New Terri Dailies Theme
Terri's murder probably would have been avoided but for the culture
of death and Kevorkian's role in their evil agenda.
Posted on 06/04/2011 2:05:56 PM PDT by wagglebee
ST. PETERSBURG, June 3 / -- Today marks the end of Jack Kevorkian’s reign of terror over vulnerable and needy patients. For decades Jack Kevorkian spent his life advocating for assisted suicide, helping dozens of mostly non-terminal persons kill themselves.
“It was clear that this man had a dysfunctional obsession and infatuation with death and that his true involvement in these deaths was never properly reported,” stated Terri Schiavo’s Life and Hope Network’s Executive Director, Bobby Schindler.
In an October 2010 MSNBC interview with Jack Kevorkian, he was asked to weigh in on Terri Schiavo’s two-week court ordered dehydration death. Dr. Kervorkian stated that Terri would have qualified for his assisted suicide service. Kevorkian further explained, “[She] could qualify because the husband was next of kin, legally. And that’s all that counts because you can’t have interference by family members who might be antagonistic or hostile.”
“This statement only further exposes how the influences in society and the media used the torturous death of my sister, Terri Schiavo, to validate the ‘Right to Die’ mentality and Kevorkian’s lust for the death of others, which drove his agenda,” Schindler explained.
Contrary to this mentality, Terri Schiavo’s Life and Hope Network aggressively advocates for vulnerable persons, the disabled, and those who are dying.
“History will surely judge Kervokian as a very dark figure. We are very encouraged that today we see a greater awareness that every life deserves dignity and protection,” stated Suzanne Schindler Vitadamo, Terri Schiavo’s sister. “While Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network denounces all of his work, we do recognize that every life is precious and therefore extend our prayers and condolences to the family of Jack Kevorkian,” added Vitadamo.
We understand from reports that Dr. Kervokian passed in an environment that was neither “antagonistic” or “hostile.” Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of his victim patients.
The culture of death and their accomplices in the media are trying to turn Kevorkian into some sort of saint.
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Many of Dr. Kevorkian’s good deeds were fueled by sick motivations.
And then Romans 1:18-32 happened to him.
I can't help but notice how the whole "death with dignity" movement always starts off with such lofty goals, such as "ending unneeded suffering," but it then always devolves into a ghoulish desire to start killing off more and more people by way of the medical profession.
Yippee! Euthanized by God!
The modern version says, "Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God."
At least he died doing what he loved. Dying. (I read this somewhere.)
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Agreed.
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Oops. I completely misread that. Kevorkian didn't do any good deeds. He was an extremely disturbed and evil man, however.
Someone on another thread described him as a "serial killer". I would agree with that.
Thanks for the ping!
Now, let's have that list.
We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest.
~ Sophie Scholl
Boston Globe writer James Alan Fox has yet another refutation of the claim by economists John Donohue and Steven Levitt in their infamous book Freakonomics that legalizing abortion led to a drop in crime rates.
Fox said readers of the newspaper emailed him recently concerning a New York Times piece on crime rate reductions and they advocated the disproved notion that legalized abortion resulted in a reduction in violent crimes. Fox, a criminologist, has responded and says the theory is full of holes:
Despite persuasive logic regarding a reduction in the number of children born to circumstances that would place them at-risk for growing into criminality, the significance of this effect appears to have been grossly overstated. For example, nearly 60% of the decline in murder since 1990 involved perpetrators ages 25 and older—individuals who would have been born prior to the landmark abortion decision. As shown in the figure below, there were substantial reductions during the 1990s in homicides committed by older age groups, especially those in the 25-34 year-old age range.
The abortion-crime link also cannot account for the transient surge in youth homicide during the late 1980s, if not for which the 1990s would not have witnessed such a sizable decline. The rise and then fall in youth homicide before and then after 1990 has much more to do with fast changing patterns of drug trade, gang activity and illegal gun supply than a sudden shift in abortion policy.
Finally, the abortion-crime hypothesis cannot explain the large drop in murder and other violent crime from the first six months of 2009 to the corresponding months of 2010. In fact, nothing really can.
This is not the first time Fox, of Northeastern University, has refuted the abortion-crime theory. He released a study in December 2008 showing a large rise in homicides by black teens in recent years even though black women have the highest abortion rate. The study found homicides by blacks between the ages of 14 and 17 have jumped 34 percent from 2000 through 2007. The number of crimes for white people in the same age range did not increase.
In the book Freakonomics, Levitt claimed legalizing abortion led to a major drop in murder and other violent crimes in the 1980s and 1990s. He theorized that the babies who were victimized by abortion would have been more likely to commit crimes. But Fox’s study shows violent crime in the black community has gone up in the last decade — not down.
“Yes, it’s not nearly as bad as it was in 1990, but it is worse than it was in 2000,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Yet, if Levitt’s hypothesis is true, crime should have gone down significantly in the black community because of a higher abortion rate.
An August 2007 study conducted by a researcher at the University of Maryland shows that legalized abortion has led to higher rates of crime and increased murder rates. That occurred because a higher percentage of children grew up in single-parent homes during the years following Roe v. Wade.
