!
Posted on 03/31/2010 5:10:34 AM PDT by wagglebee
March 31st will mark the five-year anniversary of the needless death of my sister, Terri Schiavo.
It is difficult to believe this much time has passed since that horrible event which will be forever seared into my memory.
I wish I could say things have changed for the better since my sister’s death or that people with cognitive disabilities are now better protected in response to the horror she had to endure.
Tragically, however, it seems the rights of the brain-injured, elderly and others are still being violated.
All one has to do is look at what happened just last week. On March 21st, Fox aired an episode of The Family Guy that featured a "sketch" called "Terri Schiavo: The Musical." I was astonished at the producer’s cruel bigotry directed towards my sister and all cognitively disabled people.
Sadly, although more offensive than what my family has seen in the past from the media since Terri died, the bald-faced ignorance expressed in that episode of The Family Guy was nothing new. In fact, all signs indicate that we have embarked on a very disturbing path.
There is no disputing that Terri’s life – and death – had an astonishing impact on our nation. Our family still receives letters, emails and phone calls almost every day from people who tell us how Terri’s story touched them in profound ways, particularly when they come to know the facts.
Indeed, it was because of my family’s experience trying to protect Terri that we realized how all persons with similar cognitive disabilities are completely vulnerable to state laws that currently make it “legal” to deny them the most basic care – food and water.
This horrifying realization was why we established Terri’s Foundation. In Terri’s name, my family now works to protect tens of thousands of people with similar brain-injuries from having their fundamental freedoms taken away by an aggressive anti-life movement hell-bent on portraying severely disabled and otherwise vulnerable human beings as nothing more than “useless eaters”.
If the amount of phone calls we receive is any indication, what happened to Terri has become common. I think most people have no idea how our individual rights to make decisions about basic care like food and water, antibiotics, etc., have been so dramatically eroded. This not only includes family members advocating for loved ones but also protecting oneself by medical directive.
We recently heard from a woman whose mother was being cared for at a hospice facility. The daughter was powerless to effectively advocate for her mother because she had no power of attorney.
Even though she was her mother’s next-of-kin, and despite the fact her mother was begging her for food, the daughter was not allowed to feed her. It had been determined the mother was no longer able to swallow. But the daughter said her mother was eating safely just prior to being sent to hospice and questioned whether she still could. The mother was not given a feeding tube, and died just a short time later.
Perhaps the “Death Panels” Sarah Palin spoke of sounded like bombastic language. Yet when Palin added this term into our nation’s debate on health care, I believe she did not realize that many hospitals and facilities already have something frighteningly similar. Ethics committees are making many life and death decisions about patients, including whether to withhold simple provisions.
In a seemingly clandestine way, these ethics committees – comprised of medical and legal professionals – are empowering facilities to make life and death decisions independent of the family or a person’s own wishes.
The chilling stories we receive make it clear few citizens have any idea how vulnerable they are when it comes to judgments left in the hands of these ethics committees and facilities. And with the federal government now controlling our health care, there is no reason not to believe that these types of committees won’t become nationalized. Particularly when a health care system has been sabotaged by cost factors and quality of life judgments.
When our office receives phone calls from people fighting for their loved ones, I cannot help but look back and reflect on the courage of many individuals and groups who advocated on behalf of my sister.
As time has passed, however, many of those people, organizations and politicians – even many of our own friends – have fallen silent. Many who once ardently supported Terri’s life no longer actively educate or advocate for vulnerable patients.
With each troubling phone call from a frantic family, I am reminded there are countless other Terris in desperate need of our voice. Terri’s Foundation has been successful helping to save some, but sadly so many others have fallen victim.
I understand our nation faces many challenges today that may threaten our very existence. But how can we claim to be a just and honorable society, deserving of any blessing at all, if we richly reward hateful bigots while refusing to protect our weakest citizens?
Moreover, how did the tremendous courage and kindness we saw when we were fighting for Terri’s life have faded? How can any of us abandon this issue when all signs are that things are getting worse?
There are still many who support our efforts, who recognize the erosion of the value and dignity of the medically weak and who believe in protecting the life and liberty of all human beings.
The problem is their voices are often drowned out by the din of the pro-death lobby that claims death is the only dignified answer to a complicated problem.
Meanwhile the pro-death movement has not fallen silent. Rather, it has grown more vocal. The issue for them did not die with Terri. Indeed, their success in killing her seems to have only bolstered their determination to gain wider acceptance among the American people.
There will always be people with needs, there will always be others who work tirelessly to help them, and there will always be those who turn the other way; or worse – sit behind their drawing tables, disseminating cruel bigotry and hatred toward the disabled and vulnerable.
