More slippery slopes

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/politics/assisted-suicide-bill-may-be-at-odds-with-human-rights-legislation-says-law-society-of-scotland-1.784324

Scotland's Faculty of Advocates said more clarity was needed when it came to defining “life-shortening” illnesses, pointing out common conditions such as Type 2 diabetes and hepatitis could fall into this definition.
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Margaret Somerville

"To legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia is not an incremental change.  It's a seismic and radical change in one of the most important values on which our society and civilization is founded, respect for human life and its protection."

Margaret Somerville,
Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill
Globe and Mail October 15 2014

Third Force News Scotland

10th January 2015 by CG Ross

I absolutely oppose this Bill. Suicide is wrong, because it is a refusal to accept our own humanity, which itself is defined by our kinship with God. All of us and our lives have value precisely because we are children of God. This is where our dignity comes from, not from some perception of independence and control, which are only apparent and not real anyway. My own mother was almost euthanized by default, all that was required was to rehydrate her properly, which thankfully did happen. This gave her four more years of life, and although frail and bedridden, these were good years for her and for us. Pain and death, when it comes is to be accepted, are to be accepted with courage-this also lends to our dignity, but does not define it. What we must also look to, as well as throwing out this Bill, (yet again in Scotland) is support for people who otherwise might be tempted into suicide, either through ill health, frailty or depression and loneliness. This very support would be undermined by such a Bill. Not only is this morally wrong, it is extremely dangerous

Read more at http://thirdforcenews.org.uk/health-and-social-care/polls/tfn-poll-should-assisted-suicide-be-made-legal#17AqiB8iSffBkEHb.99

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Christmas 2014

Christmas 2014 with Owen, Perry's and Randy's doggie.

picture posted by a friend of Randy's ...

Finally, a legal challenge.

Mortier Challenges the law

January 02, 2015

By Alex Schadenberg. International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

Tom Mortier, a chemistry professor, who lost his depressed mother, Godelieva De Troyer, to euthanasia in April 2012, has challenged the Belgian euthanasia law and the doctor who lethally injected his mother by launching a legal challenge at the European Court of Human Rights.

An article written by Kelsey Harkness and published in the Daily Signal concerns Mortier's case.

Harkness defines the Belgian euthanasia experience by explaining how it has expanded over time. She writes:

Although euthanasia laws originally were designed with terminally ill patients in mind, they have evolved to include persons with mental illness or physical disabilities, those who didn’t or couldn’t consent, and even children. 

In Belgium, where it is now legal for terminally ill children who are in great pain and have parental consent to end their lives, euthanasia results in about one in every 50 deaths.

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Slippery Slope...soon to happen here

Depressed woman dies by euthanasia in Belgium.

Professor Tom Mortier

This article was written by Tom Mortier and published on February 4, 2013 by Mercator.net under the title: How my mother died.

A mentally-ill Belgian woman sought euthanasia to escape her problems. The doctors told her, sure, why not?

How my mother died

Since 2002 a law was passed in Belgium that allowed people to be euthanised when they were suffering intractable and unbearable pain. Today euthanasia is more often granted to people suffering from mental illnesses like chronic depression, schizophrenia, chronic anorexia nervosa and borderline personality disorder, etc.

The law requires that a patient’s free decision has to be established before medical doctors can give the lethal injections.

My mother suffered from chronic depression. Two years ago she broke off all contact with me. In April 2012 she was euthanased at the hospital of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (the Free University of Brussels).

I was not involved in the decision-making process and the doctor who gave her the injection never contacted me.

Since then, my life has changed considerably. Up until now, I am still trying to understand how it is possible for euthanasia to be performed on physically healthy people without even contacting their children. The spokesman of the university hospital told me that everything happened according to my mother’s “free choice”. After my mother’s death, I talked to the doctor who gave her the injection and he told me that he was “absolutely certain” my mother didn’t want to live anymore.

The death of my mother has triggered a lot of questions. How is it possible that people can be euthanised in Belgium without close family or friends being contacted? Why does my country give medical doctors the exclusive power to decide over life and death? How do we judge what “unbearable suffering” is? What are the criteria to decide what “unbearable suffering” is? Can we rely on such a judgment for a mentally ill person?

After all, can a mentally ill person make a “free choice”? Why didn’t the doctors try to arrange a meeting between our mother and her children? How can a medical doctor be “absolutely certain” that his/her patient doesn’t want to live anymore? Why can’t we bear to see people suffering?

Some doctors at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel believe that euthanasia should be offered to anyone who wishes to end his/her life because of unbearable and meaningless suffering. All objections and restraints from the community are regarded as immoral and unjustifiable. These doctors are nowadays even discussing euthanasia for people suffering from autism and youngsters who are suicidal.

What scares me is that these doctors also seem to be controlling the Belgium media. Is this the society we want to evolve to? Are we going to control suicides in the nearby future by putting people out of their misery before they can do it themselves -- instead of investing in mental health and palliative care?

I believe that the appeal to “free choice” is becoming a dogma of convenience. We are rapidly changing into a society of absolute loneliness where we don’t want to take care of each other any more. And when we suffer, we ask our doctors to kill us, breaking fundamental biological and human laws. However, by doing this, we create new and insoluble problems.

Therefore, we really should rethink what we believe in. 

Is it life or is it death?

Tom Mortier PhD lectures in chemistry at Leuven University College. This article was written with the assistance of Dr Steven Bieseman and Professor Emeritus Herman De Dijn. It was originally published in the Belgian medical journal Artsenkrant.

Excepts from Stealth Euthanasia.(1)

A paragraph from Ron Panzer's 2013 online book, Stealth Euthanasia:

You may be surprised but today, many people have adopted the "quality of life" ethic where it's "ok" to end someone's life because they are seriously disabled, very elderly, have dementia or any number of other reasons.
  
Many of us have become numb to the killings so that we accept an increasingly larger category of lies that may be ended in a medical setting.

And many times, we don't call them "killings. "  We say, "We let him go."  "It was time." and to "let go" is certainly appropriate when someone is truly at the end of life, but when someone is not imminently dying and they end up dead, it really is a "medical killing."