The findings were published in the April 2007 issue of the academic journal Economic Inquiry and are part of a new book written by researcher John R. Lott. According to Lott, the high court’s decision ultimately resulted in more out-of-wedlock births, a reduction in the number of children adopted and fewer married parents.
Before that, Lott and John Whitley, affiliated with the University of Chicago, wrote a paper in August 2006 challenging the abortion-crime reduction claims.
Meanwhile, in November 2005, Christopher Foote, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and research assistant Christopher Goetz, told the Wall St. Journal the data Levitt used was faulty.
Foote said there was a “missing formula” in Levitt’s original research that allowed him to ignore certain factors that may have contributed to the lowering of crime rates during the 1980s and 1990s. Foote also argues that Levitt counted the total number of arrests made when he should have used per-capita figures. After Foote adjusted for both factors, the abortion effect simply disappeared, the Journal reported.
“There are no statistical grounds for believing that the hypothetical youths who were aborted as fetuses would have been more likely to commit crimes had they reached maturity than the actual youths who developed from fetuses and carried to term,” Foote and Goetz say in their report.
Thread by marshmallow.
Eduardo Verastegui wants Guadalupe Medical Center to be “an oasis of life”
In his hit 2006 movie “Bella,” Mexican actor and producer Eduardo Verastegui’s character walks off his job to spend the day with a co-worker contemplating an abortion. Verastegui rehearsed by going to an actual abortion clinic; after arriving, he soon forgot his movie and was distressed to see many young women enter the clinic in tears.
Sidewalk counselors asked him to translate for a Mexican immigrant couple about to enter the clinic. The couple recognized Verastegui from his work on Mexican telenovelas, or soap operas, and talked with him for 45 minutes. They left without entering.
Months later, the couple called him to share that the child they had intended to abort had just been born and they wanted to name him Eduardo in his honor.
Verastegui went to the hospital and held the baby. “It was beautiful,” he said. “By the grace of God, I was able to help save this baby.” Guadalupe Center
In an effort to help more women choose life, Verastegui and his nonprofit organization, Mantle of Guadalupe (www.mantodeguadalupe.org), opened the Guadalupe Medical Center in Los Angeles in September. The clinic serves one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, consisting of predominantly Latino residents.
“My hope is that Guadalupe Medical Center will reach and help many women, children and families,” Verastegui said. “It will be an oasis of life for those most in need.”
The 5,000-square-foot facility serves 20 women daily and offers free pregnancy-related services such as ultrasounds, prenatal care and natural family planning education. It offers medical services in addition to counseling, and has an obstetrician/gynecologist on staff. At a January fundraiser, Verastegui pledged to make it the largest pro-life clinic in the country.
Jaime Hernandez, president of Mantle of Guadalupe and Verastegui’s.....
(Excerpt) Read more at osv.com ...
Thread by NYer.
DENVER, Colorado, June 1, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Denver Catholic bishop is warning parents that membership in the Girl Scouts could carry the danger of making their daughters more receptive to the pro-abortion agenda.
In a Wednesday column for the Denver Catholic Register, Denver Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley observes that in the last year a growing number of parents and youth ministers have shared concerns with him over the Girl Scouts alignment with groups advocating abortion.
He urges parents to browse for themselves the websites of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) and Girl Scouts USA (GSUSA) to see the organization’s approach to “sexuality, ‘choice’, and reproductive issues,” saying this exercise “may be a sobering experience.”
The Girl Scouts have faced strong criticism especially in the last year after the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) revealed that they participated in a United Nations workshop distributing the Planned Parenthood sex education pamphlet “Happy, Healthy, and Hot.”
The pamphlet instructs young girls not to think of sex as “just about vaginal or anal intercourse.” “There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!” it states.
Just last month, two teenage girls went public with their decision to leave the Girl Scouts after eight years because of the organization’s ties to Planned Parenthood.
In his column, Bishop Conley quotes a youth minister who warned that girls who have been influenced by Girl Scouts USA will be “more receptive” to the pro-abortion and pro-contraception agenda.
“It’s hard to imagine that a girl who remains involved with Girl Scouts into young adulthood won’t eventually learn of the connections her organization has with ‘pro-choice’, pro-contraception and ‘reproductive freedom’ groups,” the youth minister wrote. “If she was introduced to GSUSA through her parents and her local parish, then that will inevitably create contradictions between her Catholic faith and her Scouting experience.”
The bishop notes that Scouting’s structures allow local troops to have a certain amount of autonomy, but nevertheless he says the activities and orientations of the international and national Scout bodies have “an important trickle-down effect.” “This is exactly why ‘pro-choice’ organizations have worked to develop connections with the Scouting movement,” he writes.
“Parents, as the primary educators of their children, have every right to insist that their beliefs, especially their moral and religious beliefs, be respected—not undermined—by the organizations to which they entrust their children,” he says. “Parents need to remain alert to the content of their daughters’ activities. And Catholics involved in the Girl Scouting movement should make it clear to leadership that Scouting is only a means to an end—the proper formation of young character.”
“It’s not an end in itself; and should Scouting ever fail in that proper formation, other groups can be found or formed to take its place,” he concludes.
Contact Information:
World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts
World Bureau, Olave Centre
12c Lyndhurst Road
London NW3 5PQ
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7794 1181
Fax: +44 (0)20 7431 3764
Email: wagggs@wagggsworld.org
Girl Scouts of the USA
420 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10018-2798
Phone: (800) 478-7248
E-mail: Use this form.
