Humanize From Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism
Topic

medical assistance in dying

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Bottle with pills euthanasia viagra alternative analgesics antibiotics care

Death Activists Oppose Limits on Virtual Access to Assisted Suicide

Assisted-suicide advocates say they believe in “strict guidelines to guard against abuse.” They don’t. They write bills as broadly as they deem politically expedient and then expand access as people become accustomed to doctors prescribing overdoses to ill, suicidal patients. Read More ›
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Wooden Judges Gavel with Soundboard and Medical Injection Syring

Euthanasia’s Cultural Collateral Damage: Less Respect for Human Life

Euthanasia causes egregious cultural damage beyond the direct consequences of allowing the killing — or facilitating the suicides — of sick and disabled people. Read More ›
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Definition of word euthanasia in dictionary

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Anti-Suicide Walk Ignores Assisted Suicide

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is holding an overnight walk in Washington, D.C., on June 3 to fight suicide. From the “Why We Walk” promotion for “Out of the Darkness“: As you walk over 16 miles from dusk till dawn, you’ll find support and understanding in a community of others affected by suicide. Together, we will help put a stop to this leading cause of death. That’s great. But do the ads or promotional material even mention that Washington, D.C., legalized assisted suicide several years ago? Do they mention that people who ask for assisted suicide are almost never offered suicide prevention? And do they mention that studies are now showing a connection between assisted-suicide legalization and increasing suicide rates generally? Do the Read More ›

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Canada ft0204_5685 Kanada

Canadian Minister of Health: ‘Suicidal’ Are Not Eligible for Euthanasia

Assisted-suicide activists play a word game when they insist that the practice isn’t really “suicide.” They claim that a person who seeks death does so only because of serious illness or disability. If a person is healthy, this claim goes, he or she wouldn’t have wanted to die. Thus, assisted suicide isn’t suicide but merely medical aid in dying (MAiD). But the same kind of reasoning could be applied to anyone who seeks to die, regardless of the circumstances. Had the grieving mother’s child not been hit by a car, for example, she wouldn’t be thinking of killing herself. But for his chronic depression, the psychiatric patient wouldn’t want to die. Had the entrepreneur’s business not collapsed, he wouldn’t want Read More ›

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side view of empty hospital bed in clinic chamber

Suicide Tourism Comes to Oregon

Assisted-suicide activists always promise that strict guidelines will protect against abuse. It’s a big con. The guidelines are not really strict. They rely primarily on self-reporting. And they are meant to be temporary: As soon as political conditions permit, the access to doctor-prescribed death expands. Read More ›
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Young pea (Pisum) sprouts in a sunny vegetable garden

The Fear of Suffering is Driving Us Crazy

But eliminating suffering is impossible. Not only is the goal Utopian, but it leads to ever-more-extreme distortions of decency and a collapse of public policy rationality—which ironically, can cause the very “evil” that suffering abolitionists yearn so desperately to prevent. Read More ›
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Gavel leaning against a row of law books

Court Finds No Constitutional Right to Assisted Suicide in Massachusetts

I just hope that state’s legislators read this decision carefully because, as the paragraph I quoted above demonstrates, maintaining the law against assisted suicide serves and protects the general welfare and is in the public interest. Read More ›
Wesley Smith EWTN

Wesley J. Smith Discusses Dutch Court Decision to Strike Down Measure that Expands Euthanasia Laws

A court has struck down a measure to expand euthanasia laws in the Netherlands. Activists wanted to make it legal for non-medical professionals to perform assisted suicide procedures. Read More ›
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Male person with gloved hand turns off the intravenous drug system to the unconscious patient

Euthanasia Without Brakes

If we don’t change our current cultural trajectory we will end up in the same dark corner as Canada, the Netherlands, and Belgium. And the real danger to our cultural wellbeing is that the people who now complacently assume that such warnings are alarmist will be the ones applauding the loudest when that dark time comes. Read More ›
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Busy surgeons over the operating table

Don’t Let Doctors Kill Sick Patients for Their Organs

Some lines should never be crossed. Allowing doctors to kill patients during organ harvesting wouldn’t only be an acute threat to the sanctity of life, but I can think of no better way to sow mistrust in our health care system generally—and the lifesaving field of organ transplant medicine specifically. Read More ›