By Wesley J. Smith Keaton Crull, a three-month-old baby from Indiana being treated in Kentucky, is about to be removed from life support over his parents’ objections. That’s because they no longer have a say. Their parental rights over his medical decisions were stripped–-and it looks like that drastic step might have been taken because …
Continue reading "Baby’s Parents Refuse to End Life Support, Lose Custody to State"
By Wesley J. Smith These days, even that boundary line is growing more blurry — particularly in countries that have fully swallowed the euthanasia hemlock — which is why a new study published in Population Health is cause for alarm. It appears to be an early gambit to remove the medical requirement from the Dutch …
Continue reading "Ground Being Prepared for Death on Demand in the Netherlands"
By Wesley J. Smith Belgium has no age limit for its euthanasia. Now, a letter published in a British Medical Journal publication reports that 10 percent of babies who died from 2016 to 2017 in Flanders — up to age one — were given drugs by their own doctors with “an explicit life-shortening intention.” In …
Continue reading "Doctors Kill 10 Percent of All Babies Who Die in Flanders"
By Wesley J. Smith CNN has published an important story in which a former Chinese policeman describes in vivid, first-person terms, how he systematically tortured Uyghurs to garner false confessions. He was told when assigned to the crackdown that he was arresting terrorists. But he soon learned they were just ordinary people living routine lives disapproved …
Continue reading "More Evidence of China’s Brutal Program against Uyghurs"
By Wesley J. Smith Once killing is defined as an acceptable response to suffering, there are few natural stopping points in the steady expansion of legalized euthanasia or assisted suicide. Requiring a diagnosed medical condition still retains some heft. But it isn’t logical, since the ultimate issue is suffering, not its causes. These days, even that boundary …
Continue reading "Ground Being Prepared for Death on Demand in the Netherlands"
By Wesley J. Smith Thursday was World Suicide Prevention Day. You didn’t hear about it? If so, that’s pretty typical, which is why I call this annual event, “Invisible Suicide Prevention Day.” Once again, the obligatory official proclamations didn’t mention that suicide is now promoted widely in the media, popular culture, and by political activists seeking to legalize …
Continue reading "Biden’s Suicide Prevention Day Proclamation Fails to Repudiate Assisted Suicide"
By Wesley J. Smith President Joe Biden made an irrational statement the other day about when human life begins, saying at a press conference: I respect those who believe life begins at the moment of conception. I don’t agree, but I respect that. I’m not going to impose that on people. Except this is not …
Continue reading "When Human Life Begins Is Not a Matter of ‘Belief’"
By Wesley J. Smith Please understand, dear readers, that when assisted-suicide advocates promise strict guidelines to protect against abuse, they don’t really mean it. The promise’s purpose is to get the law passed, not to be kept. Once facilitated suicide–or in the case of euthanasia, homicide–is firmly ensconced in public policy, the guidelines go by the …
Continue reading "Why the Hawaii Health Department Wants Looser Assisted-Suicide Rules"
By Wesley J. Smith We have entered the era of what I call “do harm medicine,” in which the concept of what constitutes harming the patient has become entirely malleable and subjective. I even wrote a book covering that subject. Here’s an example: When organ transplant medicine began, the “dead donor rule” was instituted to assure a wary …
Continue reading "Bioethicist: Let Doctors Kill the Healthy by Harvesting Organs"
By Wesley J. Smith Readers may recall the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans cases from the U.K. — in which doctors both wanted to remove life support and prevent the children from being transferred to other hospitals willing to continue care. Because the law in the U.K. permits courts to decide the “best interests” of children in medical extremis, the MDs got their way. …
Continue reading "Brit Baby’s Death Ruled Better Than Small Chance of Living — Again"
By Wesley J. Smith Pope John Paul II once famously described Western society as a “culture of death.” But what does that term mean? It refers to a civilization that endorses lethal omissions and even outright killing by doctors to alleviate suffering or resolve life crises. “Culture of death” is most often applied in the …
Continue reading "Three culture of death tipping points"
By Wesley J. Smith As I have warned here before, euthanasia activists are pushing for laws that permit people to write advance directives ordering themselves starved to death if they become mentally incapacitated. That effort is apparently gaining steam. The assisted suicide supporting organization Final Exit Network published a poll that supposedly found only 15 percent of …
Continue reading "Activists seek to force caregivers to starve their patients to death or be at risk of lawsuits for “wrongful life”"