Thread by me.
Today, at age 83, Dr. Jack Kevorkian slipped into eternity and left in his wake a trail of civilizational wreckage from which we may never recover. With his Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) movement, he was one of the Twentieth Century’s architects of the Culture of Death; the Margaret Sanger of the opposite end of the life spectrum.
As Msgr. William Smith taught so very well:
1. All social engineering is preceded by verbal engineering.
2. All evil begins with a lie. Identify the lie, and we succeed in unmasking the evil.
Kevorkian began his evil with a lie by omission. He frightened terminally ill people with the specter of an excruciatingly agonizing death (and I’ve seen cancer patients go this way), while never giving equal weight to palliative care and the reality that pain can be made bearable. Moreover, he spent the last 21 years of his life as the champion of suicide, while he could have used his considerable knowledge and skills to help advance the field of palliative medicine.
He didn’t.
Kevorkian invoked the idea of “Death with Dignity,” which suggests that suffering is a hollow experience of no redemptive value. The concept also fails to address the reality of hospice care, where people die peacefully sedated surrounded by friends and family.
Death with Dignity hardly describes suicide. Suicide is desperation-driven, fueled by the twin afflictions of helplessness and hopelessness. It’s grubby and base, advanced by people who lack vision or soul. Surrendering to despair while standing on the brink of eternity is the final admission of the individual that God has no power in that moment. What should be the individual’s moment of greatest trust is laid waste by the smooth-talking clinician who says that the only sure avoidance of suffering lies in the flip of a switch on a Kevorkian machine.
As with all evil, it has metastasized throughout the medical community. The “right” to die with dignity has become an imperative to die as soon as possible when diagnosed with a terminal condition, and now in England, the obligation for the elderly to simply go away. Just this week, word has come out of England that doctors are prescribing water, WATER for the elderly in hospitals so that nurses will actually hydrate them.
Doctors caring for elderly patients in hospital are being forced to prescribe water for them in order to ensure they have enough to drink.
Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the NHS watchdog, found nurses sometimes left patients so thirsty that the only way for doctors to ensure they had enough liquid was to add “drinking water” to hospital medication charts.
The revelation comes in the first reports from the CQC into dignity and nutrition of elderly people treated by the NHS, which reveals a failure to attend to the most basic requirements of care. The Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, who ordered the reports, said the failings were “unacceptable”.
Read the rest of the story here.
The plight of the terminally ill is no light matter. The fear of confronting one’s mortal ending can be paralyzing. Add to that the specter of dying in unbearable agony. Now add to that the dishonest physician who offers no real assurance of palliative care, and offers only suicide.
That is the essence of predation.
God be merciful to Dr. Kevorkian. Nobody knows his soul, but God. However, he has done great evil during his time among us. His last 23 years were the slow suicide of a soul.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let Perpetual Light shine upon him.
"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."
I thought it was a pro-rights forum, too.
How are these Daily Threads identified?
I apologize for intruding on a caucus thread, but I don’t see any indication that’s what it is.
Thanks for the ping!
What a twisted thing to write, on a Terri Schiavo thread! I, as a Christian, believe you are alive forever more. Your body that you occupy now will not be so enduring, but I believe the God Who Created the universe in which you came to exist has told us that we are to be alive forever more once we come into existence. I personally believe we now exist sensing time as linear, but it is in reality a volume, and forever is the state of beyond linear limitations. Sadly, too many will be alive forever more in not so comfortable circumstances that they would make flippant remarks when they reach that where/when. It takes a special arrogance to ridicule those who are pro-life.
And we agree that a baby has rights, and we have rights as disabled, elderly, mentally challenged, able-bodied, whatever...
I don't mean to disrupt your thread.
Kervorkian should be remembered as the man who murdered others, but died of NATURAL CAUSES himself. Hypocrite!!
I am so tired of you humorless holy rollers. That was a joke. If you can’t take a joke maybe you’re in the wrong place. If you write me again about this I will hit the abuse button. I’ve never done that in my history of FR but I’ve about had it with humorless people. I stand by what I said: euthanized by God. In case you don’t know, it’s a parody of what Alexander Berkman said when Henry Clay Frick died (Berkman tried to assassinate Frick): assassinated by God. It’s a good joke and has nothing to do with Terry Schiavo and all to do with the evil Kevorkian.
I weary of deceitful, arrogant atheists, trying to sneak in a jab here and an insult there regarding the Christian concept of Pro-Life.
So, the new theme is their evil agenda lives on?
Thread by surroundedbyblue.
Every night before closing his eyes, while lying on a hospital bed in his living room, Francis Massco pleaded to his wife of almost 60 years: "Pray that God takes me home tonight."
Three years after a diagnosis of prostate cancer, followed by costly, invasive treatments, Massco, 82, decided in February against more chemotherapy.
"I wouldn't be mad if I fell over right now," he told the Tribune-Review last month.
The one-time corporate attorney resisted a little-known tenet of medicine: Hospitals and doctors make more money by aggressively treating terminal patients than by keeping them free of pain and letting them die with dignity. Some doctors derisively call the practice "flogging" — as in, beating a dead horse.
