Bobby Schindler: Drinking the Pro-Death Kool-Aid

Lately, Americans have been quick to disparage other countries for their approach to life and death issues. In particular, many Americans have been outraged at the Netherlands’ policies regarding euthanasia, assisted suicide, infanticide and the killing of those with mental illnesses.

As Americans, we haven’t been entirely intellectually honest in addressing why these things have become so prevalent in Europe. After all, we would never allow that kind of immorality or degradation of human life. Not in this great nation. Right?

Americans had better look again and take the time to rethink their value systems. Because if you honestly believe such things don’t happen here, I’m afraid you may not be paying attention.

The simple fact is that many of us have been successfully conditioned to accept medical killing as a kind, appropriate and compassionate tactic. A great deal of it goes on quietly and out of the harsh light of public view. But, a growing number of families can tell you in no uncertain terms, it happens every single day in the United States.

Embracing death as a medical solution to human problems is nothing new. The attitude is one that has been promoted for decades. The slow but successful indoctrination of our mostly apathetic general public suggests that it is not only acceptable to kill disabled, elderly and vulnerable people, but that such acts are perfectly justifiable.

Only legal in three states, the number of those who have opted for physician assisted suicide may not be staggering. However, what is positively astounding is the very large number of people who, on a regular basis, fall victim to the practice of deliberately killing the cognitively disabled, the elderly, the mentally ill and countless others who are being starved and dehydrated to death.

With the entire world watching, my sister, Terri Schiavo died seven years ago on March 31, 2005 of a court-ordered dehydration – an agonizing death that lasted nearly two weeks. It may have been the first time most people were witness or even considered that this type of inhumane act could happen to an innocent individual. Sadly, Terri’s case wasn’t isolated – it continues and in every imaginable setting.

It seems clear that much of what is happening almost always includes the talk of money. Because health care has become so astronomically costly, bottom-line thinking and profit have started to outweigh the needs and desires of certain people who live at risk.

The very real result, in terms of attitudes and actions, is that more vulnerable American citizens are sitting squarely in the cross-hairs of what appears to be a very real antilife establishment. Such attitudes put each and every one of us at risk.

When a person reaches a certain age, or their physical capabilities become profoundly limited and no longer are able to do what an “able” person can do, what happens?

Working to shape public policy, bioethicists and proponents of choice in dying do their in work in very subtle ways – reaching for buzzwords that soothe the general public into thinking death is the appropriate medical solution to complicated human conditions.

Indeed, their attempts at shifting our societal attitudes towards life, health, disability and death have been tremendously successful. The marketing, packaging and selling of forced death as a solution has brought the United States equal with those countries with which we find fault. We, truly, are no better.

There are several dynamics at play and many people, who are experts in medical ethics, would probably outline the core issues in this way:

We re-defined basic care. In most states, the provision of food and water is statutorily defined as “medical treatment.” That enables health care providers and family members to deny this kind of basic care with the intent of causing death. This happens to people who are not dying, not stricken with illness and the elderly who unable to safely feed themselves.

We embraced ethics committees. According to a 2005 report by the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics, the laws of 40 states allow doctors and hospital “ethics committees” to disregard advance directives when they call for treatment, food or fluids. Perhaps the term “death panels” doesn’t seem so funny anymore, does it?

We tolerated the Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) diagnosis. PVS was established in 1972 by physicians, and it is often used as a criterion to kill the cognitively disabled. This is precisely the diagnosis used in Terri’s case. Consider, if you will, how profoundly offensive it is to refer to anyone as a “vegetable”.

Clearly, this term is meant to condition you to think less of a disabled person. There is another problem. PVS is misdiagnosed upwards of 50% of the time, according to a number of published studies. Even though the diagnosis is largely unscientific, it can be a death warrant to a patient with profound cognitive disabilities.

We embraced a flawed personhood theory. Some bioethicists have defined human beings as human “non-persons,” based on their ability to interact in “meaningful” ways – a benchmark that is subjective in every way. If someone doesn’t meet this criterion, theirs is a life no longer worth living. Indeed, personhood theory is being taught to our future physicians and health care professionals in some of our most prominent universities. It’s a sad and odd to note that, in the final decade of his life, President Ronald Reagan became according to these bioethicists a human non-person because of his Alzheimer’s.

The final stroke? Verbal engineering. Putting words in our public discourse and vernacular—words that people will repeat without thought, words that are intended to be the means to an end. The concept is simple, efficient and it works. As an example of this, read an article by Wesley J. Smith and Rita Marker titled, “Words, Words, Words.” They explain how various words and phrases have had a profound impact on the public, numbing them into accepting things that they know are negative.

