Wesley J. Smith

The national elections, just completed, added five states that will be completely controlled by Democrats next year, i.e., legislature and governor. They are, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Every one of these is ripe for legalizing assisted suicide, as that policy is now part of the liberal/progressive issue agenda. Most have already seen serious efforts to legalize doctor-prescribed death — even when Republicans held some power. Indeed, the electorally late (defeated for reelection) Governor Joe Lombardo of Nevada vetoed a legalization bill a few years ago. Other states that are already governed by a so-called Democratic trifecta, but which have not yet legalized assisted suicide, are Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Efforts have been made to legalize assisted suicide in all Read More ›

Mainstream bioethics is left-wing politics by another name. Practitioners therefore often seek to expand the jurisdiction of the field to push their favored political agendas — for example, to issues of war and peace.

In the latest example of this tendency, an influential journal just published a piece of advocacy for transforming general practitioners into instruments of fighting climate change. Specifically, the authors of the article urges doctors to nag their patients into reducing their carbon emissions. First, the authors acknowledge that the primary role of general practitioners currently is to focus on the medical issues of each individual patient, not to promote societal reform:

The General Practitioner (GP) is expected to operate with a wide sphere of interest, exploring the wider determinants of health and illness in their patients. They may use a biopsychosocial approach that attempts to navigate the relationship between the individual, their wider social network, and psychological experiences [1]. Axiologically, however, GPs are still expected to primarily confine their scope of concern to the patient immediately in front of them; the professional role of the GP is hitherto considered as being to care for the patient as their ‘first concern’ [2], and only in rare cases should they subordinate that patient’s interests to wider concerns.

Many big shots in the bioethics community continue to argue against “medical conscience,” insisting that doctors should be forced to perform all requested legal medical procedures — even if it involves the taking of human life — that can produce the result the patient wants.

In the latest ani-conscience broadside, published in the professional journal Bioethics, two internationally known bioethicists, Julian Savulescu and Udo Schuklenk, take an almost absolutist position:

Our argument is that patients have a right to receive health care when four necessary conditions are satisfied (citations omitted):

1. The treatment is legal in that jurisdiction.
2. Providing the treatment is consistent with constraints of distributive justice.
3. The treatment is in the patient’s interests.
4. The patient autonomously desires the treatment.

The doctors define “patient’s interest” as a “benefit recognisable within accepted professional standards of benefit and harm.” Note carefully that these are often ideological, as opposed to medical, positions.

The highbrow Dear Abby of the New York Times — a.k.a. The Ethicist (who is a philosophy professor at NYU) — published an inquiry from a reader whose “difficult aunt” is pondering assisted suicide. The Ethicist’s response was rather namby-pamby. From his answer:

It would be kind to give her a call, explaining that her messages left you concerned and uncertain about her situation. (A decision to seek MAID is a far cry from obtaining it; eligibility is subject to a formal medical assessment.) You can ask whether she has spoken to her doctors about MAID and what they’ve told her. Just be careful about offering more than you can give. You don’t have to make yourself available for an extended or continuing conversation.

The “difficult aunt” aspect of the question deflected from the truly pressing moral issue that the inquiry presented. What if you are asked to support someone with whom you are close — a parent, spouse, child, sibling, cousin, friend — in his or her decision to commit assisted suicide. More anguishing, what if your loved one wants you to be there for it? What would you do?

Should “nature” be accorded enforceable human-type rights? Not too long ago, the very notion would have been laughed out of town.

But no one is chuckling now. Over the last decade, support for granting legal rights to nature has steadily seeped from the radical fringe into the establishment mainstream.

So what are we talking about?

The usual definition states that nature—which, when you think about it, is everything that exists—has “the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles” in evolution. That comes close to a right to life for all of flora and fauna, doesn’t it?

Such proposals are already being adopted at both national and local levels. Hence, Peruvian bees have been granted rights. A Canadian town recently granted “the right to life, to natural growth, to integrity and to regeneration”…for trees!

