Wesley J. Smith

Pro-assisted-suicide activists like to say the unethical act is legal in Montana. Strictly speaking, that isn’t true. Some years ago, a muddled Montana supreme court ruling refused to create a state constitutional right to assisted suicide as requested by activists because the Montana constitution’s legislative history made it clear that the court couldn’t. But wanting to legalize it anyway, the judges declared somehow that assisted suicide wasn’t against public policy of the state and that consent to such an act was a defense to a criminal charge.

Montana has been in that muddled legal state ever since, with attempts to either explicitly legalize or criminalize assisted suicide unable to get to the governor’s desk.

Now, the Montana senate has moved the anti-assisted-suicide agenda forward, passing a simple bill that would declare consent to assisted suicide unavailable as a defense by making assisted suicide contrary to Montana public policy. 

Environmentalism is becoming increasingly irrational and unscientific. The “nature rights” movement, for example, has convinced governments and judges to assign personhood, “rights,” and, laughably, even “responsibilities” to geological features. Concomitantly, the increasing advocacy in many scientific papers to “listen to the wisdom of indigenous people” in determining environmental policies reflects this ongoing shift away from empiricism in environmental research and advocacy.

Yes, indigenous people were and are keen observers of nature and live more softly on the land. But relying on “indigenous wisdom” to craft environmental policies suitable to the needs of modern societies makes little sense. Many of their practices were steeped in religious and mystical beliefs. They developed comparatively rudimentary technologies, had no electricity, and were required to feed, house, and otherwise provide for far fewer people than the 8 billion of us living today.

But don’t tell that to the increasingly ideological science establishment. A new paper published in Nature Communications goes deeper into “indigenous wisdom” argumentation, urging the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) environmental research sites to collect and analyze data in a manner accommodating of indigenous sensibilities.

It’s all about equity, don’t you know.

The creation of the modern hospice movement was a major advance in the care for people with terminal illnesses. Alas, in recent years, hospice has entered something of a crisis, with too many facilities offering inadequate care and some patients receiving short shrift of services to which they are entitled. To get to the bottom of the problem, Wesley invited Read More ›

Taking abortion pills can lead to dangerous side effects, perhaps even death. Which is why the process of chemical abortion — called “medical” by pro-abortion advocates — is supposed to occur only under the guidance of a doctor. Indeed, post-Dobbs, women died because of improperly supervised chemical abortions, wrongly blamed by the media and pro-abortion advocates on pro-life laws.

But the medical establishment is so invested in unlimited abortion that JAMA Internal Medicine just published an advocacy article calling for the two drugs used in chemical abortions to be available over the counter:

A growing body of evidence indicates that mifepristone and misoprostol meet the FDA’s criteria for OTC sale. The medications are not addictive, and the user determines on their own whether they have the condition needing treatment, in this case an unwanted pregnancy. The criteria that the FDA is likely to focus on are whether the user can appropriately self-select for use and whether they can use the product correctly over time, often referred to as actual use.

Regarding the former, research indicates that people can accurately self-assess their gestational duration and other eligibility criteria for medication abortion. In the event someone uses the regimen significantly past 10 weeks of pregnancy (for example, after 12 weeks’ gestation), it is less likely to be effective, but it is unlikely to cause serious medical complications for the pregnant person. For the question about actual use, even with facility-based medication abortion, patients generally take the medications on their own at home, manage adverse events, and determine when they need follow-up care. [Citations omitted.]

Moves are afoot in bioethics to require caregivers to withhold food and water by mouth from a patient made incompetent by dementia if that patient, while compos mentis, has signed such a request — and even if the patient willingly eats, enjoys meals, or asks for food. It is sometimes called “voluntary stop eating and drinking [VSED] by advance directive,” in the parlance.

I have frequently criticized VSED by directive as inhumane to the patient, cruel to caregivers (as it forces them to starve people to death), and designed to open the door to lethally jabbing those with advanced dementia as the less onerous alternative to their being made to starve to death.

Now, as supposedly some form of compromise, there is a proposal on the table to barely feed — i.e., malnourish — dementia patients who have previously signed such a directive. From, “Mr. Smith Has No Mealtimes,” published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management (citations omitted):

Minimal Comfort Feeding (MCF)…is the provision of only enough oral nutrition and hydration to ensure comfort. With MCF, eating and drinking is not scheduled; rather, caretakers offer food and liquids only in response to signs of hunger and thirst. Patients are neither wakened for regular mealtimes nor encouraged to eat or drink. Instead, they are offered frequent, fastidious mouth care, continued social contact, therapeutic touch, sensory distraction, and medications to relieve distress associated with apparent thirst or hunger before being provided with minimal amounts of liquid or food.

A mountain sacred to the indigenous people of the island has been named a “person” with “rights” and “responsibilities.” From the AP story:

The law passed Thursday gives Taranaki Maunga all the rights, powers, duties, responsibilities and liabilities of a person. Its legal personality has a name: Te Kāhui Tupua, which the law views as “a living and indivisible whole.” It includes Taranaki and its surrounding peaks and land, “incorporating all their physical and metaphysical elements.”

A newly created entity will be “the face and voice” of the mountain, the law says, with four members from local Māori iwi, or tribes, and four members appointed by the country’s Conservation Minister.

This is irrational and illustrates how environmentalism is going off the rails. A geological feature has been declared to be a living person! Again!

The execrable gender ideologue Admiral Rachel Levine is no longer in government. That’s great news in the long run for children with gender dysphoria, because the new administration wants to actually protect these disturbed minors. Accordingly, President Trump today signed an executive order protecting such children from being subjected to often irreparable body-altering “gender-affirming care.” From the order, “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation:”

Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.

Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding. Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.

Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.

Excellent.

Animal rights activists are determined to persuade a court to declare an animal a “person” to enable them to engage in unremitting lawfare against all animal uses — an advocacy project known as “animal standing.” Having failed twice in New York to have chimps and then an elephant named Happy declared persons, the NonHuman Rights Project moved its effort to Colorado seeking writs of habeas corpus to be issued on behalf of zoo elephants. The activists had some reason for hope. Two judges in New York’s highest court swallowed the baloney in a 5-2 ruling against elephant personhood. Thankfully, the Colorado supreme court exhibited greater wisdom in unanimously turning the case away. Why? Because as any ten-year-old could tell the Read More ›

The public health sector has been roiled by controversy and political turmoil in the last few years, what with the COVID pandemic, the fight over vaccine mandates, and questions about politicization of the sector. Beyond that, viruses make the news like never before. So, Wesley turned to an expert in both fields to learn more about virology, the government’s response Read More ›

The American medical establishment remains radically committed to the misnamed “gender-affirming care” model, refusing to even consider following the examples of the U.K., Sweden, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, France, Norway, and others whose health ministries have hit the brakes hard on providing puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries to gender dysphoric children.

Example: The current New England Journal of Medicine published a “Perspectives” screed attacking the Cass Review — widely respected for its thorough investigation of the lack of significant data supporting puberty blocking of gender dysphoric children. From “The Future of Gender Affirming Care“:

Our concern here is that the Review transgresses medical law, policy, and practice, which puts it at odds with all mainstream U.S. expert guidelines. The report deviates from pharmaceutical regulatory standards in the United Kingdom. And if it had been published in the United States, where it has been invoked frequently, it would have violated federal law because the authors failed to adhere to legal requirements protecting the integrity of the scientific process.