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
Thanks for the ping!
Thread by me.
Rep. Allyson Schwartz of Pennsylvania is one of the fastest rising stars in the Democrat Party, taking on a recently announced leadership role at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Schwartz, a four-term suburban Philadelphia congresswoman, is taking on the position left vacant by Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz who was just tapped to chair the Democratic National Committee.
One fact that has gone unmentioned in all the media reports trumpeting Schwartz’s ascendancy is that Allyson Schwartz, besides having a perfect pro-abortion record in Congress, co-founded and acted as Executive Director of an abortion clinic in Philadelphia for 13 years (1975-1988).
The clinic was called the Elizabeth Blackwell Center which is ironic because Blackwell, the first female physician in the U.S., was pro-life.
The clinic was not without its troubles. The Philadelphia Daily News quoted a call from a Republican candidate that detailed an assortment of lawsuits against the clinic:
“18 lawsuits have been filed against Miss Allyson Schwartz’s clinic, including assault, battery, negligence, perforated bowels and uteruses,” the woman said, “and even abortions performed without consent of her patients."
In 2002, the Blackwell clinic declared bankruptcy due to diminished demand for abortion and stiff competition in the area. In its last year, the center still performed about 1,500 abortions. According to the Daily News, the center derived its largest share of revenue from abortions.
Since Schwartz left the abortion business, she hasn’t forgotten her past. NARAL has consistently rated Schwartz a perfect 100 score. EMILY’s List, the radically pro-abortion PAC, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Schwartz, giving her campaign far more than any other organization. According to one site, EMILY’s List donated almost $500,000 to Schwartz.
In return, Schwartz voted against the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, and the Stupak Amendment. Schwartz even sponsored the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) which would have erased all federal, state, or local limitations on abortion up to an including the ninth month of pregnancy.
Schwartz was already heading up candidate recruitment and will now oversee candidate services throughout the country.
Note: I worked for two congressional campaigns against Schwartz. See Also Patrick’s reaction at the NCRegister.com “Democrat Leader Operated Abortion Clinic”
Thread by markomalley.
When a retired nurse from Virginia learned from her sister-in-law that a biotechnology company in Rockville, Md., was selling aborted baby parts online, she could hardly believe what she was hearing.
But, she said, “I looked on the website and sure enough, they were selling baby parts.”
Still incredulous, she decided to dial the phone number on the website.
“I called them and gave them my name. I said I was interested in how I could get a fetal heart.
“They said, ‘What do you want to use it for?’ As a retired nurse, I was able to give a plausible answer. I said I was interested in fetal heart slides for research; I chose something from the different examples he gave.
“He said, ‘We can get those sections for you.’” The retired nurse then said she wanted to be sure the specimens would be viable.
“The guy said they would be fresh; they don’t slice up the heart and prepare the slides until someone orders them.”
Capitalbiosciences.com is the website of Capital Biosciences, Inc., which offers a variety of “biological products,” including a list of 36 different aborted baby parts, ranging from appendix, brain, colon, and lung tissue to ovary, skin, spinal cord, testicle and tonsil tissue.
(Excerpt) Read more at defendlife.org ...
Thread by 2ndDivisionVet.
* She addresses 'unreal, sad and confusing' news of son's Down's Syndrome
* Writes Trig 'may provide more challenges and more joy' than imagined
* Writes that others would have wanted to abort, or send sympathy
* Shows thoughtful, human side of controversial politician
Sarah_Palin 'played God' in a deeply touching email she wrote two weeks before her fifth child, Trig, was born with Down's Syndrome, it was revealed today.
The poignant message to family_and_friends, included in 25,000 pages of her private emails made public on Friday, may alter the way the former Governor of Alaska is viewed by the American public.
In April 2008, two weeks before Trig was born with Down's Syndrome, Mrs Palin sent the email to her friends and family from her official government account.
In the touching message, Mrs Palin writes from the voice of God, as 'Trig's creator, your heavenly father'. She addresses the 'unreal, sad and confusing' news that her soon-to-be born child will have Down's Syndrome. The letter's existence had previously known, but only very brief excerpts had been made public.
Writing as God, Mrs Palin wrote, 'I let Trig's mom have an exceptionally comfortable pregnancy so she could enjoy every minute of it...'
She wrote, 'Trig's mom and dad' were told early by doctors that the child 'may provide more challenges and more joy than what they ever may have imagined or ever asked for.
'This new person in your life can help everyone put things in perspective... and get everyone focused on what really matters. The baby will expand your world and let you see and feel things you haven't experienced yet'. The letter also makes unlikely conspiracy theories that have long been circulating on blogs that Trig was actually born to Mrs Palin's unwed daughter Bristol....
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
June 12, 2011 - Tonight, The Beach Boys with special guest, John Stamos, will headline the 2nd annual Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Concert at the Fraze Pavilion in Kettering, Ohio!
Opening for The Beach Boys will be The Lettermen, with Actor/Comedian, Jim Labriola serving as Master of Ceremonies. The weather is beautiful and the stars will be out, so we hope to see you there with what will be a very special and memorable night!
“New Head of Democratic Campaign Cmte Ran Abortion Business
Rep. Allyson Schwartz of Pennsylvania is one of the fastest rising stars in the Democrat Party, taking on a recently announced leadership role at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.”
