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Euthanasia conjoined with organ harvesting just took a particularly disturbing turn in Spain, where a woman was euthanized and then had part of her face transplanted. From the Catalan News story: Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona has performed the world’s first face transplant with a donor who passed away from euthanasia. Around 100 medical professionals took part in the partial face transplant, a highly complex operation using neurovascular microsurgery techniques that lasted about 24 hours . In presenting the milestone procedure, the healthcare director, Maria José Abadías, highlighted the “extraordinary generosity of the donor,” ​the “collective effort” behind the...

Euthanasia conjoined with organ harvesting just took a particularly disturbing turn in Spain, where a woman was euthanized and then had part of her face transplanted.... Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona has performed the world’s first face transplant with a donor who passed away from euthanasia. Around 100 medical professionals took part in the partial face transplant, a highly complex operation using neurovascular microsurgery techniques that lasted about 24 hours. In presenting the milestone procedure, the healthcare director, Maria José Abadías, highlighted the “extraordinary generosity of the donor,” ​the “collective effort” behind the operation and the “pride” of all...

[Catholic Caucus] Cardinals’ letter against Trump’s foreign policy is a blatant political attackCardinals Cupich, McElroy, and Tobin speak of their concern for ‘religious liberty’ and ‘the right to life’ after years of silence under the Biden administration, even when it spied on Catholics and locked up pro-lifers.By now it shouldn’t be surprising when Catholic clergy counter-signal President Trump. It happened first when Pope Francis attacked him for wanting to build a border wall in 2016. It happened in December of last year when Leo indirectly rebuked him for his peace plan in Ukraine, which he said would “break apart” the...

An elderly woman was euthanized within hours of her husband claiming she changed her mind after insisting she wanted to live. Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying laws allow patients to request a painless death if an assessor agrees their terminal condition meets certain requirements. Patients often wait weeks, but it can happen the same day the application is lodged if judged to be medically urgent by a MAiD provider. But a report by the Ontario MAiD Death Review Committee raised concerns that safeguards were being eroded that led to questionable deaths. One case study was that of a woman in...

Freedom of religion is on the ropes in increasingly authoritarian Canada — despite a specific charter guarantee of “freedom of religion and conscience.” Indeed, an Ontario court ruled previously that doctors can be coerced under threat of professional discipline to perform lethal jabs or abortions against their religious beliefs and conscience objections. Why? The court ruled that the unenumerated right of patients to receive any legal procedure paid for by the government superseded the specific charter protection. If doctors don’t want to kill, the court also ruled, they can either provide an “effective referral” — meaning soliciting a doctor known...

Pope Leo stated Dec. 23 that he had joined Chicago Archbishop Cardinal Cupich in pleading with Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker not to sign a controversial assisted suicide bill into law and was “very disappointed” when Pritzker ignored their intervention and signed the bill. “I spoke very explicitly with Governor Pritzker about that,” the Holy Father said outside Castel Gandolfo in response to EWTN Vatican correspondent Rudolf Gehrig’s question about the bill. Pritzker visited the Vatican and had an audience with the Pope in November. “At that time, the bill was already on his desk,” the Holy Father said Tuesday....

Millions of Americans want to move to Canada. While few have actually left the country after Trump’s latest victory, they fantasize about living under a leftist government with free health care. And during the recent debates about ObamaCare’s self-destructing subsidies, every self-respecting liberal vehemently denounced America’s backward ‘paid’ health care. Every civilized country has free health care, they insist. Just look at Canada. Canada does have free health care in the sense that there are government insurance systems that cover “medically necessary services” funded by paying 70% more in taxes than Americans. This ‘free health care’ comes with a 3...

It's a fresh Monday morning in the quaint city of Amersfoort in the Netherlands, and a group of elderly guests are listening attentively to the words of an Australian physician. Dr Philip Nitschke, the first doctor in the world to administer a legal, lethal voluntary injection, and the inventor of the controversial Sarco pod, is presenting his latest gadget. The Australian-born founder of Exit International, the non-profit that provides guidance on assisted suicide, stirred controversy in 2024 when a woman ended her life using the so-called suicide pod, in apparently the first case of its kind. But undeterred by the...

In a striking scene in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge asks two men raising money for the poor, “Are there no prisons? … And the Union workhouses? … Are they still in operation?” When the charity supporters reply that many would rather die than go to such places, Scrooge replied, “If they would rather die … they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” Later in the story, Scrooge is reminded of his dehumanizing words and is ashamed. Recently, in real life Britain, Lord Falconer of Thoroton suggested to the British House of Lords that the...

The founder of Dignitas, a controversial assisted suicide organization, ended his own life at age 92, the group announced Monday. It’s a tragic irony that underscores the dehumanizing consequences of the deadly practice. Ludwig Minelli, a former journalist and human rights lawyer, died November 29 through what Dignitas described as “voluntary assisted dying,” just days before his 93rd birthday on December 5. The Zurich-based death group, which Minelli established in 1998 to enable people to end their lives “on their own terms,” provided no further details about the circumstances of his death. Dignitas, one of Switzerland’s most prominent suicide killers,...

