Posted on 01/26/2011 3:17:11 PM PST by NYer
Back when I first got into this line of work, I wrote a piece for Newsweek about the dangers of euthanasia consciousness. I was a naif at the time. I had no idea how insidiously seductive the culture of death could be nor how deeply it had already seeped into the culture of the West. Since then, the darkness has spread like a stain.
But even then, in my innocence, I was prophetic. Here’s a key paragraph from my first anti-euthanasia piece, “The Whispers of Strangers,” published on June 28, 1993:
Of greater concern to me is the moral trickledown effect that could result should society ever come to agree with Frances. Life is action and reaction, the proverbial pebble thrown into the pond. We don’t get to the Brave New World in one giant leap. Rather, the descent to depravity is reached by small steps. First, suicide is promoted as a virtue. Vulnerable people like Frances become early casualties. Then follows mercy killing of the terminally ill. From there, it’s a hop, skip and a jump to killing people who don’t have a good “quality” of life, perhaps with the prospect of organ harvesting thrown in as a plum to society.
Over the years, I have been told many times that my fears would never happen. Assisted suicide/euthanasia was just for the terminally ill, at the very end of life, for whom nothing can be done to alleviate suffering. We would never use euthanasia to harvest organs!
For years I waited for the organ harvesting shoe to drop. Then, I found a letter in a transplant medicine journal in which doctors admitted harvesting organs from the euthanasia of a catastrophically disabled woman. They had done it, the letter stated, ergo it was ethical. That’s the kind of self justification we see in this field.
Now, Belgian doctors have taken to the road to sell the idea. From the story:
A group of Belgian doctors are harvesting “high quality” organs from patients who have been euthanased. This is not a secret project, but one which they described openly at a conference organised by the Belgian Royal Medical Academy in December. In a PowerPoint presentation, Dirk Ysebaert, Dirk Van Raemdonck, Michel Meurisse, of the University Hospitals Of Antwerp, Leuven And Liège, showed that about 20% of the 705 people who died through euthanasia (officially) in 2008 were suffering from neuromuscular disorders whose organs are relatively high quality for transplanting to other patients. This represents a useful pool of organs which could help to remedy a shortage of organs in Belgium (as everywhere else).
I can think of few more dangerous activities then to convince people with disabilities–and society–that their deaths have greater value than their lives. That pebble with which I was concerned has grown into a massive boulder that is generating tidal waves of harm.
Expect this trend to grow, especially here in the US, as more Baby Boomers begin to qualify. The greater the mortality rate, the less dependence on Social Security.
I’m sure the Nazis would have done the same thing had transplantation been available.
Dr. Mengele is smiling in hell.
Also the younger generation, and I’m not speaking about them all. Many are good kids, a lot of them are not. Self indulgent, no to low morals and ethics. There whole lives they’ve been told that abortion is ok. Sooooo, they won’t have a problem ending people’s lives if it means they can have more stuff.
*ping*
Belgium fills it’s role,
As a cautionary tale...
Look at our future.
There was an article posted here on FR a while back that sticks in my mind. A a teenage driver hit and —if memory serves— killed an 80 or 90 year old woman. The girl kept screaming and crying at officers and the court saying things about the victim like “She was old!” as a justification of why she should not be charged with manslaughter.
As you said, not all, but a significant number of young adults have no respect for life, especially a life that is not their own.
Yes ... I have been saying the same thing for years. The younger generations were victimized by the Baby Boomers who legalized abortion. In so doing, these young people are missing many of their peers - potential tax payers. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to figure out that at a not too distant time, they will legalize euthanasia with the argument: "you murdered our peers and placed the burden of social security on us so now we will eliminate you, to ease that cost". It's coming ... just around the corner.
Not only peers but, a person I know had two abortions. Her daughter knows this. She cried one day when we were talking and told me about her mom and she said, you know I could have had a brother or sister or both. These kids grieve too over who has been lost. They also know that they were just lucky they weren’t the one that was aborted. There but by the grace of God go I.
>From there, it’s a hop, skip and a jump to killing people who don’t have a good “quality” of life, perhaps with the prospect of organ harvesting thrown in as a plum to society.<
.
I thought that Europe does not believe in administring the death penalty.
Of course they do as long as they can decide who gets it and who doesn't. IOW, only for innocent people. Guilty people as defined by a court are ineligible for the death penalty.
Mengle #2: Don't worry! He will be after we harvest all his internal organs.
Only criminals are ineligible for the death penalty. Sick people and preborn children can be terminated without remorse.
Read LArry Nivens storys - Gil the A.R.M. covers this future society in detail.,...
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And this isn't the worst it will get - unless it is rolled back. The devouring jaws of the culture of death will never be satiated.
Ergo, it happens.
They may euthanizeme in the end, but it will never be because I consented. Never because I agreed that the world would be better off without me.
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