Two threads by me.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, November 10, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) When a 64-year-old Dutch woman with dementia was killed in March, she was the first to be euthanized without the ability to consent, Dutch media reported Wednesday.
But anti-euthanasia activists are contesting the claim, saying Dutch patients have been killed without their consent for years.
The woman, a long-time euthanasia advocate, had progressed in her illness to the point where she lacked the ability to consent, but a committee of doctors approved the euthanasia nevertheless.
She left a note expressing her wish to be euthanized, and her husband and children supported her decision.
Alex Schadenberg, who heads the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition in Ontario, warned that allowing euthanasia without the ability for the patient to consent is a whole other track.
When a person has dementia, the greater sufferer is the family member who is watching that person suffer, he said. So now really what theyre saying is, the family members who are experiencing the person with dementia, that we can have euthanasia to alleviate their suffering.
If you can do this to someone with dementia, and theyre also doing this to people with head injuries, well that means weve defined cognitive disabilities as a reason to euthanize, he added.
The Netherlands formally legalized euthanasia in 2002, provided it was requested by a patient experiencing unbearable suffering.
But the laws interpretation has since broadened to the point where the Royal Dutch Medical Association last month released new guidelines claiming the law allows euthanasia in cases of mental and psychosocial ailments such as loss of function, loneliness and loss of autonomy.
In reporting their 2010 statistics, for the first time the Dutch government reported instances of euthanasia for dementia patients. In 2010, 21 persons suffering from the early stages of dementia, but who were otherwise in good health, were euthanized.
Euthanasia is beyond effective control in the Netherlands, wrote bioethicist Wesley J. Smith on his Secondhand Smoke blog. Folks, believe me when I tell you that protective guidelines are not really meant to protect, but give the false illusion of control.
Once you accept killing as an acceptable answer to the problem of human suffering, choice has increasingly less to do with it, he added.
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Reports coming out of the Netherlands add to mounting evidence that physician-assisted suicide, over time, leads to the nonvoluntary euthanizing of patientspatients who neither requested nor authorized their deaths. (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2011/11/what%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cchoice%e2%80%9d-got-to-do-with-dutch-euthanasia; www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2011/10/applauding-suicide-for-the-mentally-ill)
In a recent article appearing in the British publication the Daily Mail, there was a well documented case where the once highly touted safeguardthat only competent people currently asking for death will be killedwas willfully abandoned. A 64-year-old woman with severe dementia who was euthanized in the Netherlandseven though she was no longer competent.
The article [www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059444/Senile-64-year-old-Dutch-woman-euthanised-longer-able-express-wish-die.html?ito=feeds-newsxml] reported,
The unnamed woman was a long-term supporter of the controversial practice and had made a written statement when she was still well, saying how she wished to die. But the pensioner, who died in March, had been unable to reiterate her instructions as the disease progressed, Volkskrant reported.
The Daily Mail reported that this practice of killing patients with dementia is on the rise, and is being documented. A report released earlier this year revealed a total of 21 patients with early-stage dementia, including Alzheimers died by lethal injection in Holland in 2010. This is the first time dementia sufferers have been included in the countrys euthanasia statistics.
Even so, does this pose a threat to those in the United States? After all, assisting suicide is currently legal in only two states-Oregon and Washingtonand may have some legal basis in the state of Montana, due to a 2010 court decision.
However while assisting suicide remains illegal in nearly every jurisdiction in the United States, those who tirelessly promote doctor-prescribed death are on the offensive in New England.
There is a current effort under way in Massachusetts to obtain 70,000 signatures of registered voters before a petition to legalize it can be presented to the legislature. If they get this far, lawmakers could either adopt it as a law or let voters decide send it to a referendum vote in the November 2012 general election.
The other major effort is in Vermont. Thanks to an outpouring of opposition, a bill to legalize doctor-prescribed death was not taken up in 2011, but could gain traction once the 2012 legislative session begins.
So what could happen next if two New England states were to join Oregon and Washington State? The more states that adopt these dangerous laws, the greater is the risk of other states removing protection from vulnerable populations.
Most would be shocked to learn that in the U.S., legalizing assisting suicide can legally mean legalizing nonvoluntary euthanasia. While Compassion and Choices, the group promoting assisted suicide laws in the states, claims to only seek to allow doctor-prescribed death for the competent, such a limitation is often legally impossible.
But state courts have ruled time and again that if competent people have a right, the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitutions Fourteenth Amendment requires that incompetent people be given the same right.
And it should be noted that in the Netherlands, legalizing voluntary assisted suicide for those with terminal illness has spread to include nonvoluntaryeuthanasia for many who have no terminal illnesses. A 2009 article from the Daily Mail documented that, Cases of [Dutch] euthanasia in the country have increased from 1,626 in 2003 to 2,331 in 2008.
It is also alleged that there have been thousands of cases of involuntary euthanasia and dozens of killings of disabled newborns. [www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1234295/Now-Dutch-turn-legalised-mercy-killing.html#ixzz1dJczqGst].This has meant that the problems for which death in now the legal solution include such things as mental illness, permanent disability, and even simple old age.
This cautionary tale being told in the Netherlands adds to mounting evidence that once human beings are regarded as disposable in some, initially carefully circumscribed circumstances, those circumstances will steadily expand. When you put a price on human life, the price goes down. The threat of this happening in the United States might not be as far off as one might think.
Thread by Morgana.
November 11, 2011 (AbbyJohnson.org) - I am going to be honest, when I first left Planned Parenthood, I hated the idea of the rescue movement. I didnt see the point. I thought it was a black mark against the pro-life movement.
Then I started meeting people who had once rescued. I started to see something that I had not before these were normal people. Men, women, old, young, White, Black, Hispanic, priests, pastors, laity so different, but all sharing one goal to save babies. These people had been convicted to do SOMETHING because nothing was being done. There were no peaceful vigils, very limited sidewalk counseling, not many laws to guide pro-life activity. I started to wonder: what if I had been pro-life during the rescue movement? Would I have been willing to sacrifice my freedom in order to save babies and take a stand against abortion?
When I became director of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, my life changed. All of a sudden, I was acutely aware of the responsibility that sat on my shoulders. I was now the face of that clinic. If something went wrong, it was now on my head. I worked all the time, usually about 70 hours per week. I was addicted to my job, addicted to the responsibility. I carried heavy burdens many were self inflicted. I will share with you my heaviest.
Every day I would arrive at work and check the schedule. Not because I had an enormous amount of employees or because I wanted to micromanage and see who was late
nothing like that. I wanted to look and see who was there that day. I wanted to place them in the clinic
where would they usually be?
(Excerpt) Read more at lifesitenews.com ...