Posted on 10/04/2009 10:28:20 AM PDT by wagglebee
How wide is the line between the right to die and the duty to die? I’m afraid we may find out soon enough.
Regular BreakPoint listeners have heard me speak about the impact of declining birth rates around the world. One consequence is that older people comprise an increasing percentage of the population in places like Japan and Western Europe.
This increases economic pressures on these countries since an aging population requires more services while having fewer young workers to pay for them.
One doctor has come up with a way to address the imbalance between pensioners and workers—that is, fewer pensioners.
What Dr. Philip Nitschke has in mind isn’t raising the retirement age—his goal is fewer pensioners.
Nitschke is the founder of Exit International, a self-described “world-leading Voluntary Euthanasia” organization. As part of his mission, Nitschke, who is from Australia, travels to different countries teaching people “how to end their lives safely.”
One of his methods is a dose of the barbiturate Nembutal. While in Britain, he told Reuters that “almost every 75-year-old I meet now sees merit in having their own bottle of Nembutal in the cupboard as an insurance policy, in case things get bad.”
Every 75-year-old? Clearly the Kevorkian from Down Under runs with an atypical crowd. As Reuters put it, “Nitschke’s is an extreme view.” Extreme, but unfortunately not unthinkable, especially given the trajectory of our culture.
At the same time Nitschke was speaking to Reuters, Britain was awaiting new guidelines for cases involving people who help family members commit suicide. The guidelines are the result of litigation involving a woman with multiple sclerosis who plans to go to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal. She wanted assurances that her husband wouldn’t be prosecuted for helping her kill herself. Britain’s law lords ruled that she was entitled to such assurances.
While assisted-suicide is still illegal within Britain, attitudes are changing. For example, the Royal College of Nurses has gone from being opposed to assisted-suicide to a position of neutrality. You don’t have to be an alarmist or even a pessimist to guess what the next change will be.
These changes coincide with the graying of the British population. Currently, 20 percent of Britons are over 65, and that is projected to rise to 30 percent by 2020. Pro-euthanasia advocates scoff at the idea that the elderly will be pressured to die by society, but British officials acknowledge the possibility. One told the BBC that he wouldn’t want to live in a society that pressured its elderly to kill themselves to make life easier for their families.
The government’s way of preventing that is laws that “strike a balance,” he said, between “sympathetic” cases and protecting the elderly. But you and I know where the road paved with good intentions leads. Without a bright line around the sanctity of human life, the extreme inexorably becomes the mainstream.
The so-called “right to die” can become, as one American politician suggested, a “duty to die,” especially as the costs associated with an aging population crowd out other priorities.
There is only one insurance policy against this nightmare—an unqualified commitment to the sanctity of life.
There is only one insurance policy against this nightmare—an unqualified commitment to the sanctity of life.
I no longer believe America has his commitment.
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Couple this with the rising birthrate of muslims and you can see the foreboding problem.
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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
No one has the slightest idea because we're not being allowed to see the plan before a vote is taken.
A pro-life bump
Recently, a democrat elected representative from Florida sttod ont he House floor and accused Republicans of the strategy the current administration is developing via John Holdren, L’il Tommy Daschle, and Zeke Emanuel ... solution to the healthcare costs and social security bankruptcy is the elimination of tens of millions of drains on the oligarchically controlled system. The affirmative action liar-in-chief has even stated that he believes giving grandma the pill instead of a hip replacement is the better way for the controlling authority over healthcare to operate.
Colson’s article is so simple and clear. I have come to the conclusion that those who deny that the “right” to die inevitably become the “duty” to die are consciously lying. I used to think that they were just blinded by their moral blinders and didn’t see the slipper slide; now I think they want people to be forced to die. They just don’t want to admit it.
You don’t need to see the plan -— just look at who is in charge. ... pols all beholden to the Death Merchants.
From the womb to the tomb has a new meaning in this world awashed with populaton controllers.
“A nation that kills its own children is a nation without hope.”
John Paul II
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