Truly, the desensitization in our culture has become so intense that those who compare the dehumanization of disabled people to the atrocities in Germany prior to the Holocaust are now labeled fanatics. Yet, the very same people that were eliminated in Nazi Germany–the cognitively disabled–are being eliminated now for the very same reasons. They are seen as inferior. Burdens. Not quite complete humans.

Obviously, there is more than just culture-jamming that goes into this insidious movement. But it has become apparent to me that the death culture is not only winning, it’s gaining broad support.

Clearly, the reasons are out there for one and all to see. Health, life and longevity have become direct threats to profitability and the bottom line. That's why I fear those behind this death movement will not only continue, but it will intensify.

Even if you and I think it’s horrible, even if you believe that starving and dehydrating vulnerable people to death is abhorrent and even though we see some politicians wringing their hands over what is happening to people at risk, the question that still remains is simply this: What is being done to stop it?

Is anybody really serious about saving lives? Or, did we obediently buy the sales pitch?

The "duty to die" has ALWAYS been the culture of death's ultimate goal.

Thread by me.

Wesley J. Smith: ‘Futile care’ duty to die may be coming to a hospital near you

When a Canadian man named Hassan Rasouli suffered complications after brain surgery, his doctors wanted to pull the plug. But his Muslim family said no. It was against Hassan’s values, and moreover, they believed he showed signs of improvement. In any event, they wanted him to be able to continue to fight for life.

But that didn’t end matters. The doctors claimed that continuing treatment was “futile” because he would never get better. Moreover, they announced they intended to stop all treatment except for comfort care — regardless of the family’s desires or their patient’s personal values — an example of what is known in bioethics as “Futile Care Theory” or “medical futility.”

The case ended up in court. Justifying their desired imposition on the family, the doctors testified in a written affidavit: “It is as certain as anything ever is in medicine that he will never recover any degree of consciousness,” Wrong. Hassan later woke up and became reactive to the point that he can now give a “thumbs up” when asked how he is doing.

Despite this, the doctors are still conducting tests to determine whether they remain committed to stopping his treatment. Further, they have asked the Canadian Supreme Court to grant physicians the general legal right to refuse wanted life-extending treatment. If they prevail, it will mean that extending life will cease to be considered medically “beneficial” — even when that is what the patient and/or family wants.

Some might snort derisively and think, “Well, that’s Canada with single-payer health care. That’s what happens in socialized systems.”

Not so fast. Futile Care Theory has been pushed quietly by bioethicists in this country for years. Indeed, many, if not most, hospitals have promulgated some form of internal futile care protocol. Not only that, but many states — most notably Texas — legally grant hospitals the statutory right to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment.

This is how the Texas law, seen as a model by many futilitiarians, works: Under the Texas Health and Safety Code, if the physician disagrees with a patient’s decision to receive treatment, he or she can take it to the hospital bioethics committee. A hearing is convened at which all interested parties explain why they want or don’t want treatment to continue.

If the committee decides to refuse treatment, it is determinative. Even if the family finds another doctor willing to provide the treatment, it can’t be done in that hospital. At that point, the patient/family has a mere ten days to find another hospital willing to take the patient, after which, according to the statute, “the physician and health care facility are not obligated to provide life-sustaining treatment.”

In practical terms, that’s a death sentence. The economics of medicine have changed from the old fee-for-service days. Today, extended care in ICUs is usually a money loser for hospitals, meaning that families find it almost impossible to find a facility willing to accept the transfer of expensive patients whose care has been declared to be “futile.” There are even reported cases of desperate families looking out of state for a facility willing to provide treatment for a loved one about to be pushed out of the lifeboat by a Texas hospital.

Please understand, I am not saying that it would never be right to withdraw wanted treatment. Any one of us can conjure a scenario in which imposing increasingly painful and extreme interventions could cross the line into abuse. But these disputes should not be adjudicated behind closed doors in star chamber-like proceedings run by bioethicists who do not share the values of patients and their families, and who work in institutions with a financial stake in the outcomes. Rather, they belong in a court of law, with the right to press access, cross examination, a public record and appeal.

Moreover, if doctors want a patient to die sooner rather than later, they should bear the strong burden of proof in order to prevail. After all, the point of Futile Care Theory is to impose a form of the death penalty. When in doubt, every benefit of doubt belongs to wanted life.

An incredible commentary on the right to life.

Thread by me.

