Disability rights activists are indomitable opponents of legalizing assisted suicide and an essential constituency in the diverse and broad-based coalition that opposes the death agenda. Now, a new DR organization has been founded to fight against the pending Massachusetts initiative that could bring legalized assisted suicide to the Bay State. From the press release:
“Disability rights activists from across Massachusetts will speak today before the Massachusetts legislature’s joint Judiciary Committee in opposition to a ballot question that would legalize assisted suicide. The activists are members of the recently formed group, Second Thoughts: People with Disabilities Opposing the Legalization of Assisted Suicide…“ Second Thoughts is a group of disability rights activists and organizations who believe that assisted suicide is a dangerous mix with a broken, profit driven health care system,” said John Kelly, the group’s director.
“Economic and family pressures can make elderly and disabled people feel like they’re a burden,” said member Karen Schneiderman. “Under those conditions, how can a choice to commit suicide be considered a free choice?” Schneiderman said that “I don’t believe that Massachusetts voters want to pass a law that discriminates against old, ill and disabled people by singling them out for assisted suicide, while young, healthy people get suicide prevention services.” Kelly stresses that the proposed law lacks safeguards to protect elders and other vulnerable populations from abuse. “An heir can help make the request, sign as a witness and pick up the prescription. Once the lethal drug is in the home, no one will know if it’s taken voluntarily. If the person changed their mind, if they struggled, who would know?”
Three WRTL-backed bills will receive a vote in the State Assembly on Tuesday, March 13, the last day of this legislative session. All bills were previously passed by the State Senate. They are:
AB 154/SB 92: This legislation allows Wisconsin to opt-out of taxpayer-funded abortion coverage under ObamaCare. Wisconsin would join 14 other states that have opted-out of this coverage.
AB 371/SB 306: This legislation works to protect women from coerced abortions and to prohibit unsafe RU 486 chemical web cam abortions.
AB 337/SB 237: This legislation reinstates local control for sex education curriculum in public schools and allows abstinence-only programs.
Wisconsin Right to Life has been the lead organization for the first two measures by providing the following: educating legislators, recruiting testimony for public hearings, assembling exhaustive research, pushing for scheduling of the bills, and coordinating grassroots contact with legislators. We thank the Wisconsin Catholic Conference and Wisconsin Family Action for supporting these bills.
Wisconsin Family Action has taken the lead on the last bill which Wisconsin Right to Life strongly supports.
Governor Scott Walker is expected to sign these measures into law. Enactment of these laws will complete an ambitious and hugely successful legislative session with new public policy in place designed to protect taxpayers, women, families and unborn children.
The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). It even sounds off-putting. Most people are unaware that the ObamaCare law sets up IPAB, a committee of 15 unelected people appointed by the President, and gives it the authority to literally make life and death decisions for all of us. IPAB can impose “quality” and “efficiency” measures on health care providers and disqualify providers from contracting with health insurance plans that individual Americans will be required to purchase. The impact on you? You could be denied life-saving treatment, even if you want to pay for it.
The good news is that the IPAB faces widespread criticism as a rationing agent and is disfavored by a growing number of members of Congress. Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee voted 17-5 in favor of H.R. 452, The Medicare Decisions Accountability Act, legislation which repeals the IPAB. Yesterday, the full House Energy and Commerce Committee approved H.R. 452 by a voice vote. This moves H.R. 452 closer to a vote by the full House of Representatives. Many are concerned about the IPAB’s ability to cut Medicare with limited congressional oversight, but the rationing power IPAB would have to deny life-saving care to people who want to pay for it adds another layer of gravity.
The full House is likely to approve H.R. 452, but the bill faces an uncertain future in the U.S. Senate and could face a presidential veto. Nonetheless, the House is taking an important first step to rid our country of this dreaded board.
Two Australian-based bioethicists have written an article published by the British Medical Journal group arguing that there is no difference between killing a newborn and aborting a baby in the womb. “We claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be,” write the authors. Their logic is unassailable, but also chilling, for they are essentially making the case for infanticide. Or, perhaps, unwittingly, the case against abortion.
The title of the article — “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” has sparked debate and outrage across the world. Dr. Francesca Minerva now claims the article was “a theoretical and academic article,” and that she does not favor infanticide.