A record 16,499 people died by euthanasia in Canada in 2024, accounting for 5.1% of all deaths in the country. According to the latest report on “medical assistance in dying” (MAiD) from Health Canada released at the end of last month, there was a 6.9% increase in state-assisted deaths in Canada in 2024. In 2024, although assisted suicide is permitted, in which the person who wishes to end their own life self-administers the lethal substance, there was not a single case of assisted suicide. Instead, every single person who died under Canada’s MAiD programme died by euthanasia. In 2023, there...

Benjamin Turland lost both of his grandmothers to Canada's legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide program, known as Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). While much has been shared about the devastating numbers of Canadians who are dying through the program, less has been shared about the lasting impact those deaths have on the family members left behind. Key Takeaways: * Benjamin Turland said that losing both his grandmothers to MAiD "wrecked" him, and caused lasting trauma. * He explained the difference between watching a loved one die naturally and watching one choose death — and how it affects those left behind....

Hospice care aims to bring comfort, peace, and dignity to patients at the end of life. Yet for the growing number of Americans with dementia who enter hospice, their course is often long and unpredictable—making it especially important to ensure treatments align with each person's goals and stage of illness. A new study published finds that medications commonly prescribed to ease symptoms such as agitation, anxiety, and delirium—benzodiazepines and antipsychotics—may carry major unintended risks for people with dementia receiving hospice care. Among more than 139,000 nursing home residents with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias enrolled in hospice between 2014 and...

As 2025 enters its final months, battles over the legalization of assisted suicide continue to advance toward uncertain outcomes. The battlefields include the British House of Lords, New York State, and the Australian State of Victoria. Meanwhile, the clock continues to tick on the expansion of “access” to assisted suicide in Canada, where the effective date has been moved to March 17, 2027 for “medical aid in dying” (MAID) to become available for people whose “sole underlying condition is a mental illness.” Altogether, the pending proposals and arguments on their behalf illustrate what Wesley Smith calls the “slippery slope” of...

Two A-List Hollywood actors will star in a pro-assisted-suicide movie. From the Hollywood Reporter story: George Clooney and Annette Bening will star in In Love, an adaptation of Amy Bloom’s New York Times best-selling memoir In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss that is to be directed by Paul Weitz. . . . With In Love, Bloom wrote about how her she slowly lost her husband to Alzheimer’s, how the two made the decision to travel to Switzerland to end his life, and the struggle to move forward as a widow. The book was an affirmation of love and...

On Wednesday, Oct. 15, Uruguay’s Senate passed the Death with Dignity bill, which opens the door to euthanasia in the country. Following a favorable vote by 20 senators (out of 31 present), the bill, which had previously been approved in August by Uruguay’s lower house, will go to the office of President Yamandú Orsi, a member of the Broad Front, the political coalition that promoted the legislative initiative. Orsi can sign the bill into law or veto it, either entirely or partially. The measure approved by the Senate would allow any person over the age of 18 in Uruguay who...

One summer morning my husband and I stepped into a Catholic hospital through a main entrance we both knew well. It was where he was born, where he practiced almost daily as a family physician for 35 years, where we returned to countless specialist visits, outpatient appointments, palliative care meetings with dear friends, and the joy of welcoming babies in the maternity ward. For us, the hospital was a constant holy presence, an unwavering witness to the dignity of life. But this visit brought something unexpected into view. On the left wall, a new mural of muted mountains and shoreline...

The New York Post published an editorial urging New York's Governor Kathy Hochul to veto the assisted suicide bill. In June, 2025 the New York State Senate approved assisted suicide Bill A136/S138 that was also approved by the Assembly in April. The assisted suicide bill has not yet reached Governor Hochul desk, but, when it does she must veto the assisted suicide bill or it will become law. Contact New York Governor Kathy Hochul (Contact Link) or call her at: 518-474-8390 and urge her to protect people when they are vulnerable by vetoing the assisted suicide bill. The New York...

During a Canadian parliament Finance Committee hearing Krista Carr, the CEO of Inclusion Canada, which is a national federation of people with disabilities, stated that: People with disabilities are now very much afraid in many circumstances to show up in the healthcare system with regular concerns because often MAiD is suggested as the solution to what is considered to be intolerable suffering that happens to be caused by some of the things that this committee addresses like poverty and the situations that people with disabilities disproportionately find themselves in compared to other Canadians. This is explosive testimony from Krista Carr...

A lady who wrote to a financial advice column detailing her financial struggles in accessing healthcare has been told about how easy it is to access assisted suicide, which would mean she “wouldn’t need to worry”. Writing to MarketWatch’s financial advice column, a woman in her sixties detailed how she was concerned about being unable to access Medicaid, a government health insurance programme in the United States, unless she sells off her assets. “It also goes against my principles to dispose of my assets just so the government will support me”, she said. As age and life experiences have left...