Free Republic

Michigan Democrats quietly introduced legislation last month that would legalize assisted suicide in the state. While the country was distracted by other issues, Democrats in Lansing rolled out a package of bills designed to create what they call a “Death with Dignity Act.” The name sounds so gentle and compassionate, yet it is anything but. According to the Midland Daily News, House Bills 5825 through 5828 seek to create a legal process to allow terminally ill patients to obtain medication from doctors that would kill them. The text of House Bill 5825 says it would “regulate physician assistance for patient-requested...

FRANKLY SPEAKING. By PAT FRANK. WASHINGTON| OF ALL the stories that have come out of Nazi Germany since the unhappy day that Hitler took power, the one that has caused more shivers to run up and down the spine of your correspondent was the news that the Nazis now practice euthanasia to eliminate from their super-state the ill and the aged. This practice isn’t directed against the Jews. It is directed against Hitler’s own people the last, of pure Aryan blood, and it is positive proof that when you deal with Hitler you must not regard him as a human...

A Catholic priest said that while seeking treatment for a hip injury at a Canadian hospital, medical workers twice offered him the option of assisted suicide, despite knowing that he was religiously and morally opposed to the practice. Fr. Larry Holland, 79, fractured his hip after falling in his bathroom on Christmas Day 2025 and subsequently went to Vancouver General Hospital to seek treatment for his injury, The B.C. Catholic, the official media outlet of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver, first reported. However, despite the priest’s assertion that his condition is not and never was fatal, he says a...

A small group in the House of Lords has proposed hundreds of amendments that are helping stymie a bill that was meant to legalize medically assisted death for the terminally ill. Six hundred and eighty-eight. That is the number of amendments that just seven members of Britain’s House of Lords have proposed to a bill that was meant to legalize assisted dying for the terminally ill. So many amendments have been lodged — more than 1,280 in total — that the bill now seems doomed to fail, in a rare example of the Lords, Parliament’s unelected second chamber, blocking a...

I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting on how good my life is right now. It’s been spring in Central Texas since February, and the program I teach at has had classes outside, like next to a turtle pond and a running creek. I‘ve found myself thinking of how wonderful it is to see the fish swimming in the stream, to see the turtles sunning themselves on the rocks, to feel the sun and the breeze on my face, to smell the Texas Mountain Laurel bushes with flowers that smell like grape candy, to have a job where I...

A Canadian woman who went to the emergency room with back pain said she was left shocked when a doctor immediately floated the suggestion of euthanasia. Miriam Lancaster, 84, was rushed to Vancouver General Hospital last April with a fractured sacrum, a break at the base of the spine relatively frequent in elderly people. Lancaster said she was stunned by the doctors' immediate suggestion upon examination. ‘I was approached by a young lady doctor whose very first words out of her mouth is we would like to offer you [euthanasia],’ Lancaster said in a video posted on X. The retired...

In what sane world does anyone allow a gang-rape victim be "euthanized" to end her pain and suffering as the criminals walk free?AdvertisementThis is really happening in Spain, where the sad case of 25-year-old Noeli Castillo Ramos is playing out, likely in the next hour at 6:00 p.m. in Barcelona. Some kind of "medical" "professional" will administer a lethal shot to put her down like a dog.According to the New York Post:AdvertisementA 25-year-old gang rape victim who was left paralyzed after a suicide attempt is scheduled to die by euthanasia after court officials overruled her father’s desperate last-ditch effort to...

Gavin Newsom is reflecting on the long-term grief he dealt with after witnessing his mother end her life through assisted death, also referred to as death with dignity. Newsom was a 34-year-old rising politician at the time and told the outlet that he felt guilty that his busy schedule kept him distant as his mom suffered from the disease. But when the day arrived, he and his sister Hilary were by Tessa’s side. “I hated her for it — to be there for the last breath — for years,” he said. “I want to say it was a beautiful experience....

“I’m the Prime Minister of Spain. This Is Why the West Needs Migrants,” Pedro Sanchez headlined his New York Times op-ed. “The West needs people. Currently, few of its countries have a rising population growth rate. Unless they embrace migration, they will experience a sharp demographic decline.” Spain’s demographic decline is helped along by the nearly 1,000 euthanasia cases a year. Those who die are replaced with the growing flood of Muslim championed by Sanchez. The West needs people, but only certain kinds of people, and it euthanizes the wrong kind. Spain’s population is set to shrink by one more...

A senior who went to Vancouver General Hospital for a diagnosis and treatment after experiencing sudden pain was offered euthanasia by a doctor – before the woman had even been asked what was wrong with her. “I am 84 years old, and a year ago, an amazing thing happened,” Miriam told Amanda Achtman, the founder of the Dying to Meet You Project. “When I got out of bed one morning, I was suddenly in excruciating pain, so much so that my daughter came running in from another room.” “She called an ambulance,” Miriam said. “Off I went to the Vancouver...

Canada is set to pass a grim milestone in its medically-assisted suicide program with a total of 100,000 citizens projected to be euthanized by the government before its 10th anniversary on June 17. The Great White North’s MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) program will soon cross the sickly six-figure threshold, according to The National Post. Ottawa’s most recent data shows 15,767 Canadians were euthanized by the state in 2024 — 5.1% of all deaths in the nation that year. Rachel Fournier, who has requested medical assistance in dying, looks out a window at a palliative care center. About 45 Canucks...

A family has accused Canada's laws of 'killing the disabled and vulnerable' months after their son, who suffered from seasonal depression, died by assisted suicide. Kiano Vafaeian, a 26-year-old blind man with Type 1 diabetes, died in December using Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program, which allows patients with 'grievous and irremediable' medical conditions to request a lethal drug. Eligibility was expanded in 2021 to include people with chronic illnesses, disabilities and, pending parliamentary review, potentially individuals with certain mental health conditions. Vafaeian faced mental health struggles stemming from a car accident at 17, and according to his mother,...

The grieving parents of a 26-year-old man are speaking out against Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) laws, arguing the system failed to protect their “vulnerable” son from being euthanized, despite a history of mental illness. Kiano Vafaeian was euthanized on Dec. 30, 2025, in British Columbia. His family says he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age four and began struggling with mental health after a car accident at 17. His mother, Margaret Marsilla of Ontario, said his depression was often seasonal, yet he became “obsessed” with MAID after losing vision in one eye in 2022.

A woman in Australia has become the first person in the world to have their organs harvested after ending their life by assisted suicide. Karen Duncan, from Victoria, Australia, ended her life by assisted suicide after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease in August 2024. It is reported that Ms Duncan began having conversations about ending her life by assisted suicide with her family and doctors shortly after her diagnosis. In Victoria, an individual can end their life by assisted suicide or euthanasia if they have been given a prognosis of 12 months. This follows a significant expansion of 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. 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....