Nobody owns his life: an integral defense of life

In the defense of life, it is absolutely essential that we are committed to the abolition of all laws and judicial decisions that would permit even a single abortion. But we have to look further ahead to protect in an integral way the whole of human life from its biological beginnings until natural death. The same logic of dominion over life that leads to abortion serves as justification for euthanasia, assisted suicide, as well as contraception and artificial means of fertilization. If a person is capable of deciding on the life or death of the baby in the womb, that person could also make these same decisions over the life of a dying or disabled person under his or her legal care.

Nobody owns his life; no one has the right to euthanasia or assisted suicide. No one has the right to judge if the life of a human person is “not worthy of being lived” and should thus be eliminated.

Behind an apparently compassionate approach to the sufferings of a person that is dying, there is often a strong economic motivation to save society of the expenses of keeping alive a person whose condition has been deemed terminal. Life is the property of the Creator, so only He may decide the time of its beginning and the time of its conclusion; thus neither abortion or euthanasia, suicide, assisted suicide nor any form of artificial conception where human persons decide the time of the beginning or the end of life are permissible.

We have to protect the family which is the cradle of life and encourage generosity with life at a time of demographic winter. We should do everything possible to guarantee children their natural right of being born in a stable family, constituted by a man and woman, and their right to be conceived in natural fashion and not artificially.

The struggle to protect life is closely related to the acceptance or the rejection of the fullness of the Way, the Truth and Life that was brought to the world through the incarnation of the Eternal Word. John Paul II in Centesimus annus, demonstrates that a society cannot live without God in the emptiness of atheism. He finishes this analysis indicating how the Kingdom of God has to have a concrete effect in the life of society, enlightening it and penetrating it with the energies of grace. In light of these principles we can understand the gravity of Italian Law 194 of May 22, 1978 that legalized abortion and of the Law 40 of February 19, 2004 that legalized artificial fertilization. We cannot be in agreement with those that are of the view that Law 194 has to be applied in a correct way as a means of limiting the number of abortions. The first article of this law is totally ambiguous. It states that, “The Republic…. Protects human life from its beginning.” But right away we can ask: who between the partisans of this law is ready to define the beginning of life as its biological beginning? We can try to limit the damages caused by this law applying article 73 of Evangelium vitae, but we can never accept the ideological foundations of the Italian abortion law.

The Italian law that legalizes artificial fertilization is the consequence of view of life in which men think everything he wants to do is licit. Some see this as a consequence of the Enlightenment, but really behind it we have the old demonic temptation that led our first parents to think they could be like God and become the Lords of everything created, instead of accepting that man is only a temporary administrator of a spiritual and material reality that has been entrusted to him during his life on this earth.

Behind this law there is a view in which children are not seen as a gift from God but as a right. This frame of mind of dominion over life is a grave evil in itself, but we also have to be keenly aware of its immediate consequences, which are the death of thousands of newly conceived babies, because many are rejected at implantation in the womb of the mother due to the unnatural means of implantation. There are sources that indicate that in this way more than eighty percent of the embryos produced artificially die before being born.

There is a connection that can never be taken away between the unitive and procreative meanings of the sexual act; this connection should not be broken by man. Artificial fertilization separates procreation from sexuality, and in certain way there is a relation between a contraceptive frame of mind and artificial fertility because we can say it is the reverse.

The defense of life is a fundamental part of building up the common good of society, as John Paul II taught us:

To be actively pro-life is to contribute to the renewal of society through the promotion of the common good. It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop. A society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized.” Then John Paul II adds with sober realism, “There can be no true democracy without a recognition of every person’s dignity and without respect for his rights.

A central element of the common good is the active protection of life as part of a commitment to establish a just and well-organized society under the Social Kingship of Christ, where Faith would be lived with a deep love of the truth, and as a consequence all the social and economic resources should be properly managed to assure a social and economic growth in real terms. A fundamental element in this struggle to establish the common good is generosity with life, because selfishness with life is the consequence of the lack of hope, which is in turn due to a lack faith. This lack of faith and hope leads directly or indirectly to abortion, euthanasia and all sorts of aggressions against the family. This happens also because without a hopeful and strong view of the future grounded in the faith it is difficult to make the permanent commitment which is the essence of marriage. A lived faith would encourage the generosity of families with life and a healthy socioeconomic policy would give them the necessary material security to carry forward their mission.

In the missionary presentation of the faith we should make a courageous and integral effort to communicate the teachings of the Church on life and family, demonstrating how all of them are bound together, and the abandonment of one of them leads to an attack on the others. These teachings are strongly opposed by a world dominated by relativism and hedonism, but without these it impossible to lead a happy and well integrated life. These obstacles should not discourage us, because nothing is impossible with God who always wishes our salvation.