The opening paragraph by Minerva and her colleague, Alberto Giubilini, reads as follows:
“Severe abnormalities of the fetus and risks for the physical and/or psychological health of the woman are often cited as valid reasons for abortion. Sometimes the two reasons are connected, such as when a woman claims that a disabled child would represent a risk to her mental health. However, having a child can itself be an unbearable burden for the psychological health of the woman or for her already existing children, regardless of the condition of the fetus. This could happen in the case of a woman who loses her partner after she finds out that she is pregnant and therefore feels she will not be able to take care of the possible child by herself.”
Note that a child without a disability would fit into this criteria.
What do the authors say about adoption?
“We also need to consider the interests of the mother who might suffer psychological distress from giving her child up for adoption,” they write. “It is true that grief and sense of loss may accompany both abortion and after-birth abortion [infanticide] as well as adoption, but we cannot assume that for the birthmother the latter is the least traumatic.”
Killing newborns is already occurring in the Netherlands under a protocol developed by a prestigious hospital. Here are two infamous American examples of how extreme dedication to abortion can lead to support for infanticide:
When the federal partial-birth abortion ban was being debated in the U.S. Senate in the 1990s, then Senator Rick Santorum asked then Senator Russ Feingold what should happen if the baby slipped out of the womb and was born before being killed. Feingold replied that it was still a decision between the woman and her doctor.
Then Illinois Senator Barack Obama did everything possible to bottle up a bill which would require that infants who survive abortion attempts be treated like any other infant born alive. He also voted against the legislation. In other words, if the expected desire was a dead baby, then that’s what the result should be.
The after-birth abortion article will likely get fairly short-shrift at this time. But, it raises provocative thoughts about the fragile link between abortion and infanticide.
It is always shocking when a death occurs unexpectedly, especially when the person is young. So it is with the death yesterday of 43-year-old Andrew Breitbart. I didn’t know him or much about him. To all who did know him, he was universally recognized as a powerful spokesperson and activist for the causes he held dear.
In a video filmed just a few weeks ago, Breitbart spoke to Students for Life and revealed that he was adopted. As was his sister and four other children he grew up with in his neighborhood. He didn’t think much about the abortion issue, because to gain status in Hollywood where he lived, you had to be “pro-choice.” Eventually, he was influenced certainly by his adoptive status and, as he states in the video, by the pro-life movement, especially young people, and came to embrace a pro-life viewpoint.
The world has lost two famous people recently who had a significant impact in the world — Andrew Breitbart and Steve Jobs. Both were adopted. While Breitbart eventually understood how his life as an unborn child could have been destroyed, it apparently was not so with Jobs. Regardless of their viewpoints, both deserved the opportunity to fulfill the life and destiny given to them. And their mothers gave it to them.
RIP, Andrew. We are proud and honored to know of your story and your devotion to life.
The U.S. Senate voted yesterday 51-48 to support the Obama Administration in forcing religiously affiliated organizations to cover contraception and sterilization in their health insurance plans, even in cases where the institution opposes it on moral or conscience grounds. This reinforces that these organizations have no conscience clause protections under the ObamaCare health care law. (The Administration’s dictate gave churches some limited conscience clause protections, but religiously affiliated organizations, such as church schools, hospitals, and charities, will have none).
Fifty Democrats and one Republican voted to deny conscience rights and 45 Republicans and three Democrats voted in favor of recognizing the conscience rights of such organizations. For Wisconsin, Senator Johnson voted for conscience rights and Senator Kohl against.
One possible effect of this in the near-term is that with no conscience clause protection, the Obama Administration is now free to order insurance plans to also cover abortion itself, if it decides to do so. If Obama does this, it would likely be after the November elections when he doesn’t have to answer to the voting public again.
The National Right to Life Committee and Wisconsin Right to Life have long advocated against the Obama healthcare “reform” and continue to work to repeal it. We will continue to report abuses inherent in the law, and any denials of care that ensue from it, and we will fight bureaucracies and panels that arise from the bill whose purpose it is to expand abortion or to deny life-saving medical care. We will work in the House of Representatives and in the courts to establish conscience rights. We cannot allow this unprecedented affront to religious liberty stand and the sweeping ObamaCare law to remain in force.
