Marie Smith, wife of Congressman Chris Smith, runs a remarkable organization, the Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues (PNCI). PNCI coordinates efforts among members of democratically-elected legislatures – collectively known as parliamentarians – to advance respect for the inherent value, worth, and inviolable dignity of every human being from fertilization until natural death. The PNCI website […]
Category: International
Wesley Smith notes the increased acceptance of coupling euthanasia with organ harvesting in his July 4 Weekly Standard article. He notes that Julian Savulescu, a Romanian born Oxford bioethicist, supported this trend in a scholarly paper published in Bioethics. Wesley notes that Belgian doctors and bioethicists have been promoting the idea since at least 2008, […]
Here is a link to the Life News story on the Rasouli case that will be heard by a Canadian court next month. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/19/canada-supreme-court-to-hear-key-euthanasia-case-in-may/ The Rasouli case involves an important issue concerning whether doctors need consent before withdrawing life sustaining medical treatment. Richard M.
That’s the report on Wesley Smith’s blog. See http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2011/03/31/culture-of-death-elderly-belgian-couple-euthanized-together/ Smith asks: “Why is anyone surprised? Once we accept killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering, there are no brakes. Belgium is merely jumping the most enthusiastically off the vertical moral cliff.” Richard M.
On the European Life Network blog, Pat Buckley has an interesting post about a case in India that raises some of the same issues presented in the Terri Schiavo case. http://europeanlifenetwork.blogspot.com/2011/02/could-this-be-indias-terry-schiavo-case.html The case involves Aruna Shanbaug who has been seriously disabled since 1973. One interesting twist is that the effort to have Ms. Shanbaug’s feeding halted comes from a […]
Here is a link to a press release from the European Centre for Law and Justice on a recent decision from the European Court of Human Rights on assisted suicide. http://www.eclj.org/Releases/Read.aspx?GUID=f47f9a82-9459-4a51-9c4d-eb3db0ff3cf3&s=eur The decision rejected the claim of a man who claimed a right to obtain a lethal drug without a prescription, as Swiss law requires. Here is the […]
I think there is a perception that the issue of assisted suicide has receded in importance. The issue does not seem to have the high profile it did in the mid-1990s when Jack Kevorkian was on the loose and when it appeared that the US Supreme Court might create a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide. But […]