Until we all recognize that our inherit worth doesn’t change because of life’s circumstances, illness, disability or other events, we will continue to rob our most vulnerable of their right to fairness, justice and the ability to guide their own course in life.
Thread by rhema.
And these secularist religions have their violent radicals, too. The Earth Liberation Front, a little irony challenged, has burned Hummers in an attempt to save the Earth from air pollution and deadly carbon. And some abortion-stalwarts say they’ll give up their lives to insure the right of every woman to procure violent death within her own womb. Antonia Senior of in the Times of London, who–to her immense credit–is utterly honest about what abortion is and does, visits the Tower of London; after pondering martyrdom, Senior identifies what she will not die for (dolphins, England) and writes:
“I could think of one cause I would stake my life on: a woman’s right to be educated, to have a life beyond the home and to be allowed by law and custom to order her own life as she chooses. And that includes complete control over her own fertility.”
[...]
Any other conclusion is a convenient lie that we on the pro-choice side of the debate tell ourselves to make us feel better about the action of taking a life. That little seahorse shape floating in a willing womb is a growing miracle of life. In a resentful womb it is not a life, but a foetus — and thus killable.
[...]
As ever, when an issue we thought was black and white becomes more nuanced, the answer lies in choosing the lesser evil. The nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year are the lesser evil, no matter how you define life, or death, for that matter. If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too.
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
Two threads by me.
Ludwig Minelli, the head of Dignitas, is 77. A trained lawyer, he founded the assisted suicide organisation 12 years ago.
The organisation, whose slogan is '"live with dignity, die with dignity", has helped over 1,000 people to die.
Many of them are people who have travelled to Switzerland because assisted suicide is not permitted in their own countries.
Dignitas has the status of an association under Swiss law, with two active members, Mr Minelli and one other.
The identity of the other member has not been revealed.
These two active members control the policy and financing of Dignitas.
Question: You have been described as a man on a mission, a man on a crusade...
I wouldn't say a crusade but I am persuaded that we have to struggle in order to implement the last human right in our societies. And the last human right is the right to make a decision on one's own end, and the possibility to have this end without risk and without pain.
Many people would say though that if there are to be organisations which organise assisted suicide that there should be some rules around how they function.
Well there are rules but there are no state laws. We have our own rules and the first rule is that we never precipitate an assisted suicide. Every step must be initiated by the member and not by us. And the third rule is that we are always first looking whether we will be able to help someone to continue with life rather than to end life.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
__________________________________________________
July 8, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A letter written by Aycke Smook, a retired physician from Bergen Am Zee in the Netherlands, was published on the euthanasia lobby listserve to commemorate the death of Adelbert Josephus Jitta, a retired Dutch Prosecutor who had worked to change the euthanasia laws in the Netherlands.
The letter explains how Jitta and Smook worked together to change the Dutch laws by establishing euthanasia protocols in the hospital, by undermining the Dutch euthanasia law and by prosecuting cases that were designed to be struck down by the courts to establish precedents that allowed euthanasia.
Dr. Smook started the article from July 6, 2010 by stating:
I just attended the cremation of Adelbert Josephus Jitta, (Sept 24, 1938 to June 30, 2010).
He was one of the most important protagonists of the Dutch law on euthanasia as a member of D66, a liberal/democratic party.
When he was a prosecutor in Alkmaar, we met each other during a meeting about reporting euthanasia cases in our hospital. Fortunately the board of the hospital was not against euthanasia, because they said that it was a medical decision with legal aspects. This was in the early eighties.
It took us some time and sometimes a keen struggle to get a standard formal procedure, after some prosecutions in one of which he had to prosecute me!
When he informed about that, he said that he had asked one of his colleagues to handle the case and that he already had asked Eugene Sutorius to defend me. After two years of uncertainty and the expense of 40,000 guilders, first paid by the NVVE, later by my insurance company, I was cleared.
And so by trial and error, we succeeded in the end to lay the foundation for our law in the Netherlands in 2002.
It was not an easy period for both of us, working in our totally different disciplines. The good thing of it was that from then on we could openly speak about euthanasia.
Dr. Smook then explains some of the cases Jitta was involved with. Dr. Smook stated:
When I started as a surgeon treating patients with cancer, we, the head nurse of the department and I gave the last medication behind closed doors on explicit demand of the patient. It was tricky but we had a good feeling about it, because in this way we could carry out the last wish of the patient.