I guess they named it the "Margaret Sanger Clinic" because Auschwitz was already taken.

Thread by NYer.

VIDEO: Planned Parenthood’s ‘Margaret Sanger’ clinic in NY welcomes sex-selection abortion

NEW YORK, May 31, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An employee at the flagship abortion clinic of Planned Parenthood in New York has been caught on tape telling a woman how to be sure of her unborn baby’s female sex in order to abort her in a second undercover video released Thursday morning.

The footage shows the undercover investigator, walking past a sign on the wall that reads “WOMEN COUNT,” meeting Planned Parenthood social worker Randi Coun at the Margaret Sanger Center International on Bleecker St.

Coun walks the investigator through obtaining a CVS test to determine gender as early as the first trimester, but assures the potential patient that it would be just as safe to obtain an abortion as late as 24 weeks.

“Yeah, so, you know, with—an abortion at any stage up to 24 weeks is considered a safe procedure. Um, the biggest difference is that after 16 weeks, the procedure becomes a 2-day procedure, rather than a procedure that’s done just on one day,” says the social worker. “It’s just there’s more steps involved and it’s just a little more complicated.”

Unborn children younger than 16 weeks are aborted by either dilation and curettage (D&C) or dilation and evacuation (D&E), in which the body is cut into pieces to ease removal from the womb. After 16 weeks a saline abortion can be used, in which a strong salt solution is injected into the amniotic sac. This kills the baby by burning its outer layer of skin and poisoning it when the solution is swallowed, a process that takes around an hour. Labor to expel the body normally sets in naturally within 24 hours, completing the abortion procedure.

Coun tells the investigator that Planned Parenthood would not question her sex-selection motivations. “I can tell you that here at Planned Parenthood we believe that it’s not up to us to decide what is a good or a bad reason for somebody to decide to terminate a pregnancy,” she said.

Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek, who is a nurse, notes the CVS suggestion is an extreme one that puts the baby at risk. “CVS tests have a risk of miscarriage of about 1 in 100, which Coun did not mention, and are typically done to test for genetic disorders,” wrote Stanek.

The video was released two days after footage from a Texas clinic showed a counselor helping a potential client get an ultrasound to determine the baby’s gender for a sex-selective abortion, and warning her not to tell doctors of her intentions. “A lot of doctors will place judgment because the brain is already developed, a lot. Pretty much everything’s already developed.”

Planned Parenthood issued a statement the same day announcing the counselor had been fired, but also confirmed that it is willing to perform sex-selection abortions. Meanwhile, the abortion chain is opposing a bill set for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday that would ban sex-selection abortions.

GENDERCIDE IN AMERICA: Undercover in NYC Watch the Video!

This is a beautiful story!

Thread by me.

Trisomy 18 is not a death sentence: The story of Lilliana Dennis.

As the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition I have had the opportunity to read stories of despair and other stories of hope.

The story that I am writing about today is one of the greatest stories of hope. This is the story of Lilliana Dennis, a child who is living with Trisomy 18, a rare genetic condition that many doctors have labelled as "incompatible with life."

This is a story of a child who was not supposed to live. A child who has a condition that most doctors would refuse to provide treatment for and let to die, based on "futile care" theory. A story of a child, who in the Netherlands, may have been euthanized based on the guidelines of the Groningen Protocol, because she would be viewed as a "life unworthy of life."

This is a story of a child who is not only living but who is thriving and showing the world that the lives of children with Trisomy 18 are worthy of life, worthy of care and worthy of medical treatment.

On May 23, an article entitled: Hearts full of hope: Surgery extends the life of infant with rare condition was written by Ryan Trares and published in the Daily Journal in Franklin Indiana. This article told the story of Lilliana. Here is the text of the article:

Youtube video from Lilliana's first birthday.

Hearts full of hope: Surgery extends the life of infant with rare condition

Lilliana soon after birth

The odds seemed impossible to comprehend.

Russell and Rhonda Dennis had just learned their newborn daughter, Lilliana, suffered from Trisomy 18. The genetic disorder would stymie her physical and mental development. Fewer than half of babies with the disorder survive their first week. Only about 8 percent live an entire year.

All you can do is take her home and love her while you can, doctors said.

That was about one year ago. The Dennis family never thought that Lilliana would celebrate her first birthday, but after open-heart surgery and regular therapy, she is thriving.

Her parents want to hold her up as an example that though the condition can be traumatic, it’s not an automatic death sentence.

