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Paris now has a vigorous new pro-life advocate for its archbishop! Archbishop Aupetit, 66, was something of a “late vocation” (if you only count the priesthood as a vocation): He was ordained at age 44, after a previous vocation as a medical doctor. He practiced medicine from 1979 to 1990 and taught bioethics until 2006. His book, L’Embryon, Quells Enjeux? (The Embryo: What Are the Stakes? Paris: Éditions Salvator, 2008) is a vigorous defense of the unborn child. Archbishop Aupetit is very much a Renaissance man: As he notes in his book, “We have tried to visit the different domains...

“This French secularism, which sometimes surprises our neighbours, is a powerful cement in a country torn by so many wars of religion." - Emmanuel Macron President Emmanuel Macron has hinted at controversial changes in France’s bioethics law this year at the same time as he invited the country’s religious leaders to participate fully in the public debate about reforms the Catholic Church opposes. Addressing senior clergy at a New Year’s reception, the president said his role was to ensure both that France debated the bioethics reforms seriously and that it adapted its laws responsibly to changes in technology and society....

Belgian doctors fear the number of French people heading over the border to seek help to end their lives could shoot up and are warning that the road to the end is paved with problems. With the number of French people considering euthanasia as a viable way to end their daily suffering on the rise, the burden is largely falling on neighbouring Belgium. While active euthanasia, by which a person deliberately causes the patient's death, remains illegal in France, the procedure became legal in Belgium 15 years ago. What's the law in France? During Francois Hollande's leadership in March 2015,...

France on Wednesday kicked off a marathon round of talks designed to inform the country’s legislation on bioethics, with the government hoping to avoid a repeat of the poisonous debate that hijacked the legalisation of same-sex marriage. The six-month consultation, involving scientists, medical practitioners and legal experts from across France, will lead to a revised bioethics law, slated for later this year. It will touch on a broad range of subjects, from legalizing euthanasia to the development of artificial intelligence. Some of the topics up for discussion represent a political minefield in France, and President Emmanuel Macron will be keen...

A faith-based care facility in Canada has lodged a complaint against an abortion doctor for “sneaking” into the institution and “killing” a resident. The Louis Brier Nursing Home has notified the British Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons that Dr. Ellen Wiebe of the Willow Women’s abortion clinic helped end the life of an 87-year-old resident, Barry Hyman, without the facility’s permission. The care home is an Orthodox Jewish institution. Although it permits residents to be assessed for voluntary euthanasia, it forbids the actual killing of residents on the premises. Active euthanasia, or “medical assistance in dying,” has been legal...

The Vatican and the Italian Church have lost the battle over the introduction of an Italian euthanasia law without fighting according to the former archbishop of Ferrara-Comacchio, Italy, Monsignor Luigi Negri. For Negri this is “serious and sad”. Talking to La Fede Quotidiana (December 2017) Negri said that this state of affairs evoked in him “bitterness and disappointment”. To the question whether he would have expected clearer words from the bishops and from the episcopal leadership, Negri replies, “I no longer expect anything from anyone.” La La Fede Quotidiana points out that the Polish bishops have succeeded in changing politics...

  The Renzi-Gentiloni governments will go down in history as those that imposed two of the most wicked laws in the Italian Republic: pseudo-homosexual-marriage, called “Civil Unions” (May 20th 2016) and euthanasia, under the name of the “living will" or DAT (Dichiarazione anticipata di trattamento [Declaration Advance of Treatment]), approved definitively by the Senate on December 14th 2017. This law will be registered in the Official Journal on the fortieth anniversary of the legalization of abortion, which  passed on May 22, 1978 with Law 194.  Thus the circle closes. Forty years of aggression against life and the family between abortion...

According to La Bussola Quotidiana, the Italian euthanasia law, adopted on December 14, is the most permissive in the world. It introduces a right to die and to kill, and obliges the doctor to participate in the killings. Parents and legal representatives are allowed to decide over the fate of their children and those unable to decide like elderly people. A patient can use any reason to invoke a “right to die”. Sandro Magister writes on December 21 that from Pope Francis “there has come not a single word of criticism.” L’Osservatore Romano covered the approval of the law according...

Oct. 19 (UPI) -- A New Jersey family who took their dog to be euthanized were shocked to discover five months later that the canine was alive and living with a veterinary worker. Keri and Lonnie Levy said they took their 15-year-old miniature pinscher, Caesar, to be euthanized May 17 at the Briarwood Veterinary Hospital because he was suffering from a long-term illness that left him in declining health with a poor quality of life. "[Keri] picked up the collar. And actually paid her bill and received, even, a letter from the veterinary offices stating their condolences on the loss...

This should be instructive: After remarking on the need for a consistent pro-life approach on immigration in the US, Pope Francis might have to clean house on that topic with religious brothers closer to home. The Belgian Brothers of Charity issued a defiant statement today after a Vatican order to stop offering euthanasia, especially in non-terminal cases, for their psychiatric patients. Rather than comply, the monks insist that they have plenty of room within Catholic teaching to assist in suicides when patients request it: Go here to read the rest.  So here we have Catholic Monks killing people in defiance of Church...