Let’s work as hard as we can to vote those horrible antilife Dems out of power. It seems like we’re sinking fast, but we CAN rise up again.
I think the best thing is to let EVERYONE know that the 'Rat campaign chairwoman actually ran an abortuary.
Thanks for the ping.
I found the thread/article that I posted from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review particularly disturbing because it associates cost of care with a duty to die. Once physician-assisted suicide becomes a treatment option, it will always be the cheaper treatment & will therefore become preferential. What blew me away was how many FReepers DON’T GET IT!!!!!!!!!!!
With few exceptions, retired people and even many people who still work are cheaper to kill than leave alive.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz took all the wrong lessons from the Holocaust. She uses it as a how-to guide for killing disabled people. She’s one of the most hateful specimens I’ve ever seen. I will always remember her for her hateful rants against disabled people who dare to keep breathing day after day. This week she’s pandering to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords for political gain, but she already came out against Giffords and others with similar injuries when she demanded they all die in whatever brutal fashion can be thought up.
bttt
This thread was started by a zotted troll.
Three and a half years ago, Terry Pratchett, the beloved author of the Discworld series, announced that he has early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Now he's made an even more startling announcement.
Pratchett, who has campaigned in his native United Kingdom for the right of assisted suicide, has begun the formal process of assisted suicide in Switzerland, one of the few countries in the world to legalize euthanasia. Specifically, this would take place at Dignitas, a clinic that provides qualified doctors and nurses to assist with the patients' suicides.
Dignitas has sent Pratchett the paperwork he needs to sign to begin the assisted suicide process—but he has yet to sign it.
(Excerpt) Read more at blastr.com ...
Threads by me.
"Freedom" is a highly cherished value in our society, not only in all aspects of life, but increasingly in aspects of death as well. The chant, "My life is mine" has also become, "My death is mine." There is a move in our country and in the world to permit the terminally ill to end their lives through euthanasia. Some claim that it is the ultimate civil liberty to decide the time and manner of one's own death. (A moment's thought about that idea, however, reveals its absurdity.)
For a Christian, however, is "my life" really "mine"? Is my death really mine? The answer has to be yes and no. It is mine in the sense that it has been given to me and nobody else; it is not mine alone, however, because I am not the source of my own existence, and I am accountable for it to another, namely, God. "You are not your own," St. Paul declares (1 Cor. 6:19). "If we live, we are responsible to the Lord, and when we die we are responsible to the Lord. Both in life and in death we belong to the Lord." ( See Romans 14:18). Not one of us decided the time or manner in which we came into this world. Our life is a sacred gift from God, and only He can give it. It is therefore His right alone to take us out of this world.
We do not possess a "right to die." A right is a moral claim. We do not have a claim on death; rather, death has a claim on us! Some see the "right to die" as parallel to the "right to life." In fact, however, they are opposite. The "right to life" is based on the fact that life is a gift which we do not possess as a piece of property ( which we can purchase or sell or give away or destroy at will ), but rather is an inviolable right. It cannot be taken away by another or by the person him/herself. The "right to die" is based, rather, on the idea of life as a "thing we possess" and may discard when it no longer meets our satisfaction. "Right to die" thinking says there is such a thing as a "life not worth living." For a Christian, however, life is worthy in and of itself, and not because it meets certain criteria that we or others set.
Must we, then, in the case of terminal illness, do everything and anything possible to stay alive, despite the condition we may be in? The answer to this is a clear NO. There is no law of any state or religion which says that we must stay alive at any cost. Death is an inevitable part of life, and when it is clear that God is calling us from this life, we accept His summons with faith. We firmly believe as Christians that life on this earth is not our final destiny or our highest good. "Our citizenship is in heaven." ( Phil. 3:20) "We have here no lasting city, but are seeking that which is to come" (Heb.13:14 ). All of our activities on earth, in fact, are meant to bring us closer to our true goal, union with God. In some circumstances, prolonging life would not serve that purpose, and may, because of severe burdens, hinder a person from drawing closer to God.
So the question is, "Where do we draw the line?" In serious illness, what means of treatment are we obliged to use, and what are we not required to use?
The means we use have traditionally been classified as either "ordinary" or "extraordinary." "Ordinary" means must always be used. This is any treatment or procedure which provides some benefit to the patient without excessive burden or hardship. "Extraordinary" means are optional. These are measures which do present an excessive burden, or simply do no good for the patient.
The distinction here is NOT between "artificial" and "natural." Many artificial treatments will be "ordinary" means in the moral sense, as long as they provide some benefit without excessive burden. It depends, of course, on the specific case in point, with all its medical details. We cannot figure out ahead of time, in other words, whether or not we ourselves or a relative want some specific treatment to be used on us "when the time comes," because we do not know in advance what our medical situation will be at the time. When the time does come, however, we must consult on the medical and moral aspects of the situation. Remember, procedures providing benefit without unreasonable hardship are obligatory; others are not. You should consult your clergyman when the situations arise.