Lilliana's first birthday

“She’s proven she can live, she can learn,” said Rhonda Dennis, her mother. “She still might not live much longer, but we’ve come to terms with all of the things that the Lord has laid out. He’s in control, and bad things may come, but that’s part of his plan.”

In their southside Indianapolis home, the Dennis family have created a system to help protect Lilliana.

A monitor measures the amount of air she is getting in her lungs, warning the family if she has trouble breathing. Tanks of oxygen are on standby, as are medications to open her airways, in case the little girl struggles.

A gastric feeding tube was implanted in her stomach in April, since she has not developed the ability to eat by mouth. She gets much of her nutrition pumped into her body during the night, then feeds three times during the day to ensure she gets the proper nutrition.

The Dennises have four other children, and none of them have Trisomy 18. Even while Rhonda Dennis was pregnant with Lilliana, she experienced no complications or warnings that their new child would have so many problems.

Lilliana was born May 17, 2011, at Community South Hospital. She was three weeks early and weighed only 4 pounds, 7 ounces. Her small weight was the first sign that something may be wrong. More concrete signs, such as her clenched fingers that never seemed to straighten and feet that curled like rockers, made doctors order a genetic test.

The results showed she had Trisomy 18. The condition, also called Edward’s syndrome, is similar to other genetic disorders such as Downs syndrome. When Lilliana was conceived, she had an extra chromosome, which caused her to develop a heart defect, poorly developed fingers and toes, and blockages that stunted her breathing.

In Lilliana’s case, the immediate danger was the stress on her respiratory system. The hole in her heart prevented oxygen-rich blood from properly circulating through the body. The struggle for oxygen puts undue stress on the rest of the body, and eventually they die. Little research has been done on Trisomy 18, due to the incredibly high death rate. Estimations are that almost 99 percent of babies with the condition are never even born. For those that are, odds are about 50 percent that they survive their first week.

Such a large percentage of the children born with the disease die quickly, and doctors have little opportunity to study the physical effects, said Dr. Sanjay Parikh, Lilliana’s cardiologist at Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis.

From the start, the family turned to their faith to cope. Russell, president of Heritage Bible College in Franklin, and Rhonda Dennis turned to a specific Bible verse for guidance — Romans 15:13. The verse reads, “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.”

That message became their rallying cry.

“When you’re told these things up front, you just think it’s God’s plan. I really didn’t think she would live. I thought that she would live a short time, and we’d just show everyone we still trusted God,” Rhonda Dennis said.

They also started researching the problem on their own. Online support groups, as well as national organizations such as the Trisomy 18 Foundation, helped fill in the blanks beyond what their doctors had told them.

The information was frightening, as it revealed how deadly the condition can be. But it also offered hope. They read about children who were attending school and had learned to walk. One woman lived to be 41 and graduated from college.

“The doctors tell you this condition is incompatible with life, that it’s fatal, and that all of these things will more than likely go wrong,” Rhonda Dennis said. “But then you meet these people and see these kids doing stuff, interacting, walking and talking.”

Initially, Lilliana’s doctors told them it was too late for surgery and there was nothing they could do. But the Dennises wanted a second opinion. Working with friends in Ohio, the little girl’s heart scans and images were hand delivered to a doctor based in Toledo, Ohio, who specialized in Trisomy 18 cases.

The family also went to see Parikh. He examined her heart images and immediately said that he could do the surgery.

But he had a catch. Parikh couldn’t guarantee that he could assemble a surgical team that would agree to do it. Because the life expectancy of any baby with Trisomy 18 is so short, and surgery doesn’t guarantee a greatly extended life, many health officials feel that any surgery or procedure is cruel.

“The prejudice is such that, these babies don’t live long enough, so why put them through the pain and stress of surgery if it isn’t going to make that great of a difference,” Russell Dennis said.

The Dennises also had to plead their case in front of the hospital’s ethics board, which must give the approval on risky or controversial procedures. The board was split, and unanimous approval was needed to do the surgery. One of the main opponents of doing it asked the family how this operation would affect Lilliana’s quality of life.

“My thinking was, if she gets the surgery, she lives. If she doesn’t, she dies. It was that simple,” Russell Dennis said.

But it was Rhonda Dennis who spoke. She looked at the physician and simply asked, “What if it was your daughter?” After deliberating behind closed doors, the committee emerged and gave their approval for the surgery.

Other parents who had gone through Trisomy 18, as well as their own research, told the Dennis family they had a six-week window to repair the hole in her ventricle which would relieve the stress.