Your support for these efforts is critical in the weeks and months ahead. Much education and public persuasion needs to be done if we are to repeal ObamaCare and preserve the lives it threatens, and to establish conscience rights. Please support the critical work of National Right to Life and Wisconsin Right to Life with a generous gift today, and please help spread the word about the abuses of ObamaCare and the need to repeal it!
National Right to Life and Wisconsin Right to Life
According to Jared Yee, in an article published by Mercatornet.com, there has been a rapid rise in assisted suicide deaths in Switzerland in 2011 facilitated by the Swiss assisted suicide groups Dignitas and Exit.
“The number of people who died by assisted suicide in Switzerland by assisted-suicide organisations rose significantly in 2011, new figures show. Exit, which assists the suicides of Swiss residents only, announced that it assisted the suicide of 416 people last year up from 348 the previous year. Of those deaths, 305 occurred in the German-speaking region, up from 257 in 2010, and 111 occurred in the French-speaking areas, up from 91 in the previous year. The organisation also saw a boom in new memberships. It now has 75,000. In 2011, Dignitas, Switzerland’s other major assisted-suicide organisation, assisted the suicide of 144 people, a 35% increase as reported by the Sonntag Zeitung.”
Dignitas specializes in assisting the deaths of people who travel from other countries, a practice fondly called “suicide tourism.” Because many of those assisted come from the UK, “suicide tourism” has sparked intense debate in England about legalizing in that country so people do not have to travel to Switzerland. “Suicide tourism” has also generated significant debate within Switzerland and in other parts of Europe.
A vote is expected this week on the Blunt amendment in the U.S. Senate to establish conscience rights and overturn the Obama mandate on birth control, morning after pill and sterilization which is an unprecedented and outrageous attack on religious liberty. What President Obama has managed to do is unite a wide swath of religions across the country in opposition. Religious leaders are keenly aware that today’s assault on Catholics is tomorrow’s assault on them.
Here is a sampling of comments by a variety of religious leaders:
Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, President, The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod: “…we believe and teach that freedom of religion extends beyond mere houses of worship. We must be able to exercise our faith in the public square….We deem this recent government mandate as an infringement upon the beliefs and practices of various religious communities…..this mandate will have the effect of forcing many religious organizations to choose between following the letter of the law or operating within the framework of their religious tenets.”
Rev. Mark G. Schroeder, President, Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod: “We also encourage our members, as many others in various denominations and church bodies have done, to recognize and speak out against this clear threat to the blessing of religious liberty American citizens have enjoyed since the founding of the nation. We also confess and affirm that if the government directs us to do something in clear violation of the will of God, we must obey God rather than men.”
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, Yeshiva University: “In refusing to extend religious liberty beyond the parameters of what the administration chooses to deem religious conduct, the administration denies people of faith the ability to define their religious activity. Therefore, not only does the new regulation threaten religious liberty in the narrow sense…..but also the administration impedes religious liberty by unilaterally redefining what it means to be religious.”
Dr. Craig Mitchell, Associate Director of the Richard Land Center for Cultural Engagement, Southwester Baptist Theological Seminary: “When Thomas Jefferson talked about a wall of separation between church and state, he was opposing persecution of people for their beliefs, but that is exactly what this mandate does…..If the purpose of government is to serve its people, then this rule is wrong.”
Dr. Samuel W. Oliver, President,East Texas Baptist University: “If the government is allowed to go down this road, where will it end? ….Today, the Administration is trying to force us to provide our employees with abortion causing drugs….If the government can force Catholic monks to dispense birth control, what can’t it do? If the government can decide that East Texas Baptist University is not religious enough to have the right to religious liberty, what can’t it do? If this administration can just decide that religious beliefs are less important than its chosen policy goals, what can’t it do? These questions are frightening. And that is why religious organizations and people of will from all across the spectrum are joining together out of concern that this mandate threatens to erode one of our most precious rights, our religious liberty, guaranteed to us by the First Amendment.”
The slippery slope in The Netherlands has become a free-fall where “guidelines,” sold as safeguards for patients (wink, wink), are nothing more than a green light to make more people eligible for euthanasia or doctor-prescribed suicide. The stories are endless — just in the past few weeks, news reports reveal that at the beginning of March, mobile euthanasia units will roam the country looking for patients seeking euthanasia. The British Medical Journal (9/17/11) reports that in 2010, there were 3,136 euthanasia deaths, a 19% increase over the 2009 total of 2,636.
