Two threads by me.
Ludwig Minelli, the head of Dignitas, is 77. A trained lawyer, he founded the assisted suicide organisation 12 years ago.
The organisation, whose slogan is '"live with dignity, die with dignity", has helped over 1,000 people to die.
Many of them are people who have travelled to Switzerland because assisted suicide is not permitted in their own countries.
Dignitas has the status of an association under Swiss law, with two active members, Mr Minelli and one other.
The identity of the other member has not been revealed.
These two active members control the policy and financing of Dignitas.
Question: You have been described as a man on a mission, a man on a crusade...
I wouldn't say a crusade but I am persuaded that we have to struggle in order to implement the last human right in our societies. And the last human right is the right to make a decision on one's own end, and the possibility to have this end without risk and without pain.
Many people would say though that if there are to be organisations which organise assisted suicide that there should be some rules around how they function.
Well there are rules but there are no state laws. We have our own rules and the first rule is that we never precipitate an assisted suicide. Every step must be initiated by the member and not by us. And the third rule is that we are always first looking whether we will be able to help someone to continue with life rather than to end life.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
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July 8, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A letter written by Aycke Smook, a retired physician from Bergen Am Zee in the Netherlands, was published on the euthanasia lobby listserve to commemorate the death of Adelbert Josephus Jitta, a retired Dutch Prosecutor who had worked to change the euthanasia laws in the Netherlands.
The letter explains how Jitta and Smook worked together to change the Dutch laws by establishing euthanasia protocols in the hospital, by undermining the Dutch euthanasia law and by prosecuting cases that were designed to be struck down by the courts to establish precedents that allowed euthanasia.
Dr. Smook started the article from July 6, 2010 by stating:
I just attended the cremation of Adelbert Josephus Jitta, (Sept 24, 1938 to June 30, 2010).
He was one of the most important protagonists of the Dutch law on euthanasia as a member of D66, a liberal/democratic party.
When he was a prosecutor in Alkmaar, we met each other during a meeting about reporting euthanasia cases in our hospital. Fortunately the board of the hospital was not against euthanasia, because they said that it was a medical decision with legal aspects. This was in the early eighties.
It took us some time and sometimes a keen struggle to get a standard formal procedure, after some prosecutions in one of which he had to prosecute me!
When he informed about that, he said that he had asked one of his colleagues to handle the case and that he already had asked Eugene Sutorius to defend me. After two years of uncertainty and the expense of 40,000 guilders, first paid by the NVVE, later by my insurance company, I was cleared.
And so by trial and error, we succeeded in the end to lay the foundation for our law in the Netherlands in 2002.
It was not an easy period for both of us, working in our totally different disciplines. The good thing of it was that from then on we could openly speak about euthanasia.
Dr. Smook then explains some of the cases Jitta was involved with. Dr. Smook stated:
When I started as a surgeon treating patients with cancer, we, the head nurse of the department and I gave the last medication behind closed doors on explicit demand of the patient. It was tricky but we had a good feeling about it, because in this way we could carry out the last wish of the patient.
After Adelbert and I started working on a new hospital euthanasia protocol, we once had a patient in the hospital who wanted euthanasia. But alas, it was during the weekend and he (Adelbert) and his family were out sailing and since this happened before the mobile telephone era I could not reach him. Half an hour after we had reported, as agreed, the euthanasia to the local coroner, the police came bursting in the department.
I think you can imagine the dreadful shock this created on all the nurses, patients and family around us. Adelbert had not yet informed all his colleagues and other people concerned. I was completely overwhelmed and very angry, but after an ample discussion and a good glass of wine, we could continue and refine the protocol.
The letter then explains his involvement with the euthanasia lobby. Dr. Smook writes:
He also was a speaker at the Maastricht conference in 1990 and at the WF (World Federation) meeting in Melbourne. When he stepped down as a prosecutor, he strengthened the board of NVVE. After his retirement he went on with his activities on euthanasia in the member support group of NVVE.
He was a widower for about two years now, which he found hard to accept. When he fell ill, he could take advantage of his own success for which he fought for years in the end.
Many people wonder what happened in the Netherlands. Why would a country that courageously opposed the Nazis and which refused to institute the T4 euthanasia program institute a wide open system of euthanasia that even accepts the euthanasia of newborn infants with disabilities through the Groningen Protocol, and the euthanasia of people with mental illness and depression?
The answer is that it was planned by a small group of people who were willing to put their professional lives on the line.
Reversing the cultural trend will likely require the same commitment.
Thread by nhungerford.
Racist eugenicist and Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger would be so proud:
"According to the city Health Department, 2008 saw 89,469 abortions performed in New York City — seven for every 10 live births. Among black women, abortions out number live births by three to two."
These statistics from New York City more closely resemble the abortion mill culture of post-communist countries like China and Russia (who have historically devalued the worth of individual human life in favor of the collective good), than the old Clintonian mantra, “safe, legal and rare.”
I realize that many people, liberal and otherwise, are proponents of abortion choice, but the situation in New York City raises important ethical questions on the consequences of this perspective: Even if one is in favor of legalized abortion, does such a person want to live in a society in which more people are aborted than born? My guess is that most people do not. Secondly, if the answer is indeed no, how do we avoid this situation? A system which merely offers abortion as an alternative cannot discriminate between what pro-choice people deem as acceptable reasons for abortion and say, a woman who wants to use it as birth control. You have to allow them all.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...