Parikh and his team gathered on Oct. 13 to perform the open-heart surgery, a first for a baby with Trisomy 18. The operation was long, complicated by Lilliana’s small size and her breathing problems. But by the next day, she was stable and recovering in the hospital.

After 17 days of recovery, Lilliana came home with her parents. The change in her health since that time has been noticeable.

Though they take precautions with an oxygen monitor and medications, Lilliana’s breathing has become stronger and more regular. The next challenge is teaching Lilliana’s body to work the way a small child’s should. Rhonda Dennis is working with her to learn to feed by mouth. She has an oral stimulator that allows her to coat Lilliana’s gums and inner cheeks with baby food, most of which the girl spits up.

Lilliana also sees a physical therapist six times each month. The sessions are designed to help with basic muscle tone, such as lifting her arms and legs, and moving her head. She still can’t lift her head up much when laying on her stomach, but has started actively moving her lower body around.

“She has great hip action. She can scoot all over the floor,” Rhonda Dennis said.

To celebrate Lilliana’s first birthday, the Dennises had a celebration open house. She received her own birthday cake, and gifts from family and friends. After 12 months of fear and concern for their daughter, Russell and Rhonda Dennis are grateful to focus on the positive.

They understand that Lilliana will likely struggle for the rest of her life, and they’ve accepted that. Their goal now is to give their daughter the best life she can have while she’s alive, and to reach out to other parents to help them with the myriad decisions that come with Trisomy 18.

“If the parents don’t know what to push for and what to demand, a lot of times they won’t get it,” Rhonda Dennis said. “There are statistics that show that many of these children don’t live long. But you don’t know that for sure.”

"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."

ObamaCare is even worse than we imagined.

Thread by me.

ObamaCare Uncovered: Even Worse Than You Thought

In two short minutes, you can find out even more things than you’ve heard before about what’s wrong with ObamaCare. (And this doesn’t even cover it all, folks.) We knew it was bad – we knew it was really bad – but did we know it was this bad? I mean, seriously, $100-a-day fines for each employee? If this isn’t an extreme violation of personal, constitutional, and conscience rights, I don’t know what is.

Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised at all the things that can hide in a nearly 1,000 page law, with even more pages of regulations implementing that law. In 2011, John Vinci of NetRight Daily wrote (footnotes omitted):

If you thought that Obamacare was long, it is only a fraction of the length of the regulations.
Obamacare contains over 700 directives for HHS and other agencies to implement Obamacare.
We went through and counted all of the Obamacare regulation documents published so far. We found that the number of pages in regulations are already 114 percent as long as the number of pages in the Obamacare statutes! The statutes contain 961 pages compared to 1,093 pages of regulations … What is more telling is the word count comparison. The Obamacare statutes together contain 425,116 words. Compare that to 1,147,271 words published so far in Obamacare regulation documents. The regulations are 270 percent as long as the statute itself.

Alliance Defense Fund, the organization who created the video at the beginning of this article, has also designed an easily sharable collection of facts about ObamaCare. You can share the fact sheet with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, and more. ADF has done a well-researched job of explaining just what ObamaCare means to everyday Americans. And they reveal multiple hidden facts that must be brought to light.

For example:

Employees who don’t purchase ObamaCare will be fined up to 2.5% of their salary.
Some ObamaCare plans can take $ straight out of your paycheck and put it in an abortion-on-demand fund.
The U.S. Department of Labor reports that there are approximately 154,000,000 people in the U.S. labor force. If only half of plans include the Abortion Premium, at only $1 per month, the yearly income into this fund would be $924,000,000.
On average, an abortion costs $450. At the above rate, this fund could completely subsidize 2 million abortions per year. Currently, there are 1.2 million abortions per year in the U.S.
The employee will discover that their plan contains an abortion premium either by seeking it out in the fine print once they have enrolled, or noticing the separate surcharge taken from their paycheck.

ADF provides sources for the claims made in its fact sheet. The facts are chilling, but they must be studied, understood, and broadcasted by every American. Clearly, President Obama has used ObamaCare as an avenue to give a committed Planned Parenthood associate and abortion advocate – HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius – free rein to impose conscience violations and abortion funding on millions of Americans who are pro-life or who simply do not desire to fund someone else’s abortion.

As ADF correctly states, “[f]orced purchase is usually called ‘coercion’ rather than ‘commerce.’”

Know the facts, and speak out, America.

YouTube: ObamaCare Mandate Is Worse Than You Think

Every day America is beginning to look more like Germany in the 1930s.

Thread by JohnKinAK.

