to allow assisted suicide are...

VANCOUVER, October 26, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Unitarian Church of Vancouver has stepped in to provide a Canadian venue for Australian right-to-die activist Philip Nitschke after he was refused workshop space to hold a seminar on how to commit suicide by the Vancouver Public Library.Rev. Steven Epperson of the Unitarian church said he believes Nitschke, director of the suicide advocacy group Exit International, has the right to free speech, even if he's telling people how to kill themselves."Historically, we have provided a forum, a space, for controversial, difficult ideas to be presented," Epperson told the Vancouver Province.The Vancouver church has a...

LifeNews.com Note: Ken Connor the chairman of the Center for a Just Society and co-author of "Sinful Silence: When Christians Neglect Their Civic Duty." A pro-life attorney, he was intimately involved in the fight to save Terri Schiavo and is the former president of the Family Research Council.The subject of how best to honor and care for those facing death due to terminal illness or old age has always been controversial. As talk of "death panels" and "rationing" stirs debate over the government's proper role in health care, two new studies funded by the National Institutes of Health are lending...

The British Broadcasting Corporation in England has deemed it necessary to try and absolve Darwinism from any responsibility for the Holocaust and the many other atrocities committed in the name of evolutionary progress ever since Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859. To achieve this, BBC2 produced a TV “documentary” entitled Darwin’s Dangerous Idea,[1] written and presented by their journalist and political commentator Andrew Marr. This 3-part series...

"If nobody wants a "death panel" fiddling with Grandma's oxygen tube, then why do people who want health care to be a more collective experience have such a history of saying old people ought to die? The latest is a video that went viral last week of a 2007 speech from Robert Reich, one of the progressives' big-idea guys. Reich told a crowd what a candidate for president should say if he were honest. Among the gems: "If you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years...

I have been warning for nearly ten years that the Medical and Bioethics Intelligentsia were committed to imposing futile care theory on the most weak and vulnerable patients.  Lately, we have been discussing the pronounced threat of health care rationing under Obamacare.  Today, I noticed two new studies in the New England Journal of Medicine that could be abused by health care rationing and medical futility advocates to justify policies that prevent certain patients from receiving wanted life-extending treatment.One deals with late stage dementia as a terminal illness, and the other with providing kidney dialysis for the frail elderly....

When is suicide, not really suicide?  When assisted suicide advocates decide that promoting their agenda requires the deconstruction of accurate and descriptive language.    It is one thing when ideological activists try to redefine terms to win a political debate. It is quite another when a judge does it by judicial fiat.   But that is precisely what may happen in Connecticut.  After advocates failed to legalize assisted suicide in the last legislative session, two Connecticut physicians—aided by the assisted suicide advocacy group Compassion and Choices (formerly Hemlock Society)—filed a lawsuit requesting a court order unilaterally changing the definition of suicide....

Most of Obama’s stated plans for America are indistinguishable from those of George Soros. As the left forces nationalized health care on us, we may want to consider Soros’s Project on Death. Soros is a leading promoter of the assisted suicide movement. He papers over it with tripe about compassion; in reality, the project is a push for palliative care rather than treatment for gravely ill patients. As always, it’s all about the money:

At around 4am on Monday, a friend of mine was woken by a call from the private care home in south-west London where her 98-year-old grandmother is resident. "Mrs ------- has breathing difficulties," the night manager told her. "She needs oxygen. Shall we call an ambulance?" "What do you mean?" my friend responded. "What's the matter with her?" "She needs to go to hospital. Do you want that? Or would you prefer that we make her comfortable?" Befuddled by sleep, she didn't immediately grasp what was being asked of her. Her grandmother is immobilised by a calcified knee joint, which...

In a September 2007 speech at UC Berkeley, Robert Reich told his audience the following: "We're going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple years of your life to keep you going for maybe another couple months. It's too expensive...so we're going to let you die." Reich wasn't just Clinton's Labor Secretary. He's NOW a confidante and personal advisor to Obama. He's a player and he knows what's happening in the administration.

MONTREAL – When it comes to euthanasia, Quebec medical specialists are in sync with the rest of society. In survey of its members released Tuesday, the Quebec Federation of Medical Specialists found that 84 per cent of responders are ready for a public debate on the issue and 74 per cent “would certainly favour or probably be favourable” to euthanasia within a legal framework. Federation president Gaétan Barrette likened the euthanasia controversy to the abortion debate of 20 years ago where society seemed several steps ahead of legislators. More to come.

The assisted suicide movement doesn’t give a fig about consistency. If people attack legalized suicide, they pound the podium and assert that we must respect state’s rights.  But when states refuse to legalize assisted suicide–as in Montana–they file lawsuits hoping an activist judge will find a heretofore unheard of “right” to assisted suicide.First came an attempt to impose assisted suicide nationally via U.S. Supreme Court fiat. That failed 9-0. Then, Florida, where the court also said no. Ditto, California and Alaska.  Finally, pay dirt in Montana.  And now, even though Connecticut got nowhere in the last legislative session in an...

