Free Republic

Subtitle: A Canadian judge has ordered an injunction from a father to be lifted so that his 27-year-old autistic daughter can be permitted to undergo a doctor-assisted suicide. On March 14, I reported on the story of a 27-year-old Albertan woman with autism who had been approved for euthanasia in December; she was planning to receive a lethal injection on February 1 when her father, whom she lives with, successfully obtained a temporary court injunction the day prior. Her father argued that her autism and “possibly other undiagnosed maladies do not satisfy the eligibility criteria for MAiD [Medical Assistance in...

...Organ donation organisations in Ontario and Quebec, for example, are already contacting patients on the euthanasia waiting list to request their livers, kidneys and spleens if they are in good condition. A study published in January 2024 by the Canadian Medical Association Journal on all organ donation cases from January 2018 to December 2022 shows that since 2018, when it became possible to donate one's organs after making the decision to end one's life by euthanasia, doctors who provide medical assistance in dying (Maid, euphemism for euthanasia and assisted suicide) are encouraged to discuss/promote organ donation with eligible patients once...

LifeNews has repeatedly profiled cases where doctors may too quickly began cutting up patients who are not really dead to begin harvesting their organs for donations.These kinds of cases have happened before, as supposedly “brain dead” patients have come back to life just before having their vital organs taken from them after prematurely being declared dead. Although there is nothing morally wrong with organ donations — in fact, it’s arguably a very pro-life action to take — these kinds of stories ought to remind organ donors (and any patient and their family) that doctors are too quickly declaring patients dead...

LifeNews has repeatedly chronicled cases of people who were prematurely declared dead or said to be in supposedly persistent vegetative states who ultimately recovered. Now comes the story of Lexi Hansen, a BYU student who suffered critical head injuries last week after being hit by a car. Hansen, 18, was alert and breathing on her own Tuesday, though she was still listed in critical but stable condition. She even tried to get out of her hospital bed. While she has a long road to recovery ahead, her family believes they have witnessed a miracle. lexihansen“When they brought her in, the...

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A California hospital is unwilling to allow an outside doctor to fit a 13-year-old declared brain dead after tonsil surgery with the breathing and feeding tubes that would allow her to be safely transferred to another facility, its lawyer said Tuesday. Children's Hospital Oakland will not permit the procedures to be performed on its premises because Jahi McMath is legally dead in the view of doctors who have examined her, lawyer Douglas Straus wrote in a letter to the girl's family. "Performing medical procedures on the body of a deceased human being is simply not something...

Children’s Hospital Oakland has a very good reputation where I live in the Bay Area. But its public communication around the tragedy of Jahi McMath’s ”brain death” has been astoundingly insensitive, bordering on arrogant. The hospital’s statements quoted in today’s San Francisco Chronicle continues the maladroit insensitivity. The hospital states it will remove the ventilator the moment that can be done legally. From the story: Children’s Hospital Oakland officials confirmed Sunday they will turn off the machines sustaining Jahi McMath’s body as soon as a legal injunction expires at 5 p.m. Monday unless otherwise ordered by a court. “Barring any...

Animal rights charity PETA killed almost 90 per cent of dogs and cats placed in the care of the shelter at its Virginia headquarters last year, it has been revealed today. The charity, well-known for attention grabbing publicity campaigns such as the 'I'd rather go naked' anti-fur campaign, euthanized 1,647 cats and dogs last year and only placed 19 in new homes according to the data submitted to the Virginia Department for Agriculture and Consumer Services. PETA told Mail Online that the animals they take in at the center are 'unadoptable', however 89.4 per cent of pets is much higher...

Two deaf twin brothers in Belgium were euthanized by their doctor after realizing they were going blind and would be unable to see each other ever again, their physician says. The 45-year-old men, whose names have not been made public, were legally put to death by lethal injection at the Brussels University Hospital in Jette, on Dec. 14. The men, who were born deaf, had a cup of coffee and said goodbye to other family members before walking into hospital room together to die, their doctor told Belgian television station RTL.

Insane, self-righteous lib says she would strangle handicapped (BBC) Virginia Ironside of London's Independent newspaper sparks outrage

OK. You've heard all the talk about this crucial conference in Copenhagen and you've decided to clean up your carbon footprint. First a few pet related facts: * Dogs occupy 6 million UK households * Cats are close behind - 5.2 million What I am talking about is our pets' environmental "paw print". A big dog consumes around 1,000 calories a day - half that of an adult woman. The issue of carbon paw prints has been in the news recently thanks to a book: Time to Eat the Dog. The authors claim that keeping a dog has the same...