Brussels, Belgium - The board of the Belgian Brothers of Charity announced Tuesday it will continue offering euthanasia to patients in their psychiatric centres, despite being ordered by the Vatican to stop doing so. The “Broeders van Liefde” board had been given until the end of August to comply with the Vatican order, which was seen and approved by Pope Francis. Brothers of the order were also asked to sign a joint letter to their general superior, Brother René Stockman, confirming their adherence to Church teaching.In a Sept. 12 statement the organization defied the Vatican request and said it “continues...

"More children from the fit; less from the unfit—that is the chief issue of birth control." [1] –Margaret Sanger, Birth Control Review Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, has an ignoble legacy as a racist who addressed the Ku Klux Klan and initiated a Negro Project to reduce the population of poor, uneducated African Americans whom she considered unfit to reproduce themselves. This Margaret Sanger—the real Margaret Sanger—is completely whitewashed in Parenthood propaganda, which deceitfully portrays Sanger as a champion of reproductive “choice.” Even more incriminating than Sanger’s racism, however, is her close association with Nazism. Sanger was part...

BERLIN (AP) — A male nurse who was convicted of killing patients in Germany with overdoses of heart medication is now believed to have killed at least 86 people — and the true scale of the killings could be even larger, investigators said Monday. Many of the deaths could have been prevented if health authorities had acted more quickly on their suspicions, said Johann Kuehme, police chief in the northwestern city of Oldenburg.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/14/dying-together-deepest-wish-couple-91-die-rare-double-euthanasia/ An elderly couple died holding hands surrounded by loved ones in a rare double euthanasia....“ ...“The geriatrician determined that our mother was still mentally competent. However, if our father were to die, she could become completely disoriented, ending up in a nursing home.

Pope Francis has given a Belgian religious order until the end of August to stop offering euthanasia to psychiatric patients. Brother Rene Stockman, superior general of the order, told Catholic News Service the Pope gave his personal approval to a Vatican demand that the Brothers of Charity, which runs 15 centres for psychiatric patients across Belgium, must reverse its policy by the end of August. Brothers who serve on the board of the Brothers of Charity Group, the organization that runs the centers, also must each sign a joint letter to their superior general declaring that they “fully support the...

The slippery slope is real.  Once the state gets in the business of killing off its citizens via euthanasia, the brutal logic of economics works its way through the system.  In Canada, which legalized euthanasia just over a year ago, one of the most important forums for political discussion, Maclean's Magazine, published an article arguing that doctors ought to be paid a premium for killing off euthanizing terminal patients. And of course, it was all so reasonable in tone.  It really is a lot of work for the doctors, you see. Most providers need to meet with their patient a couple times...

FULL TITLE: Parents of sick baby Charlie Gard 'concerned' lawyer representing terminally-ill son is head of euthanasia charity The parents of terminally-ill baby Charlie Gard are concerned the lawyer appointed to represent their child heads a euthanasia charity, reports claim. Victoria Butler-Cole, who speaks on Charlie's behalf in court, is chairman of Compassion in Dying, a sister organisation to Dignity in Dying. The organisation campaigns for change in the law to make assisted dying legal in the UK. Dignity in Dying used to be called the Voluntary Euthanasia Society. The two charities share the same chief executive and media team...

Why has the case of British 11-month-old baby Charlie Gard struck an international nerve? At its core, this controversy is about state infringement on parental rights. The question is, whose child is Charlie: his parents’ or the state’s? Why is the hospital holding him hostage and by what authority can it override his parents’ wish to pursue therapy that could help Charlie? President Trump, Pope Francis, 40 European parliament members, members of Congress, Terri Schiavo’s brother Bobby Schindler, and even Cher have weighed in, all agreeing the hospital should release Charlie to his parents. According to Justice Francis in a...

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia has said more about the new orientation of the profoundly restructured Pontifical Academy for Life in a lengthy interview with the French weekly, La Vie, scoffing at fears that the Academy willed by Pope Saint John Paul II would cease defending life “from the first moment of conception through to the last breath of life.” “Nothing and nobody will ever change that clear orientation,” he told La Vie. But both the interviewers and the interviewee agreed that something new is in the making since Paglia replaced Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula as head of the Academy in July...

However, he says, “what does worry me is the increase in the number of times euthanasia was performed on dementia patients, from 12 in 2009 to 141 in 2016, and on chronic psychiatric patients, from 0 to 60.” He recounts some of the horrific cases of patients of advanced dementia being euthanized without consent, such as one woman whose coffee was drugged, and who when she tried to struggle was held down by her family, and another where a husband mixed sleep medication in the porridge of his demented wife before the GP arrived with his deadly syringe. He describes...