Wesley J. Smith

A friend asked for my thoughts about a new performance of Monteverdi’s “Beatus vir” (1640) by the Prague “early music” group Collegium 1704. It’s disturbing to see the combination of beautiful music, beautiful setting, beautifully produced video, even the instruments are beautiful (the interestingly shaped bows, for example, true to the historical period) — and then the COVID masks the performers all wear. The Latin text is Psalm 112, “Praise ye the Lord. Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord.” If I ran Collegium 1704, I suppose I would do just as they did. If you’re an artist, you want people to say, “Did you see…? What do you think of…?” In that, they succeeded. Yet the images are Read More ›

As the world is distracted by COVID or snoozing in an unwise “it can never happen here” complacency, the “nature rights” movement continues to advance in respectably. It has been endorsed by science journals. Four rivers have been granted rights. The Florida Democratic Party has put it in its plank. And now apparently, it is in the process of being embraced by the Davos set. A piece in support of nature right was just given a high-profile boost at the World Economic Forum. From, “What if Nature Became a Legal Person?”: If the stream were to be granted legal capacity, it could defend its interests and its rights. Should those rights be disregarded, the stream could take legal action in its own name, Read More ›

Death is in the air. No, I am not referring to the coronavirus. The pathogen I mean is a cultural pandemic, the embrace of doctor-prescribed suicide and of administered homicide as acceptable responses to human suffering. Let’s call it the “Jack Kevorkian Plague,” after the late pathologist who in the 1990s became world-famous by assisting the suicides of some 130 people. Before Kevorkian, the euthanasia movement was mostly a fringe phenomenon. After Kevorkian, although certainly not because of him alone, assisted suicide had been made legal in Oregon, and large swaths of the American public accepted the practice. Now, a mere 20 years later, lethal-injection euthanasia is legal and popular in Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Doctor-assisted suicide Read More ›

Catholic hospitals are under unremitting attack — from prestigious medical journals, media, and lawyers in courtrooms. The goal is to coerce these venerable institutions into replacing their faith-based methods of medical practice with secular moral standards that deny the sanctity of human life.  

A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine — perhaps the world’s most influential medical publication — illustrates the threat to medical conscience rights. Ian D. Wolfe and Thaddeus M. Pope, two prominent bioethicists, fret that one in six U.S. hospitals is “affiliated with a Catholic health system.” This is a problem, in their view, because religiously-affiliated hospitals often “refuse to provide legally permitted health services on the basis of institutional belief structures.” The authors are referring to services like abortion, sterilization (absent a pathology), assisted suicide (where legal), and transgender sex reassignment surgeries that alter a body’s normal biological functions. Refusing such procedures, the authors claim, leads to “substantial risks for patient choice, patient safety, and the fundamental principle of autonomy.” 

Patient choice? Yes, sometimes. If a woman requests an abortion and the hospital says no, she is not getting what she wants. But safety? The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services allow Catholic hospitals to refuse interventions that violate Church belief, but nonetheless require that all patients receive proper care. That includes providing “all reasonable information about the essential nature of the proposed treatment and its benefits; its risks, side-effects, consequences, and cost; and any reasonable and morally legitimate alternative.” In practice, this may also include referring patients to non-Catholic institutions. 

Worries over “safety” are more likely a deflection to mask anti-religious bigotry. Charles C. Camosy, associate professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University, believes that in many circumstances, the motive for attacking Catholic medicine “is about raw power. Certain influential people don’t want certain [medical] choices denied, so they try to use their power make things the way they want them to be.”

I was disappointed in Governor Andrew Cuomo’s dour statement that “we will never be the same” and we that we won’t “get back to normal. There will be a new normal.” I understand he is dealing with excruciating issues of life and death, but given the history of the United States, such pessimism is unwarranted. We have faced far worse than this and have moved through the pain into a better tomorrow. We will this time too. Here’s a small reason for optimism. In addition to vaccine research, the potential of malaria drugs, and antiviral testing, adult stem cells are also being deployed in current or imminent human trials for treating the physical effects of the COVID-19 virus. One early study on Read More ›

With the raging coronavirus pandemic threatening millions with infection, people are rightly worried that we could face the awful circumstance in which there are insufficient life-saving medical resources available for all catastrophically ill patients needing care. If that dark day comes, decisions will literally have to be made as to who among the seriously ill will be given an optimal chance to fight for life under intensive medical care, and who may have to face a likely death, albeit under palliative care. All over the country, doctors, bioethicists, policymakers, hospital administrators, and media commentators are discussing how to make such extremely difficult decisions if they become necessary. That’s proper and fitting. As the old saying goes, hope for the best and plan Read More ›

Some not bright people tragically poison themselves with a fish-tank cleaner because an ingredient in the compound is similar to those in the anti-malaria drugs that anecdotally have helped people deathly ill with coronavirus. Then, Nevada governor Steve Sisolak signs an emergency order preventing the medications’ use treating the virus in Nevada, which certainly seems extreme. What’s going on? Predictably, the AP story blames Trump: Nevada’s governor has signed an emergency order barring the use of anti-malaria drugs for someone who has the coronavirus. Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak’s order Tuesday restricting chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine comes after President Donald Trump touted the medication as a treatment for the virus. Trump last week falsely stated that the Food and Drug Administration had just approved the Read More ›

In Sweden, midwives can be fired and deemed unemployable for refusing abortion. In Ontario, Canada, doctors can face professional discipline for refusing to administer (or refer for) euthanasia. Ditto to refusing an abortion in Victoria, Australia. In California, a Catholic hospital is being sued — with the explicit blessing of the courts — for refusing to allow a transgender hysterectomy. But now in Argentina, the right to obtain an abortion has been declared so fundamental that an objecting M.D. can be held criminally culpable for refusing to terminate a pregnancy. An Impossibility? That would seem to be a moral and legal impossibility. But Argentina just elevated the “medical conscience” controversy to a whole new level of concern — from the potential of not “only” having Read More ›