What is never permitted, however, is any act or omission which causes, or is intended to cause, death, in order to remove a person from suffering. This is "euthanasia," sometimes called "mercy killing." We cannot take the life of another person, or our own, no matter what the good consequences may be. Most people who think euthanasia is a good idea are motivated by the fear of pain and the loss of control they will experience in terminal illness. Yet pain control in modern medicine has made very great progress; there are very few situations in which pain cannot be managed medically. Regarding control over our life, we need to adopt the approach that if we cannot cure, we care. Caring comes through the presence of loving, concerned people with whom the sick can share their thoughts and feelings and from whom they can receive respect and care for their emotional and spiritual needs even in the worst physical conditions. To give "dignity" to the dying is to always respect them as human persons with an eternal destiny, not to push for the option to kill them. A Christian, moreover, knows that suffering is not meaningless. It was by his suffering and cross that Christ redeemed the world. A Christian joins his/her suffering to Christ's, and has a part to play in saving the world as well.
One of the leading advocates of euthanasia, Derek Humphrey, writes, "The 1990's is the decade when the issue of voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill will be decided." (Dying With Dignity, p. 19) Christians must become more informed on this issue, and speak and act so that the issue is not only decided, but decided rightly. May God give us the wisdom and strength we will need.
____________________________________________________
Assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal in the states of Oregon and Washington, as well as in a handful of nations worldwide. Both here and abroad, pressure is mounting to legalize both evils beyond those sad places where they have already been accepted.
Behind a facade of objectivity, these evils are subtly promoted by many in the media in order to deform public opinion in their favor. We know their methods very well: through a selective presentation of news stories, movies and on television, they hope to slowly deform people's emotions, moving them to see that killing the unwanted is the compassionate thing to do.
This first method, to establish a misguided sense of compassion, is complemented by a second - to create fear that we will one day find ourselves in the same condition. We also see the verbal engineers at work, confusing hydration and feeding of the most severely disabled with an overuse of aggressive medical interventions. As we know, hydration and feeding do not cure any disease, they simply keep a person alive.
Living in Europe where the process of legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia is regrettably far more advanced than in America, I can't say enough how crucial it is that we strengthen our opposition to these evils. At a recent conference, I was honored to share the podium with several speakers who are working diligently to stop the slide down the slippery slope toward the wholesale destruction of all unwanted persons. The chairman of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Alex Schandenberg, who sponsored the Vancouver event last week, is to be congratulated for raising the profile of this very important issue.
The starting point for these evils is the liberal and materialistic view that man is the owner of his life; that he is free to choose the moment and manner of his death. Those who hold this view define suicide as "the last liberty of life."
Liberty of life? Yet these lies are becoming more mainstream all the time.
Sadly, as we have seen in the case of Terri Schiavo and too many others, most euthanasia is already essentially legal. The overt legalization of assisted suicide, however, will constitute a strong step towards the full legalization of euthanasia, and a serious blow to the already precarious legal protection of the sick, the disabled and the dying. If we adopt a law holding that a person has the right to kill himself, soon we will also adopt euthanasia; because if the individual has the right to say when his life is no longer worth living, soon society will claim this right as well.
This is the threat represented by a people whose ethics are utilitarian, and whose politics are socialist, particularly with regard to socialized medicine. The idea will soon take hold, thanks to those whom we have empowered to tell our story in the media, that it is too expensive to allow some persons to live, and since the government provides the care, the government will have to decide when their lives will end.
The next group that will be threatened, as we have seen historically, are those whose mental faculties are greatly diminished, or who are not considered useful to society. When the economic considerations are at the forefront of government run-medical care, we will see people opening up to programs that are not very different from the ones used by the Nazis.
We again see this form of murder defended in the supposedly "civilized", post-Nazi Europe. In the United Kingdom, popular writer Mary Warnock espouses the view that a person that suffers from dementia has, not the right, but the duty to die. She underlines that a person in this condition is wasting away the life of his relatives, as well as the resources of the National Health System.
The legalization of euthanasia is obviously the consequence of the decriminalization of abortion. Once society starts killing the ones that nobody sees, they begin to kill those they do see, the "unuseful" or "unfit." If we are not careful and strong in our actions against this attack, any persons at the end of their lives or who suffer an incurable illness will end up in a situation in which they will feel constrained to express their desire to die as their last duty of good manners towards the living.
What does tomorrow hold? Perhaps the killing of the politically incorrect - those who remind their fellow men that there is a God and everyone and everything depends on Him? Or will we be able to, by the grace of God, turn this around? Not that such an offering is on the table, and nobody wants to be a martyr, but if that is God's will for us, let us die reminding our countrymen of their duties towards God and men.
A total ban on assisted suicide and of any form of euthanasia is not only required morally, but is an act of social justice to protect the weak and vulnerable.
Thread by SanFranDan.
FULL TITLE: The breast cancer patients TOO OLD to save: Thousands are being denied surgery by 'ageist'
Mastectomy is the most effective treatment
Elderly women are being denied life-saving breast cancer surgery that is routinely given to younger patients, alarming research reveals.
Some doctors look at a patient’s age in their notes – and decide on a treatment plan before they have even met them, experts warn.
Their study, which provides evidence of ageism in the Health Service, found that 90 per cent of breast cancer patients aged 30-50 are offered surgery to remove tumours, compared with 70 per cent of those in their seventies.
Even women in their 50s are less likely than younger patients to have an operation.