I am so used to ideologically extreme and transgressive articles published in science and other professional journals, that when one publishes commonsense commentary, I think it should be applauded. As most readers know, there is a great advocacy push underway to have AI declared to be — or soon to be — conscious and hence, entitled to “rights” as “persons.” (I have responded to this advocacy on several occasions.) Now, an article in Nature — written by three academics — strongly rebuts that blatant anthropomorphism. From “Three Reasons Why AI Is Not Conscious and Perhaps Never Will Be”: Between us, we’ve spent decades studying consciousness from diverse scientific perspectives: experimental neuroscience, theoretical neurobiology and philosophy of mind. On the basis of this work, we Read More ›

It’s hard to get beyond the World Health Organization’s woke, but an article in the New England Journal of Medicine manages that task. The question involves the definition of “infertility.” To the NEJM authors’ consternation, the WHO has embraced an objective, scientifically based approach to diagnosing the condition. From “Who Counts as Infertile: A Missed Opportunity” (citations omitted):

In 2017, the WHO collaborated with international reproductive-medicine groups on an edition of a glossary related to infertility and fertility care. That document defined infertility as “a disease characterized by the failure to establish a clinical pregnancy after 12 months of regular, unprotected sexual intercourse or due to an impairment of a person’s capacity to reproduce.” The WHO has emphasized the importance of equitable access to fertility care globally, but its formal definition of infertility continues to exclude same-sex couples and to rely on intercourse-based framing.

Infertility is a biological condition. The WHO’s approach seems a good way to identify the inability to have children without expensive tests.

I still marvel at people who think — even after decades of experience with these laws — that legalizing assisted suicide or euthanasia will remain limited to the few for whom nothing else can be done medically to prevent suffering. Not only is it not true, but it is never intended by euthanasia enthusiasts to be so constrained. Indeed, wherever killing as an answer to suffering is legalized, the numbers so dispatched continually rise, the guidelines expand, and euthanasia or suicide as a means of death becomes societally normalized. In Belgium, that pattern continues. The Belgian Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia just issued a press release about its published euthanasia statistics for 2024-2025. A few observations: The Read More ›

Some are celebrating Canada’s government “indefinitely suspending” legalizing euthanasia for mental illness as a great victory for life. Not me. Let me explain. Of course, I am gratified that mental illness will not become grounds for being killed in 2027 as was scheduled. But note: In announcing the suspension, the government mooted legislation likely to pass that would have permanently outlawed killing for mental illness. Moreover, “indefinite” can mean years — or a month. So, it’s not a matter of principle. But here’s the kicker. The government is now promoting euthanasia for people with dementia. From the Global News story: [Justice Minister Sean] Fraser also said the government will “grant access to medical assistance in dying to people who have Read More ›

Religious freedom is under assault throughout the West around what I call “do harm” medicine. With doctors now expected to abort babies, kill or mutilate sick patients, or administer harmful substances to gender dysphoric children, and otherwise toe a utilitarian, secular line in performing professional responsibilities, Hippocratic and pro-life medical professionals and institutions are imperiled.

A column in Canada’s Globe and Mail epitomizes the mindset. When a hospital run by nuns in Nova Scotia threw in the towel, the hospital was secularized. André Picard, the paper’s health columnist celebrated the closure and called for more. From, “It’s Well Past Time for Catholic Hospitals to be Secularized”:

One hundred and twenty-nine of Canada’s 1,087 hospitals are Catholic. Most refuse to perform medical assistance in dying, abortion, tubal ligation, hysterectomy, vasectomy, gender-affirming care, or provide birth control to patients, with some even denying the morning-after pill to victims of sexual assault. There are exceptions, such as cancer-related surgery that affects the reproductive system, and workarounds like bringing in “visiting” nurses to administer meds, or building MAID clinics next door.

Many long-term care homes with religious affiliations also refuse to allow MAID on their premises. These policies are offensive — and likely unconstitutional (court challenges are underway) — and particularly problematic in smaller communities like Antigonish where there is a single hospital or care home.