Here is a link to a post by Wesley Smith discussing the efforts of disability rights organizations to oppose the assisted suicide initiative in Massachusetts. Smith notes: “Media like to portray assisted suicide opponents as primarily religious or pro life. But the facts don’t fit that supposed story. Disability rights advocates–who are mostly politically liberal [...]
Here is a link to Wesley Smith’s insighful commentary on the recently issued report in the UK from the Commission on Assisted Dying. http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2012/01/04/uk-pro-assisted-suicide-report-pushes-a-pentimento/ Smith concludes that this report is further evidence that England “is undergoing a tragic slow motion moral collapse.” Richard M.
Legalized PAS and the Werther Effect Evidence suggests that legalized PAS will result in a greater number of suicides more generally (and not simply amongst the population who opt for legalized PAS). We will have great difficulty, on the one hand, giving our and medicine’s approval to suicide as the solution to complex problems at [...]
SSRN has posted a new article, Justins v. the Queen: Assisted Suicide, Juries and the Discretion to Prosecute examining an Australian case and arguing that prosecutors should very rarely charge defendants in cases of assisted suicide. The author notes that the British Crown Prosecution Service has developed guidelines for prosecutors regarding such charges. The guidelines [...]
SSRN lists a new article entitled “The Sociology of Suicide.” The authors’ abstract describes the paper: Since Durkheim’s classic work on suicide, sociological attention to understanding the roots of self-destruction has been inconsistent. In this review, we use three historical periods of interest (pre-Durkheim, Durkheim, post-Durkheim) to organize basic findings in the body of sociological [...]