Oh-oh: Here they come. For years, organ transplant ethicists and some in the bioethics community have agitated to increase the supply of donated organs. There is nothing wrong with that in the abstract, of course. Increasing the supply would alleviate much human suffering and is devoutly to be wished.  But therein lurks a great danger. Increasing supply is a worthy goal only so long as the organs are obtained ethically. But there is a growing chorus among the medical and bioethical intelligentsia to obtain more organs by harvesting living patients. Yes, some of our most influential voices now seek a license to...

Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor AN 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened. Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients. Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care...

Hurry While Supplies Last!!!

LONDON, October 6, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Doctors who allowed a young British woman to die in hospital after she swallowed poison and declared her intention to commit suicide acted lawfully, according to the findings of an inquest this week. Under the provisions of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, the coroner's inquest ruled that doctors had no choice but to allow the woman to die after she had written a letter saying she did not want to be saved. The Mental Capacity Act, passed by Tony Blair's Labour government, created "advance directives," or "living wills," which were ostensibly meant to...

South Bend, IN (LifeNews.com) -- On the heels of pro-abortion President Barack Obama speaking at the University of Notre Dame and getting an honorary degree, a noted pro-life advocate will give a speech at its law school. Bobby Schindler, the brother of Terri Schiavo, whose husband subjected her to a painful euthanasia death, will speak.Schindler has been invited to speak today at The University of Notre Dame Law School as part of the Jus Vitae speaker’s series.Jus Vitae is committed to the principle that the right to life is inherent and inalienable in every human being and cannot be abridged...

The recent clarification by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) on the question of assisted suicide is closer to the thick than the thin end of the wedge. Gone are the halcyon days when foetuses developed calmly in their mother’s wombs. Gone, too, the peaceful days when old people were respected and treated despite their chronic conditions and the cost this entailed. It must be unbearable to feel helpless seeing a loved one suffer, and I sympathise deeply with those who find themselves in such a predicament. Nevertheless, as Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks once wrote concerning assisted dying, “…...

How wide is the line between the right to die and the duty to die? I’m afraid we may find out soon enough. Regular BreakPoint listeners have heard me speak about the impact of declining birth rates around the world. One consequence is that older people comprise an increasing percentage of the population in places like Japan and Western Europe. This increases economic pressures on these countries since an aging population requires more services while having fewer young workers to pay for them. One doctor has come up with a way to address the imbalance between pensioners and workers—that is,...

On July 4, 1995, Myrna Lebov, age 52, committed suicide in her Manhattan apartment. The case generated national headlines when her husband, George Delury, announced that he had assisted Lebov's suicide at her request because she was suffering the debilitations of progressive multiple sclerosis. Delury became an instant celebrity. He was acclaimed as a dedicated husband willing to risk jail to help his beloved wife achieve her desired end. The assisted-suicide movement set up a defense fund and renewed calls for legalization. Delury made numerous television appearances and was invited to speak to a convention of the American Psychiatric Association....

I reported the other day that Nature editorialized in favor of loosening the rules to allow living patients to be killed for their organs (more about which, soon). And now, we see more advocacy for lethal medicine in The Journal of Medical Ethics, an international publication.  From the article by Dr. F.G. Miller  (No link, here’s the abstract): Revisiting the still-provocative essays of Jonas on brain death and organ donation helps in mapping present and future ethical and policy options. Four options seem most salient. First, we can follow the lead of Jonas by adopting a stance of deontological...

After World War II, the U.S. government invested an enormous amount of money in medicine; medical research, medical procedures and medical technologies. This investment made contemporary scientific medicine into American medicine, characterized by a continuing flow of new treatment possibilities. These advances raised all kinds of ethical questions. Some were personal and individual, others were social and political. Both type questions are addressed by a new academic discipline called bioethics. The first attempt to develop a scientific medicine took place in Greece in the 5th century B.C. It was called Hippocratic medicine. Closely linked with this first scientific medicine was...

While the horrors of Germany’s Nazi past are well known, it is a well-kept secret that similar programs were also prevalent in some Allied countries. The award-winning investigative journalist Edwin Black has documented America’s huge selective breeding and forced sterilization program in his book War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race...

LifeNews.com Note: Rita Marker is an attorney and executive director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide. Live in Washington State? In a crisis? Suicidal?Call 911.Then what?A dispatcher sends crisis negotiators who, if they follow the suggestions provided at a recent negotiators' training session, could help you consider "all options." If you're eligible, you may be referred to friendly volunteers who will help you find a doctor willing to prescribe a deadly drug overdose.Just take the prescription to a pharmacy. Have it filled by a pharmacist who hands it to you with instructions to "take this with...

