Posted on 10/10/2005 5:03:14 PM PDT by wagglebee
Burke Balch, director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics of the National Right to Life Committee, says the Netherlands is no longer sliding down a slippery slope, but rather has fallen off a moral cliff as the medical community in that nation expands its euthanasia practices. He notes that the Dutch government intends to expand its euthanasia guidelines to include so-called "mercy killing" of children with spina bifida or other disabilities, as long as the parents consent.
This development is horrifying, though not surprising, Balch contends, because once a price is placed on human life, the price goes down. "In the Netherlands, although they started with purely voluntary euthanasia for people who were dying," he says, "they moved very rapidly to individuals who were not dying but were disabled."
Soon after that, the head of the Powell Center says, doctors in the Netherlands started euthanizing "individuals who were neither dying nor disabled but who were simply old and, in fact, lonely. They moved on to depressed patients, then they moved into cases where the patient hadn't given consent at all."
For instance, Balch asserts, the pro-euthanasia doctors in the Netherlands have now moved on to euthanizing the elderly in nursing homes and even killing children without parental consent. He says it is obvious that arguments about physician-assisted death being the patient's choice are no longer relevant. Instead, he insists, it has come to be about a determination of who is fit to live.
While euthanasia in the Netherlands may have started out as a way for terminally ill adults to end their lives, Balch feels it was inevitable that it would not end there. "Of course, once you start saying, 'Well, in these hard cases, we're going to say life isn't worthy to be lived,' it just keeps expanding and expanding until, unless you're going to have almost a perfect life or you're not going to be burdensome at all, you are just killed," he says.
And we will have the same thing here if the leftist culture of death has its way.
-Men(ace) in Black? SCOTUS goes Rogue...--
-Useless Eaters vs The Death Cult--
-Thunder on the Border-- (Minuteman Project)--
1- an unaccountable Judiciary.
2- whose life is it, anyway? Yours, or someone else's?
3- whose Country is it?
There are other vital issues, of course- but these three will determine just who we really are as a nation.
Moral absolutes ping/euthanasia ping.
Whatever its motives and means, euthanasia is morally unacceptable.
There's an important distinction between involuntary euthanasia and assisted suicide.
In a cash-strapped welfare state, any helpless individual who is no longer useful to the objectives of the State will be killed. His next of kin will be put under undue pressure to sign the form, and if no next-of-kin are visible, they will kill them without the forms
The only thing holding this depraved sickness back is the percentage of pro-life Christians in the American electorate. If that coalition falters, so goes the country. And what's left of civilization.
No, the paperwork will be attended to. The Nazis were fanatical record keepers. There's no reason the state wouldn't keep paperwork on a "legal" procedure.
Other than that totally minor irrelevant point you are absolutely correct.
The Dutch have alway been worthless.
My kind regards to you.
BEWARE Boomers! A right to choose will soon become a right to die.
The Roe v Wade decision has become "settled law" thus making abortion a duty. We will soon see the consequence of this law in a duty to die.
While many of the supporters of medical euthanasia may have had good intentions (the deaths of some people are beyond horrible), adopting that law crossed a line that's difficult to uncross. Deciding when euthanasia is an appropriate action is so subjective and fraught with potential error, even the best doctors will enivitably make a mistake. No person is qualified to do it. And a mistake in this case is taking a life.
There is still time for the Dutch people to admit that they were mistaken and should repeal this law.
Will be a-pinging later, thanks.
Obviously Nazism wasn't totally destroyed in Europe.
Maybe there's a clear distinction in theory, but I'm not so sure there is any distinction between involuntary euthanasia and assisted suicide in practice given that we can't exactly define when someone has diminished capacity.
What about someone who is depressed and says he wants to die on a given day? The medical association in the Netherlands recognizes suffering through living as a medical condition that can require "compassionate" physicians to offer suicide as a "cure." Some docs are death enthusiasts or have no morals and just don't want the bother. Thanks to the Netherlands' rush to make physicians responsible for killing as well as healing, it is now easier to simply say o.k., we'll help you die than it is to hang in there and keep the patient alive. Doctors have been relieved of their traditional obligation to do no harm. Plus, in a third party payer health system it is cheaper to kill than to treat.
You probably know someone who is happily alive after thinking and saying at some point that he wanted to die. Could have been from a deep depression brought about by some tragedy or the silliness of teenage depression. Had that person been unfortunate enough to live in the Netherlands, would his death have been due to assisted suicide or involuntary euthanasia?
The thesis of this article is that this distinction has blurred to the point of non-existence, at least in the Netherlands. I'm not defending either position, although I could, I'm just pointing this out.
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out--because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out--because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out--because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
----Paster Martin Niemoller
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