After Adelbert and I started working on a new hospital euthanasia protocol, we once had a patient in the hospital who wanted euthanasia. But alas, it was during the weekend and he (Adelbert) and his family were out sailing and since this happened before the mobile telephone era I could not reach him. Half an hour after we had reported, as agreed, the euthanasia to the local coroner, the police came bursting in the department.
I think you can imagine the dreadful shock this created on all the nurses, patients and family around us. Adelbert had not yet informed all his colleagues and other people concerned. I was completely overwhelmed and very angry, but after an ample discussion and a good glass of wine, we could continue and refine the protocol.
The letter then explains his involvement with the euthanasia lobby. Dr. Smook writes:
He also was a speaker at the Maastricht conference in 1990 and at the WF (World Federation) meeting in Melbourne. When he stepped down as a prosecutor, he strengthened the board of NVVE. After his retirement he went on with his activities on euthanasia in the member support group of NVVE.
He was a widower for about two years now, which he found hard to accept. When he fell ill, he could take advantage of his own success for which he fought for years in the end.
Many people wonder what happened in the Netherlands. Why would a country that courageously opposed the Nazis and which refused to institute the T4 euthanasia program institute a wide open system of euthanasia that even accepts the euthanasia of newborn infants with disabilities through the Groningen Protocol, and the euthanasia of people with mental illness and depression?
The answer is that it was planned by a small group of people who were willing to put their professional lives on the line.
Reversing the cultural trend will likely require the same commitment.
Thread by nhungerford.
Racist eugenicist and Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger would be so proud:
"According to the city Health Department, 2008 saw 89,469 abortions performed in New York City — seven for every 10 live births. Among black women, abortions out number live births by three to two."
These statistics from New York City more closely resemble the abortion mill culture of post-communist countries like China and Russia (who have historically devalued the worth of individual human life in favor of the collective good), than the old Clintonian mantra, “safe, legal and rare.”
I realize that many people, liberal and otherwise, are proponents of abortion choice, but the situation in New York City raises important ethical questions on the consequences of this perspective: Even if one is in favor of legalized abortion, does such a person want to live in a society in which more people are aborted than born? My guess is that most people do not. Secondly, if the answer is indeed no, how do we avoid this situation? A system which merely offers abortion as an alternative cannot discriminate between what pro-choice people deem as acceptable reasons for abortion and say, a woman who wants to use it as birth control. You have to allow them all.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...
Please DO NOT click the links on this thread if you are not prepared for it!
Thread by mlizzy.
GRAPHIC! The mother and abortionists of this baby should be put up against a wall and executed.
(Excerpt) Read more at truthtube.tv ...
Thanks for the ping!
!
FYI - This is a day or two old, but I've posted it on the CA state message board as "Breaking". If someone wants to make it a thread, do it.
The pro-life community in Redwood City recently arrived at their local Planned Parenthood clinic to find this sign announcing the clinic has CLOSED!
“Now there are 11 cities and one Planned Parenthood”
Planned Parenthood closes one of two abortion centers in San Mateo County - (July 15, 2010)
Full details: http://calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=5d46c6bc-1aed-40d8-aa43-1a1b1689641a
From email, from: http://www.40daysforlife.com/sacramento/
Thread by me.
ROCKFORD, Illinois, July 9, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The staff at the Rockford abortion mill, which has been blaring the radio through its speakers to drown out pro-life counselors for several weeks, got an unpleasant surprise Friday morning when a local D.J. found out what his show was being used for.
LifeSiteNews.com has reported numerous times on the bizarre Rockford abortuary, which has taken to taunting pro-life witnesses with signage and other paraphernalia mocking Christianity and Jesus Christ, and even directing personal insults at local pro-lifers. (See coverage here)
The facility’s latest form of harassment, blasting a radio talk show through its outdoor speakers to keep women from hearing the message of pro-life counselors gathered outside, backfired when D.J. Doug McDuff's scheduled talk show guest cancelled, and he opened the phone lines for comment.
Seeing his chance, Rockford pro-life veteran Kevin Rilott whipped out his cell phone and was on air within seconds, loud and clear outside the abortion centre where he was standing. Rilott took the opportunity to explain to McDuff and his listeners how the radio station, WNTA, was being used to silence pro-lifers' attempt to help mothers in need.
McDuff, none too pleased, decided to take matters into his own hands. "God bless pro-lifers! God bless pro-lifers! God bless pro-lifers!" the D.J. shouted.
One of the staff members, who was walking from across the parking lot at that moment, was so aghast, Rilott told LifeSiteNews.com, that "I thought she was going to have a heart attack."