Cancer specialist Dr Mick Peake said: ‘I’ve seen evidence of ageism when doctors are approaching the issue. Some take age as disproportionate evidence, often when they’ve never even met the patient.
‘I’d like patients and relatives to bang their fists on the table and say, “Why aren’t we getting this treatment?”,’ added Dr Peake, of the National Cancer Intelligence Network, which carried out the research.
An operation to remove part or all of the breast is the most effective treatment for breast cancer.
Patients are only offered chemotherapy or radiotherapy if the cancer has spread to such an extent that surgery is impossible.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Thread by me.
Karen Royle’s memories of the last precious hours with her cherished mother Rona are far from the serene, comforting images that she had hoped for.
Before arriving in Zurich, Karen, 51, had envisaged a pretty Swiss chalet, with perhaps a view of the Alps — ‘just like the pictures in the book Heidi, which I’d loved as a child’.
But the Dignitas ‘apartment’ at No 84 Gertrudestrasse, where 74-year-old Rona chose to end her life rather than succumb further to the ravages of Motor Neurone Disease (MND), bore no comparison to the picture-postcard tranquility her family had imagined.
The image Karen and her partner David Sweetman cannot erase from their minds is of a ‘blue tin shed’ on a barren industrial estate, with no views, just a scrubby patch of garden littered with cigarette butts.
Inside, the prefabricated structure was equally spartan, with no decorations apart from two roses, an angel-shaped candle and a silver-winged candle holder that the Royles, at Rona’s request, had brought with them.
‘That vision of what was little more than a blue tin shed will stay with me for the rest of my life,’ says David, a decorator.
‘It reminded me of a gas chamber. I felt like I was taking Rona to her execution.
‘When the taxi turned into that industrial estate, we were so horrified I just wanted to turn straight round and drive away. The only thing that stopped us was Rona’s determination to go through with it. I kept asking her: “Rona, are you sure about this?” But she never wavered. To this day, though, I can’t help but feel guilty for taking her there.’
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Thread by presidio9.
According to the Radiance Foundation, abortion and slavery have a lot more in common than you might have thought. And to make sure you see the link between the two, the Alpharetta-based foundation has started a campaign to prop up nearly 50 billboards across metro Atlanta.
The billboards feature such slogans as "The 13th Amendment Freed us. Abortion Enslaved Us" and "Abortion makes three-fifths human seem overly generous." The billboards popped up across metro Atlanta on Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.
The billboards are part of a campaign targeted at persuading black women from resorting to abortions. Black women account for 30 percent of abortions but are only 12 percent of the population.
The campaign has raised many eyebrows from organizations like the NAACP who told the Huffington Post that likening slavery to abortion is slightly offensive:
"Comparing abortion to slavery certainly raises major concerns," Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the NAACP, told HuffPost in an interview. "Women are not forced to have abortions the way they were in servitude. Slavery was about not having the right to make any decisions. Women were actually bred to produce children for the purposes of profit. This is so far removed from that, that if it weren't such a serious issue, it would almost be laughable." The foundation also launched other similar campaigns across the country in the past to target black women from contributing to the so called abortion "epidemic."
Thread by me.
In 1992, my friend Frances committed suicide on her 76th birthday. Frances was not terminally ill. She had been diagnosed with treatable leukemia and needed a hip replacement. Mostly, though, she was depressed by family issues and profoundly disappointed at where her life had taken her.
Something seemed very off to me about Frances’s suicide. So I asked the executor of her estate to send me the “suicide file” kept by the quintessentially organized Frances and was horrified to learn from it that she had been an avid reader of the (now defunct) Hemlock Quarterly, published by the aptly named Hemlock Society (which was since merged into the assisted-suicide advocacy group, Compassion and Choices). The HQ taught readers about the best drugs with which to overdose and gave precise instructions on how to ensure death with a plastic bag—the exact method used by Frances to end her life.
I was furious. Frances’s friends had known she was periodically suicidal and had intervened to help her through the darkness. The Hemlock Society had pushed Frances in the other direction, giving her moral permission to kill herself and then teaching her how to do it. This prompted the first of the many articles I have written over the years against assisted-suicide advocacy. It appeared in the June 28, 1993, Newsweek and warned about the cliff towards which assisted suicide advocacy was steering our society:
We don’t get to the Brave New World in one giant leap. Rather, the descent to depravity is reached by small steps. First, suicide is promoted as a virtue. Vulnerable people like Frances become early casualties. Then follows mercy killing of the terminally ill. From there, it’s a hop, skip, and a jump to killing people who don’t have a good “quality” of life, perhaps with the prospect of organ harvesting thrown in as a plum to society.
The other shoe—“organ harvesting”—has now dropped. Euthanasia was legalized in Belgium in 2002. It took six years for the first known coupling of euthanasia and organ harvesting, the case of a woman in a “locked in” state—fully paralyzed but also fully cognizant. After doctors agreed to her request to be lethally injected, she asked that her organs be harvested after she died. Doctors agreed. They described their procedure in a 2008 issue of the journal Transplant International:
This case of two separate requests, first euthanasia and second, organ donation after death, demonstrates that organ harvesting after euthanasia may be considered and accepted from ethical, legal, and practical viewpoints in countries where euthanasia is legally accepted. This possibility may increase the number of transplantable organs and may also provide some comfort to the donor and her family, considering that the termination of the patient’s life may be seen as helping other human beings in need for organ transplantation.