Concord, NH (LifeNews.com) -- New Hampshire state Representative Charles Weed is introducing a measure that would not only expand assisted suicide to New Hampshire but allow it for residents of surrounding states. The language of the Weed amendment would turn the Granite State into a suicide haven.The newly proposed HB 304 by Weed would allow assisted suicide.But it would go further by making it so a terminally ill patient need not be actually suffering serious symptoms to qualify for assisted suicide. Bioethics attorney Wesley J. Smith responds: "Assisted suicide advocates are cultural imperialists who, as they pretend they only...

New guidance has been issued to clarify the law on assisted suicide in England and Wales - but it offers no guarantees against prosecution.Instead the Director of Public Prosecutions has spelled out the range of factors that will be taken into account when deciding on cases. The move has been welcomed by 33 year old Kelly Taylor from Bristol who is terminally ill. In 2005 she tried to starve herself in the hope she would end her pain. "I think the new guidelines are a breakthrough, as it gives people the knowledge when and where they're going wrong and when...

LONDON, September 24, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Evidence is mounting that Britain may already have not only de facto legalised assisted suicide thanks to new prosecution guidelines issued this week, but also involuntary euthanasia by means of a tangled combination of rationing of government-funded medical care, end of life medical practice protocols that allow the withdrawal of hydration and the existing Mental Capacity Act. British and international anti-euthanasia and disability rights groups are expressing their alarm at the publication of prosecution guidelines earlier this week by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for England and Wales. These guidelines make clear that...

Most of the focus in the Obamacare debate has been on HB 3200. But Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) has been trying to forge a compromise package. Instead, he has upset both sides, the Left because it has no public option and the Right because it too contains provisions that would, in the name of cost cutting, put the expensive for whom to care at great medical hazard.A Washington Times editorial points out one provision that I have been meaning to address.  It seems that physicians who spend the top 10% in caring for patients each year will see their...

Earlier this summer, former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin was criticized for deploying hyperbole in her opposition of health-care-reform proposals on the table in Washington, D.C. She warned of end-of-life "death panels." By doing so, she got some pols to back down from proposed "end-of-life counseling" boards that would parcel out advice in a government-controlled health-care system. Perhaps Palin could have been more sober. But these are alarming times of radical change. And with her attention-grabbing language, she managed to highlight some of the life-and-death possibilities being batted around by legislators in the Capitol, as well as...

If you conducted an informal survey of the rapidly growing senior citizen segment (which includes a substantial percentage of farm family husbands/wives), you’d find that three of the greatest fears of the elderly are (1) having to go into a nursing home, (2) an end-of-life scenario in which they’re connected to machines that maintain life but with no hope of a recovery, and (3) a lengthy medical care situation that will leave them financially destitute. Who among us has not visited a family member, relative, or friend in a nursing home and, even in the most caring of circumstances, inwardly...

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- The backlash continues against the new guidelines issued by a head prosecutor for when people will not be charged with assisted suicide. Keir Starmer QC, the director of public prosecutions, has gone beyond a court ruling and decriminalized assisted suicides in the UK committed by friends and relatives.Starmer says only someone who organizes the death of a person who has been “vulnerable to manipulation” can be prosecuted.Thus, it is no longer illegal to assisted in a suicide but it would be unlawful to encourage one.SPUC Pro-Life, based in Britain, has issued a new condemnation of...

LAGUNA WOODS, Calif. (AP) -- California authorities say a 90-year-old man will likely be booked on a murder charge after he shot his bedridden wife, allegedly to end her suffering, then tried to kill himself. Orange County sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino says James Fish was in critical condition Monday after shooting himself in the head, but he's alert and able to speak. Amormino says Fish will be arrested if he survives.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix issued a new document in September to help Catholics make tough decisions concerning artificially administered nutrition and hydration that are consistent with church teaching. Titled "Directives for Catholics Concerning Artificially Administered Nutrition and Hydration," the document specifically addresses providing artificial hydration and nutrition for those facing illness who require artificial assistance. It comes at a time when the faithful have questions about their obligations vis-a-vis end-of-life issues, said Father John Ehrich, an expert in bioethics who serves on the ethics committee at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. "People have a desire...

Before she took her own life, Pamela Weston wrote a letter explaining her reasons for ending it all. “There is nothing else I want to do. Nothing else I can do. I’m too weak, too tired. I’ve had a wonderful, happy life. Now it’s over.” The 87-year-old distinguished classical musician and writer, who in her prime performed at the Festival Hall and for Clement Attlee at No 10 Downing Street, is the latest Briton to commit assisted suicide. She died on September 9 at the Swiss clinic, Dignitas. News of her death comes as the director of public prosecutions (DPP)...

Guidelines on assisted suicide law will be published by the Director of Public Prosecutions this week to clarify when people are likely to be prosecuted. Keir Starmer QC told the BBC factors that would be considered included whether anyone helping in the suicide stood to gain financially. He said assisted suicide would remain an offence as the law was unchanged. Labour minister Ed Balls said he hoped Mr Starmer would "err on the side of being very, very cautious". The guidelines for England and Wales come after a legal battle won by Debbie Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis. The...