"The abortion mill nurse who heard this began waving her arms around her head like she couldn't believe what was being broadcast over the abortion mill public address system," related Rilott. "The look of almost terror and confusion on her face was priceless as she scrambled into the mill."
The D.J. then gave Rilott airtime to explain how those who keep vigil outside the Rockford mill come "to offer love, help, and hope to mothers in need," and to request prayer for mothers in need and an end to abortion.
The landlord of the abortion mill, still determined to drown out both the radio and the pro-lifers, charged outdoors with a chainsaw running. But even that was not enough to prevent at least one mother from hearing the message and choosing life for her baby.
Rilott said that a woman who had entered the clinic earlier in the morning left after the incident, before the abortionist arrived for the day. "She certainly heard it inside the clinic, and when she left she gave us a big smile and thumbs-up, and she left before the abortionists arrived," he told LSN. "So it was a good day."
Thread by Nachum.
It is a decision no parent ever wants to make. But as the Rudd family watched their 43-year-old son lying paralysed and comatose on a life support machine, they came to a terrible conclusion.
Recalling a conversation where Richard told them he wouldn't want to be trapped in a useless body, his relatives agreed it was time to let him go.
Yet even as the Rudd family mentally prepared to say goodbye, his doctor made a startling discovery.
Despite his devastating spinal injuries, Richard Rudd was still able to blink his eyes in response to simple questions.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Thread by me.
The euthanasia agenda pretends to be narrow, but in actuality, it is very broad. We have discussed the evidence of this repeatedly over the years at SHS.
Further proof came today when I was asked whilst here in Perth to review the Western Australia Euthanasia Bill 2010. The bill would legalize doctors killing their terminally ill patients who ask for it. But the definition of terminal illness is so broad that people who might live decades would qualify. From the bill:
Terminal illness means a medically diagnosed illness or condition that will, in reasonable medical judgment, in the normal course and wiothout the application of extreme measures [whatever that means], result in the death of the the applicant within 2 years of the date on which the request was made.
Here’s the thing: Doctors usually can’t predict that far out when someone will die. People expected to live two years, might live ten or twenty. Heck, they might not expire of the supposedly condition at all.
Here’s another matter I noticed that is ubiquitous in euthanasia/assisted suicide advocacy schemes, but rarely bring up: The bill gives a blanket priviledge to doctors from criminal and civil liability for performing euthanasia. How ironic: A doctor who treats a patient could face liability for failing to meet the standard of care. The same doctor who killed the patient would not be held to account for any standard of professionalism. That means the bottom feeders who can’t do anything else could easily be attracted–like Kevorkian–to a killing practice.
"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."
Thanks for the ping!
“’For my part, I’m glad he’s alive and didn’t make a living will. If he had, then we would never have known whether it was worth continuing with the treatment.”
Another “living wills” are a crock story.
bttt
Thread by mlizzy.
Springfield, IL (April 13, 2010) – A new Nebraska law will allow women to sue abortion providers for psychological injuries related to unwanted, coerced or unsafe abortions, according to the Stop Forced Abortions Alliance.
"This is the first law in the country that allows women to hold abortionists accountable for negligent pre-abortion screening and counseling," said Paula Talley, one of the organizers of Stop Forced Abortions. "If it had been in place in 1980, I would have been spared the years of grief, depression, and substance use which followed my own unwanted abortion."
Judicial rules normally do not allow women to sue for psychological injuries after abortion unless the injuries stem from a physical injury. The new Nebraska law is the first law in the country to eliminate the requirement that the woman must prove that psychological injuries from an abortion stemmed from a physical injury.
The law also puts into place a specific standard of care for appropriate pre-abortion screening. Abortion providers may be sued for negligence if they fail to ask a woman if she is being pressured, coerced or forced to have an abortion. They may also be held liable if they fail to screen women for other statistically significant risk factors that may put them at higher risk for psychological or physical complications following an abortion.
Research has found that as many as 64 percent of women feel pressured by others to have an abortion. In addition, one study found that even though more than half of women reported feeling rushed or uncertain about the abortion, 84 percent said they did not receive adequate counseling and 67 percent said they weren't counseled at all.
In Talley's case, she said, the pressure to abort came from her employer.
"My abortion counselor never asked if I was being pressured," Talley said. "Nor did she inquire about my psychological history. If she had, she should have known that I was at higher risk of experiencing post-abortion trauma because I had a history of depression. Plus, I had moral beliefs against abortion, but I was rushing into a poorly thought out decision because I was so filled with fear and panic.
"If the abortion counselor had bothered to ask the right questions, she would have seen that I was more likely to be hurt than helped by the abortion, But I was never warned. They just took my money, and my baby, no questions asked."