The Elite Are Attempting To Convince Us That Killing Off Our Sick Grandparents Is Cool And Trendy

What should be done with elderly Americans when they become very seriously ill? Should we try to save their lives or should we just let them die? Unfortunately, there is a growing consensus among the "intellectual elite" that most elderly people are not going to have a high enough "quality of life" to justify the expense of costly life saving procedures. This philosophy is now being promoted very heavily through mainstream news outlets, in our television shows and in big Hollywood movies. The elite are attempting to convince us that killing off our sick grandparents is cool and trendy. We are being told that "pulling the plug" on grandma and grandpa is compassionate (because it will end their suffering), that it is good for the environment and that it is even good for the economy. We are being told that denying life saving treatments to old people will dramatically reduce health care costs and make the system better for all of us. We are being told that it is not "efficient" for health insurance companies to shell out $100,000 for an operation that may extend the life of an elderly person by 6 months. But the truth is that all of this is part of a larger agenda that the elite are attempting to advance. As I have written about previously, the elite love death, and they truly believe that reducing the population is good for society and good for the planet. Sadly, population control propaganda has reached a fever pitch in recent months.

Time Magazine has just come out with a very shocking cover story entitled "How To Die". The article goes on and on about how wonderful and compassionate it is to remove life saving treatment from sick relatives.

A recent article by Mike Adams summarized the message of this disgusting article....

Inside, the magazine promotes a cost-saving death agenda that encourages readers to literally “pull the feeding tubes” from their dying elderly parents, causing them to dehydrate and die. This is explained as a new cost-saving measure that drastically reduces return hospital visits by the elderly… yeah, because dead people don’t return to the hospital, of course.

Many of you also probably remember the Newsweek cover story from a couple years ago that was entitled "The Case for Killing Granny".

Underneath that shocking title was the following phrase: “Curbing excessive end-of-life care is good for America.”

According to the author of that article, spending less money on the elderly is the key to successful health care reform....

The idea that we might ration health care to seniors (or anyone else) is political anathema. Politicians do not dare breathe the R word, lest they be accused—however wrongly—of trying to pull the plug on Grandma. But the need to spend less money on the elderly at the end of life is the elephant in the room in the health-reform debate. Everyone sees it but no one wants to talk about it. At a more basic level, Americans are afraid not just of dying, but of talking and thinking about death. Until Americans learn to contemplate death as more than a scientific challenge to be overcome, our health-care system will remain unfixable.

Sadly, articles like that one are becoming quite frequent in mainstream media sources.

Just a few days ago, a Bloomberg article entitled "How 'Death Panels' Can Prolong Life" declared that we must "deny treatment to people who want it" in order to hold down costs....

In short, all the Republican talk during the health-care- reform debate about “death panels” was melodramatic and unfair, but not ridiculous. One way or another, holding down health-care costs will require policies that deny treatment to people who want it. And want it because it will extend their lives.

This goes on already, all the time. Health insurance companies have been known to deny payment for treatments deemed unnecessary. Age limits for organ transplants are another example. All policies that involve denying care because of “quality of life” considerations are, in effect, “death panels.” But no society can afford to give every citizen every possible therapy. Medicare is going broke trying.

So who are we supposed to deny treatment to?

The elderly of course.

According to that Bloomberg article, we are supposed to kill off our sick grandparents because the "quality of life" they would be expected to have if they recover would not be enough to warrant spending so much to save them....

A $200,000 operation can add a year or two to the life of an octogenarian, or it can save decades of life for younger people. In a country like the U.S., with an average life expectancy of 78.5, it takes 10 septuagenarians who get an extra five years from the health-care system to balance a single 30- year-old who gets 50 extra years. Or save the life of a newborn, who then enjoys a normal life span and dies at 78.5, and you have the same impact on national life expectancy as 16 operations on septuagenarians. The average national life expectancy can increase even as the cost goes down.

This is the kind of thinking that starts happening in a society that dramatically devalues life.

If human life has little value, then it is easy to start justifying things that would have once been unthinkable.

For example, one surgeon is now suggesting that we should start harvesting organs from patients before they die....

Dr. Paul Morrissey, an associate professor of surgery at Brown University's Alpert Medical School, wrote in The American Journal of Bioethics that the protocol known as donation after cardiac death -- meaning death as a result of irreversible damage to the cardiovascular system -- has increased the number of organs available for transplant, but has a number of limitations, including the need to wait until the heart stops.

Because of the waiting time, Morrissey said that about one-third of potential donors end up not being able to donate, and many organs turn out to not be viable as a result.

Instead, he argues in favor of procuring kidneys from patients with severe irreversible brain injury whose families consent to kidney removal before their cardiac and respiratory systems stop functioning.