Hippocratic Out Sarah Carlsruh, October 16, 2009 While he did not equate the current ethics of modern medicine to that of Nazi Germany, at a recent forum, an M.D. did imply that there is an “amoral component” headed in that direction. “One of the first acts of the Nazi government was to legalize voluntary euthanasia,” stated Dr. John Patrick. Reuters reported on September 21st that “assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland and physician-assisted suicide—where a doctor prescribes a lethal dose the patient may choose to drink—is legal in the State of Washington, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Oregon.” BBC News reported...

In case you haven't heard, President Obama is a member of a secret Kenyan terrorist cell who is scheming to dispatch waves of government bureaucrats to tell grandmas and grandpas how to off themselves. Such is the intellectual weight of a segment of the Republican Party these days. Or as one commentator recently put it, the GOP has decided "to double down on crazy." We're talking about two controversies here, one involving the so-called birther movement, which questions the citizenship of the president; the other involving mandatory "end-of-life" counseling that's supposedly part of the president's health care plan. The controversies...

The Democrats' proposed national health insurance plan would dictate medications, treatments and mental health services; determine coverages individuals are allowed to have; and operate with real-time access to personal bank accounts according to a new analysis. And it's worse, a critic said, than China's mandatory one-child policy. "In the same way that the bill pushes elderly or the sick toward euthanasia, it is a pill that would cause economic suicide," said Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel. "It's a euthanasia bill for America." Congress members have admitted they have not read the more-than-1,000-page bill, and Staver's organization is one of...

A total of 2,331 people made official requests for help with killing themselves under euthanasia legislation last year, a 10% increase on 2007, Nos tv reports on Friday. The figure comes from the annual report published by the five regional euthanasia monitoring committees. In total, 10 cases of assisted suicide were found not to have followed official guidelines and have been referred to the public prosecution department and health inspectorate for their comments, chairman Jan Suyver told Radio 1. Under Dutch rules, a number of criteria which must be met before euthanasia can be administered. For example, the patient must...

A 66-year-old US woman with advanced cancer has become the first person to die under a new assisted suicide law in Washington State. The woman, Linda Fleming, died on Thursday night after taking drugs prescribed by her doctor. The "Death with Dignity" law was approved by 60% of Washington State voters in a referendum last year. It is based on a law in neighbouring Oregon, where 400 people have chosen to die over the last 12 years The advocacy group, Compassion and Choices of Washington, said Ms Fleming died with her family, her dog and her physician at her side....

In my piece for Pajamas Media, I said that basically, the meeting between The Pope and The Pelosi would produce no fireworks, and that “…the impact of this meeting may not be felt until it has been forgotten.”Well. Not quite. The Vatican - clearly as aware as Pelosi of the power of an image - made a point of releasing no photo, as “the encounter was private” and the pope “briefly greeted” Pelosi and did not mention any other subject they may have discussed.: Benedict spoke of the church’s teaching “on the dignity of human life from conception to natural...

Think being the next president would be a brutal job? Imagine being a transplant surgeon. You can't tell the parents of a dying kid when to pull the plug, but you have to be there, ready, the minute he expires. You have to wait until he's dead, but not so long that his organs become useless. You can give him drugs to keep his organs healthy, but you mustn't technically revive him. And you can't remove and restart his heart until it's been declared kaput. Pick up a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, and you'll see...

Editor’s Note: Stephen Bloom is a Christian attorney with more than 20 years experience in private practice. He is a frequent media guest, speaker, and writer on Christianity and the law, a Lecturer in Management and Business at Messiah College, and a Consultant to the United Methodist Stewardship Foundation of Central Pennsylvania. He is a legal columnist for Good News Daily, former host of the "Practical Counsel - Christian Perspective" radio program, and founder of the Estate Planning Council of Cumberland County. Bloom has been actively involved in the leadership of numerous community and ministry organizations, including his church, where...

Cancer patients are to be denied drugs which could keep them alive after the NHS rationing watchdog ruled that they are too expensive. Patient groups said the decision, announced today by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), would condemn many sufferers of kidney cancer to an "early death". Four prohibited medicines include Sutent, which can prolong life in kidney cancer patients by up to two years. Nice said the drugs were too expensive, at about £24,000/year per patient, for the benefits they offered and would mean the health service was less able to afford more cost-effective drugs...

Chaim Shmuel Golubchuk, a"h, has gone to his Eternal reward. But the issues that pitted his children Percy Golubchuk and Miriam Geller against Grace General Hospital in Winnipeg over the last seven months will long be with us. After being informed by their father's doctors that they intended to end his life by removing his ventilation and feeding tube, the Golubchuk children sought an injunction against the hospital. They argued that their father would adamantly oppose any attempt to shorten his life, which is forbidden by Jewish law. After the entry of a temporary injunction, the hospital pursued an aggressive...