The measure easily sailed through Nebraska's Unicameral Legislature with a 40-9 majority. Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman is scheduled to sign the bill today. The law will go into effect on July 15.
Legislators Argue Burden and Constitutionality
The law requires that abortion providers must screen women for risk factors that have been established in the research for a year or more prior to the abortion. Legislators opposing the bill argued that it would be nearly impossible for abortion providers to keep track of all the research on risks factors. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Cap Dierks, disagreed.
Dierks said that a report from the American Psychological Association found that an average of 12 studies per year are published on the subject.
"Surely it’s not too much to ask abortion providers to read 12 studies per year," Dierks said. "Women rightly expect their doctors to keep up to date on their area of specialty. Why would we want the standard of care for abortion to be less than that for other medical procedures?"
Among those opposing the bill was Sen. Danielle Conrad, who argued that abortion providers are already giving women sufficient information.
"We do not need an additional layer on top of that," she said. She also argued that the bill was unconstitutional and placed an undue burden on women.
But Sen. Brad Ashford, an attorney and the chair of the Judiciary Committee that reviewed the bill, told the Legislature that the law did not raise any obvious constitutional issues because it relies only on civil remedies and does not place any burdens on women. He said that any burden caused by the screening requirements falls primarily on the abortion provider, not on the women whose rights are expanded by the bill.
State Lobbying Effort Focused on Injured Women
Greg Schleppenbach, Director of Pro-Life Activities for the Nebraska Catholic Conference, led the lobbying effort for the legislation. He said that "women deserve better than one-size-fits-all counselingor no counseling at all."
"Ninety-nine percent of abortions in Nebraska take place in two abortion facilities," Schleppenbach said. "Their informed consent counseling consists of recorded phone messages 24 hours before the abortions and most women never see the abortion provider except during the 10 minutes or so he is doing the abortion. Women deserve better."
Schleppenbach said that the stories he had heard from women who have suffered from emotional problems after an abortion provided the impetus for passing legislation that would improve their right to redress.
"Most people don’t realize that under the existing rules of law, it is essentially impossible for women to hold abortion providers liable for inadequate screening and counseling," he said. "This is why the standard of care for abortion counseling has fallen to such a dismal level. If abortion providers face no liability for inadequate screening, cost-cutting measures will inevitably lead to an assembly line process with one-size-fits-all counseling.”
Twenty-Five Year Effort to Change Malpractice Laws
Dierks’ bill was patterned after model legislation called the Protection from Coerced and Unsafe Abortions Act. The legislation was developed by the Elliot Institute, a post-abortion research and education group based in Springfield, Ill.
Elliot Institute Director Dr. David Reardon said that inspiration for the bill came from a 1985 article written by the group Feminists for Life.
"The article was identifying obstacles and loopholes in the law that made it nearly impossible for women to recover damages for abortion related injuries," Reardon said. "Plus, the short statute of limitations when dealing with medical procedures meant it was likely that women injured by abortion wouldn't be emotionally ready to come forward until it was too late. The article said this was similar to cases in which women who have been raped may feel too ashamed or afraid to come forward."
Reardon—who is the author of numerous studies linking abortion to higher rates of suicide, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse—said these observations shed new light on something he had been observing in the medical literature on abortion.
"Nearly every study done on abortion and mental health, whether before or since 1985, has found that certain subgroups of women were at higher risk of negative reactions," he said. "Most of these studies have been done by pro-choice researchers, so you can’t accuse them of bias. Many of the researchers openly recommend that these risk factors should be used to screen for at-risk patients so they could be given more pre- and post-abortion counseling."
One such study was published in a 1972 issue of Family Planning Perspectives, a publication of Planned Parenthood. The authors of that study found four risk factors that reliably predicted more post-abortion problems. They suggested that pre-abortion screening should be done using a short psychological profile which could be administered for less than a dollar per patient.
A similar 1977 study identified five risk factors that accurately predicted which women would have subsequent problems adjusting after abortion 72 percent of the time. But in interviewing women who were experiencing problems after abortion, Reardon found that abortion providers were ignoring the research. He was unable to find evidence that even one clinic in the country was doing evidenced-based pre-abortion screening.
Reardon said that this observation, combined with the insights from the Feminists for Life article, made him realize that the loophole in the law protecting abortion providers from liability for psychological injuries meant they could simply ignore all of the research on screening and risk factors. In fact, if proper screening led to a reduction of abortion rates among coerced and high risk women, they might actually lose money.
Reardon believes this lack of screening is an act of a medical negligence in and of itself.
