By Wesley J. Smith Remember when we were told that assisted suicide would only be engaged in as part of an intimate and long-term physician/patient relationship? Of course, the laws never required that. And now, Vermont has legalized assisted suicide by Zoom or Skype. The new law also eliminates the previous requirement that the doctor …
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By Wesley J. Smith And another “strict guideline to prevent abuse” bites the proverbial dust. Oregon has just eradicated the requirement — always weak, as Brittany Maynard proved by just moving there — that a patient accessing assisted suicide be a resident of the state. From the AP story: Oregon will no longer require people to be …
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By Wesley J. Smith China has been reliably and repeatedly accused of killing Falun Gong and other political prisoners for their organs. Now, a paper just published in the American Journal of Transplantation — one of the world’s most respected medical journals — lays out a convincing case that Chinese doctors are not only harvesting from executed prisoners, …
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By Wesley J. Smith A little while ago I highlighted a shocking Maryland bill that would essentially decriminalize neglecting an infant to death in the “perinatal” period — i.e., through the first 28 days after birth — by preventing investigations and prosecution of such deaths that resulted from “a failure to act.” I was interviewed on several talk-radio …
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By Wesley J. Smith It’s often said that no right is absolute. But according to the World Health Organization (WHO), that maxim doesn’t apply to abortion. Its newly published “Abortion Care Guideline” is the most radically pro-abortion official document ever published (pdf). Indeed, in recommending abortion public policies for all the world’s nations to adopt, …
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By Wesley J. Smith There can no longer be any doubt: The international public-health establishment has gone absolutist on allowing abortion at any time, for any reason, without restrictions of any kind. Specifically, the WHO has issued new guidelines that demand countries legalize abortion without any gestational time limit. From the Daily Mail story: New …
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By Wesley J. Smith Repeat after me: Assisted-suicide legalization eventually leads to death on demand. Oh, you doubt me? That is already the law in Germany thanks to a court ruling creating a constitutional right to a “self determined death,” with help from anyone, at any time, and for any reason. Now a suicide clinic …
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By Wesley J. Smith Back when embryonic-stem-cell and other types of experimentation on early embryos commenced, “the scientists” promised they would always limit their activities to embryos in Petri dishes to the maximum of 14 days in development. Just a collection of undifferentiated cells, they sophistically maintained. We’ll stop when the nervous system begins to …
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By Wesley J. Smith Remember when former Virginia governor Ralph Northam blessed the right of a mother and her doctor to “have a conversation” and decide to neglect a newborn survivor of abortion to death? Well, now, a Maryland bill would effectively decriminalize Northam’s immoral proposal without regard to abortion. First, it reiterates current law …
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By Wesley J. Smith The core problem with contemporary bioethics is that the movement denies human exceptionalism. In this view, being human is morally irrelevant. What matters are capacities, such as the ability to value one’s life, which make one a “person.” Under personhood theory, there is such a thing as a human non-person and …
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By Wesley J. Smith One of the more paradoxical claims by assisted-suicide promoters is that legalization will reduce “premature” deaths because seriously ill people who might otherwise end it all sooner will instead wait because release is available readily when they need it. I am not saying that never happens, but I have long believed …
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By Wesley J. Smith The push is now on to allow assisted suicide for psychiatric patients. The Journal of Eating Disorders has published a piece urging that psychiatrists be allowed to assist the suicides of patients afflicted with anorexia who want to die rather than continue to struggle against their mental illness. Think about this. …
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