Free Republic

Teaching EuthanasiaBy Patrick J.Reilly The intense battle to prevent Terri Schiavo's husband from removing her feeding tube was horrible enough. To think that some American Catholic universities—and their ethics, theology, law, and medical professors—bear some responsibility for Schiavo's  slow death is almost too much to imagine. Yet prior to Schiavo's death, professors from top Catholic universities helped convince the courts and the public that removing her feeding tube was acceptable and consistent with Catholic teaching—even while the Vatican said it was euthanasia. Several professors sought to publicly undermine Pope John Paul II's clear statements on the moral obligation to feed and hydrate...

President Bush seems determined to thwart any loosening of the restrictions he has imposed on federal financing of embryonic stem cell research, despite rising sentiment in Congress and the nation at large for greater federal support of this fast-emerging field. His actions are based on strong religious beliefs on the part of some conservative Christians, and presumably the president himself. Such convictions deserve respect, but it is wrong to impose them on this pluralistic nation. Mr. Bush threatened this week to veto a modest research-expansion bill that was approved by the House and is likely to be passed by the...

I've been searching for the right word to describe what is happening to Terri Schiavo, a word that has some real blood to it. It's important to find the right word now, because, by the time you read this, the severely brain-damaged woman might be dead. Perhaps you've noticed other bloodless words being flipped at her, words like "viability" and phrases like "pull the plug." These words were once the issue of bloodless people, of clerks and sophists who can prove almost anything with their fine arguments. The rest of us have fed on them until they shape how we...

<p>In a basement of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, in an office near the morgue, Ronn Wade's phone rings with yet another request for body parts.</p> <p>Colette Dugan, 43, had specialized knee surgery after her doctor learned the procedure on cadavers first.</p>

Don’t you just love it when someone with whom you're arguing says, “Well, we will just have to agree to disagree”, as a spin of the phrase ‘Reasonable people can agree to disagree’, or as the shortened version, ‘Reasonable people can disagree’? Can reasonable people disagree over cannibalism in order to permit cannibalism, without doing violence to civilization? As a pro-life advocate who gets into lots of discussions, I hear this ‘agree to disagree’ more and more. It tells me my points are getting to the irrational heart of defense for the abortion slaughter. When an advocate for abortion of...