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As the parents of two year old Alfie Evans battle to save their son’s life in the face of hospital and state rulings to turn off his life support, a hospital in France has ordered the removal of food and water from a 42 year old patient who has been severely disabled for 10 years. The Sebastopol Hospital in Reims ruled on Monday that ordinary means of life support be removed from patient Vincent Lambert on April 19. Vincent suffered severe head injuries in an automobile accident in 2008 that left him a quadriplegic, but other doctors and his parents...

A court in Ontario, Canada, has ruled that a patient’s desire to be euthanized trumps a doctor’s conscientious objection. Doctors there now face the cruel choice between complicity in what they consider a grievous wrong—killing a sick or disabled patient—and the very real prospect of legal or professional sanction.A little background: In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada conjured a right to lethal-injection euthanasia for anyone with a medically diagnosable condition that causes irremediable suffering—as defined by the patient. No matter if palliative interventions could significantly reduce painful symptoms, if the patient would rather die, it’s the patient’s right to be...

Apparently assisted suicide is not enough for the death peddlers in this Pacific Northwest State. Now they are pushing legislation in the Oregon State Legislature that would allow starving mentally ill patients to death. A similar bill was defeated last year but the euthanasia promoters are back with a new one, Oregon Right to Life tells LifeNews. House Bill 4135 is scheduled for a hearing and possible work session in the House Health Care Committee at 3:00 pm on February 7th. It is believed this bill will move quickly because there are only 35 days in the 2018 regular session....

Humanae vitae, Blessed Pope Paul VI’s encyclical reaffirming the Church’s defense of the sanctity of human life, was promulgated fifty years ago this year. It was dated July 25, 1968. When July rolls around later this year I shall have some things to say, God willing, about the encyclical’s content. What I’m talking about here is some of the aftermath of the document’s promulgation.Only some. I’m going for a broad picture and in as few words as possible. I shall not deal, for instance, with the epic fight of Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle to preserve doctrinal orthodoxy at the Catholic University...

The Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences tweeted yesterday without comment a New York Times article about people using birth control to stop having children because of "climate change" fear.  The alarmist New York Times article said some people are “acutely aware that having a child is one of the costliest actions they can take environmentally” and are therefore using artificial contraception to prevent that from happening.

A new documentary about the scale of Nazi medical experiments has reopened old wounds in France...trending on Twitter. Dr Michel Cymes, the star of a French television medical advice programme, believes that the remains of some of the 86 Jews tortured and mutilated by SS doctor August Hirt may still be in the anatomy collection of the University of Strasbourg. He first raised the theory in his 2015 bestseller, "Hippocrates in Hell", The remains of Jews on which Hirt tested mustard gas at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp near the Alastian city were supposed to have been buried after it was...

TORONTO, January 31, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – An Ontario Court ruled today that doctors who oppose euthanasia must nevertheless act contrary to their beliefs and refer patients making a euthanasia request to a physician who will end their lives. Critics say the ruling puts physicians in an “impossible position” and has ramifications for Charter rights of freedom of religion and conscience for all Ontario citizens. Three justices of the Ontario Superior Court unanimously agreed Wednesday that the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) policy requiring doctors to “effectively” refer patients for medical practices they conscientiously object to — notably...

The newly formed laity-led Academy for Life has published a critique of a recent Vatican-run conference on end of life issues that included several speakers who oppose the Catholic Church’s teachings on the right to life. Among these included the president of the board of Switzerland’s Planned Parenthood affiliate, and the president of the pro-euthanasia Royal Dutch Medical Association.  John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family (JAHLF) said that the Nov. 16-17 conference hosted by the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV) — which was recently gutted and re-constituted by Pope Francis — had "serious problems."  "The spirit of the meeting...

WASHINGTON — Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase & Co. will create an independent health care company that is “free from profit-making incentives” that will aim to reduce healthcare costs for their U.S. workers. The focus of the company will be technology solutions “that will provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost,” a news release says. “The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy. Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable. Rather, we...

Assisted suicide is the ultimate slippery slope. Time and time again, proponents use heart-wrenching stories of people suffering through pain and anguish as they endure incurable or terminal illnesses, and use these as examples of why we need, as they call it, “death with dignity.” But leaving aside the awful notion of suicide being more dignified than dying a natural death, this never remains the line when it comes to assisted suicide. The parameters get changed and stretched, and the line gets moved further and further. Now, healthy people are being euthanized… solely because of mental illness. In the Netherlands,...

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...