Wesley J. Smith

The Illinois Legislature has just passed an assisted suicide legalization bill, tying a black bow along with New York’s legalization bill passed a few months ago. Both measures still await signing by the states’ respective governors, which I fear is quite likely as the death agenda is firmly ensconced in blue state liberal/progressive policy on assisted suicide.

Should the bills get signed into law, more people will live in jurisdictions (including three of our most populous: California, New York, and Illinois) that validate some suicides and allow doctors to facilitate such deaths than live in states where assisted suicide remains illegal.

The states are nationalizing assisted suicide as well. New York’s bill has no residency requirement. Vermont and Oregon did away with theirs. And the Illinois bill’s residency requirement is so weak that one could become a resident in a day by, say, renting an apartment and registering to vote.

Assisted suicide is not yet legal in Scotland — I have traveled there three times to fight that agenda — but it is a looming threat again. And now, an amendment to the legalization bill has been proposed that would prohibit prevention efforts at or near places where suicidal people’s lives would be ended. From the ADF International press release: A Scottish parliamentarian and member of the Health Committee, Patrick Harvie MSP, has proposed an amendment to Scotland’s controversial “assisted suicide” bill that would criminalise discussion of suicide prevention within a large, undefined public area surrounding any building where an assisted suicide might take place. The vague proposal would forbid any attempts to “influence” a person’s decision to undergo an Read More ›

A Green member of the House of Lords plans to introduce “nature rights” legislation. Not only would — basically everything — have rights, but these supposed liberties could be enforced against “individuals.” The authoritarian possibilities are unquantifiable.

First, “nature’s” definition is so broad it includes just about everything in existence. From Draft 8 of the Nature Rights Act of 2025:

“Nature” means the interconnected community of living organisms, ecosystems, geological processes, and natural cycles, including all species, habitats, landscapes, waters, soils, the atmosphere, and the evolutionary and regenerative dynamics of life on Earth.

Anything in the world missing from that definition? Not that I can see. Thus, everything on earth — including the air — would be deemed a “legal person.” And notice that “nature” is personalized with a capital N:

Recognition of Nature as a Legal Person:
a. Nature is recognised as a legal person and subject of law.
b. The rights of Nature established by this Act shall vest in Nature as a single legal entity.
c. These rights shall be enforceable collectively on behalf of Nature to prevent fragmentation of legal claims.

When assisted suicide is first proposed for legalization, we are assured by death activists that strict guidelines will protect against abuse. But they don’t mean it. Once the laws pass, the supposed protections — which are always flaccid to begin with — are soon redefined by activists and the media as “barriers,” et voila, the laws are soon loosened. It’s all a con, but people seem to fall for it every time.

This pattern can be seen vividly playing out in Victoria, Australia. The state was the first in that country to legalize assisted suicide, and now the government is making more people eligible for legally hastened death. From the premier’s announcement:

The new legislation will remove unnecessary barriers to accessing VAD, improve clarity for practitioners, strengthen safety measurements and make the system fairer and more compassionate.

See what I mean? “Strengthen safety,” (!!!) and “fairer and more compassionate,” really just means more people can become dead much sooner.

As I have noted here before, NYU Law School’s radical MOTH (More Than Human Life) program embraces neo-earth mysticism as part of its efforts to promote “nature rights.” Here’s the latest example. MOTH participants are seeking to force the Ecuadorian Copyright Office to grant a copyright to a forest as the supposed co-composer of music called Song of the Cedars. From “Giving Back to Nature,” published on the MOTH website: The aim of the song and its accompanying legal petition is to recognize—legally and culturally—the inextricable agency and participation of the natural world in the making of art. The song could not have been made without Los Cedros, legally and philosophically justifying the effort to acknowledge the forest’s “moral authorship” Read More ›

Fetal personhood is a controversial issue that deserves respectful debate. But the New England Journal of Medicine just published a screed by two Ph.D.s associating its advocates with past slave-holding racists and — by strong implication — devaluing unborn human life as having zero intrinsic value. First, the article claims that pregnancy has been “criminalized.” From, “Fetal Personhood and Reproductive Criminalization” (citations omitted): Fetal personhood ideology is the underlying force behind abortion bans and restrictions, the prosecution of pregnant women because of conduct deemed potentially harmful to the fetus, and fetal homicide laws that allow a fetus to be treated as the victim of a crime. As a result of this ideology being embedded in state laws and judicial decisions, Read More ›

Two A-list Hollywood actors will star in a pro-assisted-suicide movie. From the Hollywood Reporter story: George Clooney and Annette Bening will star in In Love, an adaptation of Amy Bloom’s New York Times best-selling memoir In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss that is to be directed by Paul Weitz.… With In Love, Bloom wrote about how she slowly lost her husband to Alzheimer’s, how the two made the decision to travel to Switzerland to end his life, and the struggle to move forward as a widow. The book was an affirmation of love and the power of relationships. It was also named TIME Magazine‘s No. 1 best nonfiction book and included on their list of 100 must-read books. Read More ›

A few months ago, I posted about a Republican proposal in Wisconsin to have the state legally preempt local ordinances that grant “rights” to nature. I predicted that, if the bill passed, the Democratic governor would veto it because the nature rights movement is quickly entering the progressive mainstream. Well, no veto yet, since the bill hasn’t passed. But some Democratic legislators have reacted against the legislation by proposing a joint resolution in favor of granting “inherent rights to nature.” Par for the course, they bow to the supposedly superior environmental wisdom of indigenous people. From the proposed joint resolution: Whereas, Indigenous communities…have lived in respectful relationships with the land that is now Wisconsin for thousands of years, and their Read More ›

Should men have the right to have their cells manipulated so they can become biological mothers? Should women past child-bearing age have the same right if their own eggs are no longer viable? More to the point, should we all have the right to do whatever it takes to have a baby if that is our desire and also, to obtain the baby we want?

These questions have ceased to be grist for science fiction authors. Researchers recently announced that they have genetically manipulated human skin cells to become eggs, including those of men (the idea being to eventually enable both members of a same sex couple to have a genetic connection with their child). Then, after more genetic tinkering, the eggs were fertilized into embryos via IVF. Finally, the biotechnologists monitored embryonic development until the experiment was stopped, and the embryos destroyed.

No pregnancy has been established with this technique. But that is cold comfort. The researchers plan to keep experimenting and I have little doubt that when they overcome remaining technical difficulties, someone will create a pregnancy using “skin cell” embryos. After all, what beyond self-restraint—currently in little supply in this field—is to stop them?