Do you want your organs harvested before you are dead?

Sadly, those that often do need organ transplants the most these days are often denied for "quality of life" issues as well.

For example, at one U.S. hospital a 3-year-old girl named Amelia was denied a kidney transplant that she desperately needed simply because she is considered to be "mentally retarded".

These are the kinds of decisions that are being made by doctors and by health insurance companies all over America every day.

And did you know that life-ending drugs are going to be 100% free under Obamacare?

I did not know this until I read a Christian Post article the other day....

A Christian-based legal defense alliance is warning Americans who already believe that President Barack Obama's health care plan is a bad idea that the "ObamaCare mandate is worse than you think."

"Everyone likes a good surprise, but no one likes a bad surprise. So, you're really not going to like the surprises buried in the 2,700 pages of this document," says the narrator of a short video produced by the Alliance Defense Fund.

"Did you know that with ObamaCare you will have to pay for life-saving drugs, but life-ending drugs are free. One hundred percent free. If this plan were really about health care wouldn't it be the other way around?"

Apparently they want to make it as easy to off yourself and your relatives as possible.

So where is all of this headed?

Are we eventually going to become like the Netherlands?

In the Netherlands, mobile euthanasia teams are now going door to door to help elderly patients end their lives in the comfort of their own homes.

Is that what we want?

Do we want government agents going door to door to help people die?

As I have written about previously, the elite believe that the world is massively overpopulated and they believe that all of us are ruining their planet.

So they love euthanasia, abortion and pretty much anything else that will result in more people ending up dead.

A beautiful story of a mother's love.

Thread by me.

‘I’m going to Heaven, you stay here with Dad’: Italian mom sacrifices life for unborn baby

ROME, June 25, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - When Chiara Corbella learned she was pregnant with her third child, it was a great joy that ended in bittersweet tragedy for the young Italian mother, who died this month after postponing cancer treatment to save her cherished baby.

n a story that echoes that of Roman Catholic saint Gianna Molla, Chiara and her husband Enrico Petrillo embarked on a remarkable journey of faith in 2010 when they learned that they were pregnant with Francisco - and that Chiara had an aggressive form of cancer, reports the Catholic News Agency.

The news was especially poignant for the couple since both of Francisco’s elder siblings, Maria and David, had been lost shortly after birth. In fact, Chiara and Enrico had become popular pro-life speakers for their stories of their few treasured moments with each of their first two children before their brief lives came to an end.

This time, doctors said Francisco was healthy and developing normally. So when Chiara was advised to begin treatment immediately for her cancer, she declined, waiting for Francisco to be born in May of last year. The cancer progressed over the following year, depriving Chiara of sight in one eye before she finally succumbed on June 13, 2012.

“I am going to heaven to take care of Maria and David, you stay here with Dad. I will pray for you,” Chiara wrote to baby Francisco in a letter, one week before her death.

Chiara’s funeral Mass was celebrated by the Vicar General of Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, who called Chiara “the second Gianna Beretta.”

Saint Gianna Molla was an Italian pediatrician who died in 1962 from complications caused by a fibroma on her uterus, after she refused both an abortion and a hysterectomy because she was pregnant with her fourth child.

Although a tragedy to outside observers - and certainly also for Enrico, to whom Chiara was happily married – the couple’s last conversations reveal, in the young husband’s words, “a story of love on the cross” that seemed to conquer even death.

“The truth is that this cross – if you embrace it with Christ – ceases to be as ugly as it looks. If you trust in him, you discover that this fire, this cross, does not burn, and that peace can be found in suffering and joy in death,” said Enrico, according to CNA. “I spent a lot of time this year reflecting on this phrase from the Gospel that says the Lord gives a cross that is sweet and a burden that is light.

“When I would look at Chiara when she was about to die, I obviously became very upset. But I mustered the courage and a few hours before – it was about eight in the morning, Chiara died at noon – I asked her.

“I said: ‘But Chiara, my love, is this cross really sweet, like the Lord says? She looked at me and she smiled, and in a soft voice she said, ‘Yes, Enrico, it is very sweet.’

“In this sense, the entire family didn’t see Chiara die peacefully, but happily, which is totally different.”

Enrico said he would tell his son Francisco when he was older that “the most important thing in life” is to “let yourself be loved in order to love and die happy,” and that “this is what his mother, Chiara, did.”

“She allowed herself to be loved, and in a certain sense, I think she loved everyone in this way,” he said. “I feel her more alive than ever. To be able to see her die happy was to me a challenge to death.”

Read the full CNA story here.

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