According to Wesley J. Smith (as reported in the most recent newsletter of the Patients Rights Council), “Dutch doctors have gone from euthanizing the terminally ill to the chronically ill, to people with serious disabilities, to those who are emotionally and mentally ill, as well as infants born with serious disabilities.” Just last week, this blog featured Smith’s writings on a report that a woman with macular degeneration was euthanized.
Also according to the Patients Rights Council: “In 2010, 21 early-stage dementia patients were euthanized by lethal injection, calling into question their ability to make an informed choice and voluntarily request death. Also in 2010, the life of a 64-year-old woman with severe, late-stage Alzheimer’s was terminated even though she was unquestionably incapable of asking for death. The Dutch Medical Association argued that patients ‘in early (or late) stages of dementia…. have equal recourse’ under the euthanasia law. [British Medical Journal, 11/21/11)”
But, even this isn’t enough. Groups in The Netherlands are fighting to legalize euthanasia (what they call “dying assistance”) for those 70 and older for reasons of “humanity.”
Yet, proponents of euthanasia somehow claim there is no slippery slope. Perhaps they are right, since the slope is clearly in free-fall, with no person or condition “safe” from those who advocate death.
Cases justifying euthanasia are spreading like wildfire in the Netherlands, to the point that visual impairment can become the primary reason to kill. The latest report from the Netherlands describes an elderly woman who was euthanized over macular degeneration and other often experienced symptoms of being elderly. From the Regional Committee’s Annual Report 2010:
“The patient, a woman in her eighties, could no longer do the things that made life worthwhile to her. She lived on her own. She had always enjoyed intellectual challenges in her life, she used the computer and email and she liked reading, philosophising, debating, politics, art and so on. She had always been very independent and had considered this her greatest asset.
“Physically, however, she was deteriorating. In recent years her vision had got worse owing to macular degeneration, she suffered from dizziness, her hearing was poor and she sometimes had faecal incontinence. At first she had tried to find all kinds of ways to cope with her limitations, but these had not proved sufficient for her to perceive her life as worthwhile. She felt trapped in her deteriorating body. Her present situation was due to her advancing age, and little or nothing could be done about it. She felt her life had lost all meaning. However, her mind was still active, and she thirsted for information. The possibility of withholding food and fluids had been discussed, but this would involve a period of dependence. The patient considered this the most dreadful thing that could happen to her, and she rejected this alternative. She considered it a blessing that she could end her life with the help of euthanasia and would not have to become dependent. The unbearable nature of her suffering was due to her loss of the ability to live a meaningful life.”
These are certainly not remarkable symptoms in old age. Indeed, once can certainly understand why they would cause distress. But often these depressions in the elderly are treatable with proper geriatric psychiatric interventions. But there was no indication whatsoever that treatment by a geriatric psychiatrist–who might also have killed her, now that I think of it-–was even attempted:
“The psychiatrist, the first independent physician to be consulted, noted that despite the patient’s poor hearing he was able to interview her successfully. She was lucid and was well oriented to time, place and person. The interview did not reveal any memory problems. The patient was coherent and responded appropriately to questions. She was able to explain why her disabilities (deafness, impaired vision and dizziness) prevented her from living her life as she had always done….According to the second independent physician’s report, the patient wanted to end her life (or have it ended) because she was suffering from being alive.
Isn’t that true of every suicidal person? And this is a real indictment of Dutch medical “ethics:”
“The committee must therefore decide whether the patient’s suffering was caused by a medically recognised condition. In this connection it notes that, under the existing due care criteria, suffering that is unbearable with no prospect of improvement must be largely due to a medically recognised condition. However, there is no requirement that this should be a serious condition…The committee noted that macular degeneration is a medically recognised condition. There is no effective treatment for it, or any prospect of improvement. What this means is that this case is not a ‘finished with life’ situation as defined above, and that the physician’s actions lay within the medical field…The committee found that the physician acted in accordance with the statutory due care criteria.”
Good grief. Culture of death, Wesley? What culture of death?
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