Wesley J. Smith

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.

The world’s two most influential professional science journals probably are Science and Nature. But they no longer limit their jurisdiction to science. Both are now highly ideological to the extent that each has now lent its august pages to boosting the “nature rights” movement.

Science pushed “nature rights” back in 2019. Now Nature has jumped on the bandwagon, publishing an advocacy piece to coincide with Panama’s pushing a “Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature” in the United Nations General Assembly.

The article’s title starts out making a hubristic assumption: “Nature has Rights: It’s Time the World Recognized Them.”

Really? Since when? Based on what? Says who?

Anthropic is anthropomorphizing its AI program known as “Claude,” with the apparent intention of convincing us that powerful computer programs are — or can become — conscious “persons” with “feelings.” And, they think, Claude should one day be treated as such, to the point they have held meetings with religious leaders to discuss the moral concepts that might apply.

From the New York Times story:

Mr. [Christopher] Olah leads the Anthropic team responsible for understanding why A.I. systems like Claude act the way they do. All day, he had worked to convince his guests that A.I. models could display human behavior and even expressions that resemble feelings like anger and love.

Yet as the dinner courses came, the rabbi noticed that Mr. Olah and his colleagues were suggesting something far more significant. Anthropic’s leaders were talking about Claude as if it were not mere software.

“They’re relating to it like a conscious being,” realized Rabbi Navon, a former computer engineer who wrote his dissertation on the ethics of machine consciousness.

It appeared to Rabbi Navon that Mr. Olah and his team believed that Claude had what philosophers call “moral status” on par with a person — that it was a being with similar inherent rights to dignity or respect.

Panama has proposed that the U.N. General Assembly negotiate and adopt a “Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature.” From the press release:

In a historic development, the Government of Panama and For Nature have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly advance the adoption of a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature before the United Nations General Assembly, marking a significant milestone in the growing global movement to recognize ecosystems and species as rights-bearing entities.

The initiative is being funded in full by the Alfred Kobacker and Elizabeth Trimbach Fund (AKET Fund) in partnership with the National Geographic Society, reflecting a commitment to accelerate this emerging global framework at a moment when it is most urgently needed.

The nature rights movement is now thoroughly ensconced within the establishment and among the ruling elite. This agenda is being funded by the National Geographic Society. The AKET Fund is also pushing it. It doesn’t get more mainstream than that, which means that millions are going to be spent in the coming years promoting the idea of granting nature — which is everything that exists — the rights “to exist, persist, regenerate, and be restored,” among other liberties. Rivers, for example, are to be given the “right to flow.”

“Harm reduction” programs often cause terrible harm. But sometimes they also are beyond absurd. Like this example: Canadian prisons are going to distribute paper straws to inmates for use while snorting drugs. From the National Post story: The Correctional Service of Canada has confirmed that paper straws will soon be distributed in federal prisons to facilitate safe snorting of drugs. This week a social media post included photos of a memo distributed to Corrections staff stating that paper straws were being newly “introduced” for “safer snorting” and “intended for inhaling substances in powdered form or inhaling vapor from heated substances.” Don’t take drugs while imprisoned, but if you do, use a paper straw! Good grief. How will paper straws reduce harm exactly? Read More ›

Medical conscience is under sustained assault as doctors are being threatened with societal punishment or professional discipline for refusing to provide controversial but legal interventions such as abortion, euthanasia, and gender transition against their religious or moral beliefs. Now, a British Columbia doctor has been fined $28,100 for refusing to administer puberty blockers to a child based on his religious and moral objections. From the CBC story:

The decision describes Child Q, the 14-year-old at the centre at the decision, as a “brave, sensitive, kind transgender girl.”

It says in late 2020, she came out as transgender and struggled with her mental health as she entered puberty. Ajaero referred her to the B.C. Gender Clinic, where an endocrinologist prescribed Lupron, a medication that pauses puberty.

According to the decision, Child Q describes the day she started the medication as “one of the best days of my life.”

Lupron needs to be injected every three to four weeks. It can be injected at home, but according to the decision, Child Q and her family preferred to have it done by a doctor.

Her first appointment to get an injection at her family doctor’s was March 5.

The decision said when Ajaero learned that the shot was Lupron, he told Child Q’s mother he would not be administering it.

“He explained this was for religious and cultural reasons, and he hoped that was OK. Mother Q said it was not OK.”

Ajaero’s charting notes from the appointment said: “I noticed that the injection is for gender re-assignment as patient is already in the waiting room with [her] mother. I called mother into the room and explained to her that I would not be able to give the injection. Based on my religious belief and cultural background.”

Environmentalism continues its radical shift from reasonable conservationism to environmentalist earth religion. This growing faith was most recently preached in an op-ed published by the New York Times that quite literally proselytizes for nature animism.

Robert Moor, a self-described “Thoreauvian” nature writer and the author of In Trees, describes moving from New York City to the forests of British Columbia. He has not had the sylvan experience for which he hoped. After about a week of smoky air caused by annually recurring forest fires, the once “bone deep atheist” experiences a “baptism by wildfire,” a “religious conversion” into a neo-pagan faith called “scientific animism.” From “Our Forests Are Demanding a Sacrifice“:

In these moments, I stop seeing the sky as a blank backdrop. I see it as a living thing, and an angry one. I see the spirit of the forest rising up, rageful and trickstery, to hurl down thunderbolts and sicken us while we sleep. Put differently, I feel myself drawn away from scientific atheism, and toward a creed that philosophers call “scientific animism.”

Animism, put very simply, is the belief that the natural world is inhabited by spirits who can either punish us or bestow favors. Scientific animism applies this ancient lens to modern science, showing how forces in the natural world (plants, rivers, entire planets) are self-organized, self-perpetuating and self-willed. In this view, nature is not an inert, passive backdrop to human progress. It actively responds to our actions — though not always in the way we would predict.

King Cove is an Aleut Alaskan fishing village of about 400 people. It is adjacent to the 300,000-acre Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, which was designated a wilderness area in 1980.

This presented a lethal problem for the people of King Cove. The nearest full-service hospital is in Anchorage, 900 miles away. The town does not have an all-weather airport, meaning that very ill or badly injured people are unable to get to Anchorage during inclement weather.

A town called Cold Bay — only 20 miles away — does have an all-weather airport, so the people of King Cove came up with a commonsense solution, first proposed in 1997: Build a simple, one-lane gravel road through the Izembek National Wildlife refuge to Cold Bay so that those who need urgent care can be driven to the airport there. The proposed evacuation road would require only about 450 of the 330,000 acres in the wilderness zone, and any impact on the refuge would be de minimis. Later, to sweeten the pot, King Cove offered a land swap that would add ecologically delicate wetlands to the Izembek Refuge in return for the road.