"Without screening, it is impossible for a doctor to give informed medical advice," he said. "Performing an abortion on request, regardless of the risks, is contrary to both medical ethics and the law."
"If a woman walks into a doctor’s office and says, 'I have a lump in my breast and need a mastectomy,' and the doctor says ‘Jump up on the table and we’ll take it right out,' we don’t call that medicine. We call that malpractice. Added to that, the situation with abortion is even worse because many women and girls are having abortions they don’t really want, due to lack of resources and support, pressure, coercion, threats, emotional blackmail, disinformation or even force from others."
Reardon said that while Roe v Wade created a right for women to seek an abortion in consultation with a physician, the Supreme Court also wrote that "the abortion decision in all its aspects is inherently, and primarily, a medical decision, and basic responsibility for it must rest with the physician."
Reardon believes that Roe intended for doctors to be held liable for inadequate screening and counseling.
"Nebraska has now done what the states should have been doing a long time ago," he said. "They have removed the loopholes in civil law that prevent women from being able to hold abortionists accountable for the negligent screening that predictably leads to so many unwanted, unsafe, and unnecessary abortions."
Thread by marshmallow.
No philosopher ever proposed a more simple and straightforward view of life than the one Ayn Rand urges upon us.
"Yes, this is an age of moral crisis … Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley and the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality …. but to discover it."
Thus spake, not Zarathustra, but Ayn Rand's philosophical mouthpiece, John Galt, the protagonist of her principal novel, Atlas Shrugged. The "moral crisis" to which he refers is the conflict between altruism, which is radically immoral, and individualism, which provides the only form of true morality possible. Altruism, for Galt and Rand, leads to death; individualism furnishes the only path that leads to life. Thus, in order to go on living with any degree of authenticity, we must abandon the immoral code of altruism and embrace the vivifying practice of individualism.
Throughout the course of history, according to Ayn Rand, there have been three general views of morality. The first two are mystical, which, for Rand, means fictitious, or non-objective. The third is objective, something that can be verified by the senses. Initially, a mystical view reigned, in which the source of morality was believed to be God's will. This is not compatible either with Rand's atheism, or her objectivism. In due course, a neo-mystical view held sway, in which the "good of society" replaced the "will of God. The essential defect of this view, like the first, is that it does not correlate with an objective reality. "There is no such entity as 'society,'" she avers. And since only individuals really exist, the so-called "good of society" degenerates into a state where "some men are ethically entitled to pursue any whims (or any atrocities) they desire to pursue, while other men are ethically obliged to spend their lives in the service of that gang's desires."
Only the third view of morality is realistic and worthwhile. This is Rand's objectivism, a philosophy that is centred exclusively on the individual. It is the individual alone that is real, objective, and the true foundation for ethics. Therefore, Rand can postulate the basic premise of her philosophy: "The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A – and Man is Man."
An individual belongs to himself as an individual. He does not belong, in any measure, to God or to society. A corollary of Rand's basic premise is that "altruism," or the sacrifice of one's only reality – one's individuality – for a reality other than the self, is necessarily self-destructive and therefore immoral. This is why she can say that "altruism holds death as its ultimate goal and standard of value." On the other hand, individualism, cultivated through the "virtue of selfishness," is the only path to life. "Life," she insists, "can be kept in existence only by a constant process of self-sustaining action." Man's destiny is to be a "self-made soul."
Man, therefore, has a "right to life." But Rand does not mean by this statement that he has a "right to life" that others have a duty to defend and support. Such a concept of "right to life" implies a form of "altruism," and consequently is contrary to the good of the individual. In fact, for Rand, it constitutes a form of slavery. "No man," she emphasizes, "can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as 'the right to enslave.'" Moreover, there are no rights of special groups, since a group is not an individual reality. As a result, she firmly denies that groups such as the "unborn," "farmers," "businessmen," and so forth, have any rights whatsoever.
Making sacrifices for one's born or unborn children, one's elderly parents or other family members becomes anathema for Ayn Rand.
Her notion of a "right to life" begins and ends with the individual. In this sense, "right to life" means the right of the individual to pursue, through the rational use of his power of choice, whatever he needs in order to sustain and cultivate his existence. "An organism's life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is evil." As Rand has John Galt tell her readers, "There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence." Man's existence must stay in existence. This is the mandate of the individual and the utility of the virtue of selfishness. Non-existence is the result of altruism and careens toward death. Making sacrifices for one's born or unborn children, one's elderly parents or other family members becomes anathema for Ayn Rand. She wants a Culture of Life to emerge, but she envisions that culture solely in terms of individuals choosing selfishly, the private goods of their own existence. If ever the anthem for a pro-choice philosophy has been recorded, it comes from the pen of Ayn Rand: "Man has to be man – by choice; he has to hold his life as a value – by choice; he has to learn to sustain it – by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practise his virtues – by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality."