The idea of coupling euthanasia with organ harvesting and medical experimentation was promoted years ago by the late Jack Kevorkian, but it is now becoming mainstream. Last year, the Oxford bioethicist Julian Savulescu coauthored a paper in Bioethics arguing that some could be euthanized, “at least partly to ensure that their organs could be donated.” Belgian doctors, in particular, are openly discussing the nexus between euthanasia and organ harvesting. A June 10 press release from Pabst Science Publishers cited four lung transplants in Leuven from donors who died by euthanasia.
What’s more, Belgian doctors and bioethicists now travel around Europe promoting the conjoining of the two procedures at medical seminars. Their PowerPoint presentation touts the “high quality” of organs obtained from patients after euthanasia of people with degenerative neuro/muscular disabilities.
Coupling organ donation with euthanasia turns a new and dangerous corner by giving the larger society an explicit stake in the deaths of people with seriously disabling or terminal conditions. Moreover, since such patients are often the most expensive for whom to care, and given the acute medical resource shortages we face, one need not be a prophet to see the potential such advocacy has for creating a perfect utilitarian storm.
Some might ask, if these patients want euthanasia, why not get some good out of their deaths? After all, they are going to die anyway.
But coupling organ harvesting with mercy killing creates a strong emotional inducement to suicide, particularly for people who are culturally devalued and depressed and, indeed, who might worry that they are a burden on loved ones and society. People in such an anguished mental state could easily come to believe (or be persuaded) that asking for euthanasia and organ donation would give a meaning to their deaths that their lives could never have.
And it won’t stop there. Once society accepts euthanasia/organ harvesting, we will soon see agitation to pay seriously disabled or dying people for their organs, a policy that Kevorkian once advocated. Utilitarian boosters of such a course will argue that paying people will save society money on long-term care and allow disabled persons the satisfaction of benefiting society, while leaving a nice bundle for family, friends, or a charitable cause.
People with serious disabilities should be alarmed. The message that is being broadcast with increasing brazenness out of Belgium is that their deaths are worth more than their lives.
Thanks for the ping!
Thread by GonzoII.
INDIANAPOLIS, June 28, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Planned Parenthood’s request to block a provision of an Indiana law that requires doctors to tell women who are seeking abortions that “human physical life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm,” was denied by U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt last week.
“Plaintiffs contend that in the context of abortion, the meaning of these words, both individually and in combination, represent a plethora of opinions and beliefs about life and its inception. The Court respectfully disagrees,” wrote Pratt.
“When read together, the language crafted by the legislature in this provision supports a finding that the mandated statement refers exclusively to a growing organism that is a member of the Homo sapiens species.”
The judge disagreed with Planned Parenthood’s suggestion that the phrasing was “misleading.”
“Here, the mandated statement states only a biological fact relating to the development of the living organism; therefore, it may be reasonably read to provide accurate, non-misleading information to the patient,” the court wrote. “Under Indiana law, a physician must disclose the facts and risks of a treatment which a reasonably prudent physician would be expected to disclose under like circumstances, and which a reasonable person would want to know.”
Planned Parenthood of Indiana (PPIN) had also sought an injunction against another part of the same law, House Enrolled Act (HEA) 1210, which barred federal Medicaid funds from going to the abortion provider. Pratt granted that request, noting that the Obama administration had threatened to gut the state’s entire Medicaid allotment to save PPIN’s portion.
Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society, praised the judge for upholding scientific fact, but said that they would continue to ensure that the measure defunding Planned Parenthood goes into effect.
“While this is a significant partial victory for Life, we will press on to ensure that the full law will go into effect to defund Planned Parenthood in Indiana,” Brejcha said. “We stand ready to defend Life in other states as they plan to defund Planned Parenthood and require doctors to tell women that life begins at conception.”
Thread by markomalley.
December 16, 2010 will forever be the day that changed my life. I had just received a news flash across my monitor that the FDA had confirmed its advisory panel’s decision to ”de-label” the drug Avastin for breast cancer patients. The practical implication of this was that my wife Arlene was now at mortal risk.
My wife has stage IV or metastatic breast cancer. This is an incurable disease that claims the life of a woman every 14 minutes. A reported 17,500 women take Avastin for metastatic breast cancer and my wife is one of them. As Avastin is a unique drug that works by cutting off blood flow to tumors, we believe that the drug is saving my wife’s life and taking Avastin away is tantamount to a death sentence.
I picked up the phone to call my wife and tell her the news. When she answered, I was too choked-up to speak. The next five minutes were some of the worst moments of my life as I told my wife that bureaucrats in Washington were deciding to take away a drug that was keeping her alive.
I read a mountain of reports about the FDA’s Avastin decision and it become clear that it was corrupted with procedural problems (the Wall St. Journal referred to it as “rigged”), rendered almost meaningless by poor science and tainted by the bad faith of the FDA, which had moved the goalposts for approval of Avastin, almost after the game had been played.
The drug’s manufacturer, Genentech, said that it would file an appeal and the FDA granted a hearing for June 28 and 29 in Silver Spring, Maryland.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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