No philosopher ever proposed a more simple and straightforward view of life than the one Ayn Rand urges upon us. Man=Man; Existence = Existence; only individuals are real; all forms of altruism are inherently evil. There are no nuances or paradoxes. There is no wisdom. There is no depth. Complex issues divide reality into simple dichotomies. There is individualism and altruism, and nothing in between. Despite the apparent superficiality of her philosophy, Rand considered herself history's greatest philosopher after Aristotle.
******************************
Barbara Branden tells us, in her book, The Passion of Ayn Rand, of how Miss Rand managed to make the lives of everyone around her miserable, and when her life was over, she had barely a friend in the world. She was contemptuous even of her followers. When Rand was laid to rest in 1982 at the age of 77, her coffin bore a six-foot replica of the dollar sign. Her philosophy, which she adopted from an early age, helped to assure her solitude: "Nothing existential gave me any great pleasure. And progressively, as my idea developed, I had more and more a sense of loneliness." It was inevitable, however, that a philosophy that centred on the self to the exclusion of all others would leave its practitioner in isolation and intensely lonely.
Ayn Rand's philosophy is unlivable, either by her or anyone else. A philosophy that is unlivable can hardly be instrumental in building a Culture of Life. It is unlivable because it is based on a false anthropology. The human being is not a mere individual, but a person. As such, he is a synthesis of individual uniqueness and communal participation. Man is a transcendent being. He is more than his individuality.
The Greeks had two words for "life": bios and zoe. Bios represents the biological and individual sense of life, the life that pulsates within any one organism. This is the only notion of life that is to be found in the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Zoe, on the other hand, is shared life, life that transcends the individual and allows participation in a broader, higher, and richer life.
In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis remarks that mere bios is always tending to run down and decay. It needs incessant subsidies from nature in the form of air, water, and food, in order to continue. As bios and nothing more, man can never achieve his destiny. Zoe, he goes on to explain, is an enriching spiritual life which is in God from all eternity. Man needs Zoe in order to become truly himself. Man is not simply man; he is a composite of bios and zoe.
Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblance there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.
The transition, then, from bios to zoe (individual life to personal, spiritualized life; selfishness to love of neighbor) is also the transition from a Culture of Death to a Culture of Life.
Thread by me.
LONDON, July 21, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A disabled British man with “locked-in” syndrome due to a stroke in 2005 is seeking a court order allowing his wife to kill him without fear of prosecution.
Tony Nicklinson, a 56 year-old engineer in Melksham, Wiltshire, is completely paralyzed and unable to speak. He communicates with the use of a Perspex board and letters, looking, blinking and nodding to spell out words. He said through his lawyers that he is “fed up with life” and does not wish to spend the next 20 years in this condition.
Under the current law, the lawyers said, the only way he could end his life was by withdrawal of food and water, but Nicklinson wants his wife Jane to be allowed to inject him with a lethal dose of drugs, something she has said she is prepared to do.
The legal team has launched a request of the Director of Public Prosecutions asking if Jane Nicklinson would be prosecuted for murder if she were to kill her husband at his own request.
Jane told the BBC that her husband wants the same “rights” as everyone else to commit suicide. “He wants to be able to take his own life at a time that he chooses," she told the BBC. “He has no quality of life at all.”
“He just wants the same rights as everyone else. I mean, you or I can go out and commit suicide. He can't. That right was taken away from him the day he had his stroke.”
Bindmans, the solicitors acting on his family's behalf, however, did not mention “assisted suicide” in their statement, referring more forthrightly to changing the laws on homicide.
“Tony Nicklinson contends that the current law of murder, which prohibits in absolute terms all intentional killing, whatever the motive and regardless of the ‘victim’s’ wishes, constitutes an interference with his rights to respect for his private life under Article 8 (1) of the European Convention of Human Rights.
“He states that he is not depressed and he is not in need of counselling. He has had almost four years to think about his future, and he does not relish the prospect.”
The news has prompted criticism from a disability rights group which says that Nicklinson’s request will undermine the absolute value of human life in the law. Janet Thomas of No Less Human said, “The killing of vulnerable, innocent people, whether able-bodied or not, is never right, even when those people ask to be killed. The deliberate killing of any innocent person damages the interests of us all.”
“Mr. Nicklinson feels he wants to die because of his disabilities - as if human value and worth are to be measured by physical ability. Human worth lies not in what people can do but in what they inherently are. Each human life whether damaged or not whether a short one or a long one is a gift of incomparable value.”
Thomas said that disabled people can come to terms with their condition and have it improved with “positive help and support from family, friends and the community, and by a refusal to accept that there is any life which is worthless.”
“Society, through its laws against murder and assisted suicide, comes down in favour of life. Every time someone decides that there are lives not worth living, he or she damages the security of all of us.”
In September last year, Britain’s Director of Public Prosecutions announced that the assisted suicide law would not be enforced in cases where it was judged that a person acted out of “compassion” in helping a relative or loved-one who had indicated a “clear, settled and informed wish to commit suicide” to carry about that wish. The announcement followed a decision by the Law Lords, at the request of assisted suicide campaigner Debbie Purdie, that the law should be “clarified.”
The Care Not Killing Alliance warned at the time that the decision would threaten the lives of vulnerable disabled people, saying that they “reject the concept of a ‘compassionate homicide’ and we reject the concept that a person that assists the suicide of another person is acting in a compassionate manner.”
The massive positive publicity surrounding the Purdie case and numerous high profile cases in which public figures have committed suicide at the Dignitas facility in Switzerland, has shifted public opinion in favor of legalizing assisted suicide in Britain. In January, a YouGov poll found that four out of five respondents supported a change in the law.
Thread by me.
I have been repeatedly asked my views about the Final Exit Network advocacy billboards that push assisted suicide. I was going to post on it, but I was interviewed by Fox News Network on the issue, and I think my comments to Fox’s reporter will suffice. From the story:
A national right-to-die organization has launched a controversial billboard campaign to inform terminally ill and elderly adults that they have a right to end their own lives — but critics say the group is simply preying on vulnerable senior citizens and mentally unstable people.
Well, FEN has never advocated restricting assisted suicide to the terminally ill. Moreover, they have assisted suicides of people who were not dying–a point I made abundantly clear:
But others say Final Exit’s mission is unethical … and illegal. “The signs communicate a pro-suicide message that sends a dangerous message throughout society, including to people like the young who would not legally qualify for a lethal prescription,” said Wesley J. Smith, a California-based bioethicist who opposes assisted suicide. “I think they are trying to make themselves seem like an advocacy group rather than one in which some of its members engage in criminal suicide facilitation,” he said.
The story details allegations and pleas of FEN activists assisting suicides of people who clearly were not dying–which I covered here when it happened:
But Final Exit members, including Egbert, also are alleged to have been involved in the 2007 death of an Arizona woman, Jana Van Voorhis, who suffered from a serious mental illness, not a debilitating physical illness. Wye Hale-Rowe, then 79, and retired college professor Frank Langsner, who provided her guidance, as well as two other senior Final Exit officials — Egbert and Roberta Massey — were charged in the case that will go to trial next month. Hale-Rowe pleaded guilty in January to facilitation to commit manslaughter, a felony. She struck a plea deal with county prosecutors and agreed to testify against the three remaining defendants in the case…
Smith says the Voorhis case “shattered” the “pretense that the minions who participate in the Final Exit Network are mere counselors — rather than mobile assisted suicide clinics.”…Smith questions Final Exit’s judgment of “suffering” individuals and asks people to “take the time to look beneath the political posturing and the true agenda — death on demand for people with more than a transitory desire to die — comes clearly into focus.” “I think it is worth pointing out that the logic of these ideologues is impeccable. Once you accept the belief that killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering, assisting the suicides of the mentally ill — whose suffering is often far worse than those with physical illnesses — can become compelling,” he said.
Proof of my points are found in the last paragraph from an “alternative” suicide counselor–who is clearly pro suicide–wants people to be able to choose not to burden others by being made dead:
But Carolanne Cortese Barton of Alternate Group Counseling in Bayonne, N.J., says she sees the logic behind the billboard campaign, “because in life everyone has a choice, this really is all we have.” “Family traditions have changed and children are no longer able to take their elderly parents into their homes for care anymore and therefore have to send them to nursing homes,” Barton said. She said the billboards create awareness that there are options out there for people who are suffering and do not want their families to suffer further by paying for treatment and care.
Wow. Honesty. How unusual in the drive to legalize assisted suicide. Whether she is right is the debate we should be having.
"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."
Rand ping....
Thanks for the ping!
Very helpful thread!
I’ve been slogging my way thru Atlas Shrugged with amazement
at its timeless application to today’s crisis du jour.
I plan to re-read this analysis again and continue my reading with
it in mind.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.