Euthanasia

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Euthanasia

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There used to be an oath medical doctors took, about doing no harm.
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Here I stand. I can do no other. :flags-wavegreatbritain: :flags-canada:
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Euthanasia

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Del wrote: 16 Dec 2022, 18:20
Biff wrote: 16 Dec 2022, 17:42 I read yesterday that the leading cause of death in Canada right now is euthanasia. I wonder if that includes death by mRNA? Either way, it's horrifying.
The most common cause of death in America and in Canada is abortion. By far.

I'm very discouraged that Canada has pushed another form of legalized killing into second place.
lol, yeah but it isn't by any marginally scientific or legal definition that I've seen. Even staunchly conservative positions take developmental milestones such as heartbeats into the equation.

Otherwise you're just saying something that is more or less scientifically incorrect and hoping that it will magically become true just because you say it enough, lol.

Kind if like if I claimed that every human skin cell is identical to a human life simply because it is "alive" and has "human DNA". (And therefore anyone who rubs their arm against something and kills millions of skin cells should be put on trial in the Hague for "war crimes"). Lmao.

-

So if you just want to call something "killing babies" purely for rhetoric effect rather than factuality, then by God, "kill" as many as you can. The more the merrier. :twisted:

Because honestly I think you know that it doesn't meet a credible definition of a human life and are purposely lying about believing that nonsense simply because of other, non-life related issues about the subject. (Such as maybe concerns about the dwindling white population rate, but not actually concerns about a real life being taken).

And honestly, at some point you're going to have to stop peddling this easily-debunked crap, because eventually the church will reverse its position on it once they're forced to put it scientifically under the litmus test. Right now they can afford to lie and sell said lies to the sheep because they need to stay in business and generating a fabricated "moral panic" is a good way to do that, but, that's not going to remain a viable strategy in the coming wake of future, scientifically-grounded discussion on the abortion issue.

And heck, when that inevitably happens you'll basically be reduced to the same level as the minority of PETA members who scream "meat is murder!" outside of a McDonald's and throw fake blood on its customers. lol
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Euthanasia

Post by Del »

Trinity wrote: 24 Dec 2022, 15:19
Del wrote: 16 Dec 2022, 18:20
Biff wrote: 16 Dec 2022, 17:42 I read yesterday that the leading cause of death in Canada right now is euthanasia. I wonder if that includes death by mRNA? Either way, it's horrifying.
The most common cause of death in America and in Canada is abortion. By far.

I'm very discouraged that Canada has pushed another form of legalized killing into second place.
lol, yeah but it isn't by any marginally scientific or legal definition that I've seen. Even staunchly conservative positions take developmental milestones such as heartbeats into the equation.

Otherwise you're just saying something that is more or less scientifically incorrect and hoping that it will magically become true just because you say it enough, lol.
You're dead to me.

Go try your tired, old, sophistry and rhetoric on somebody dumb enough to fall for it.

I did science for a career. I've study ethics in, like, a for-real school. I've known for years that Roe v. Wade would fall under legal scrutiny. Something can be "legal" and yet fail to be either good or true..... that's when society reacts to repair its legal failures. We'll end abortion like we ended slavery, after much time and suffering and death.

Dear Trinity-gang.... you are not wise, nor insightful. Not even "modern." The seemingly novel ideas you preach are already falling out of style. You sound like an old boomer already.

Get some real education, or you'll be on the wrong side of history by the time you are old.

Read Chaucer (1300's), and read how the high medieval English actually lived.
Read Dante (1200's), and see how high medieval society praised the good and condemned the evil.
You won't find the myth (false, modernist) that the Church ruled over everyone and no one was allowed to think. You will find the regular folks had a lot more common sense than our modern pagans.

Read Boethius (500's), and see how truly wise the "Dark Ages" were. Modern pagans are just like the ancient pagans -- seeking false happiness in wealth, fame, power, esteem, and every sort of disordered pleasure.

Look at the sources for the blather you are spouting. Are any of these "experts" more than 50 years ago? Will anyone be reading and quoting them, 50 years from now? Ask yourself this before you foolishly dare to assert "truth" from these modern fads.
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Euthanasia

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+JMJ+

Assisted suicide and the bias toward libertarianism in journalism [Opinion]

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In an Oct. 26, 2015, file photo, supporters of legal physician-assisted suicide rally outside the New Mexico Supreme Court in Santa Fe. (AP/Russell Contreras, File)

The New York Times ran a story earlier this week by Lola Fadulu about Lynda Bluestein, a Connecticut woman with late-stage fallopian tube cancer who wishes to end her life. Connecticut does not permit physician-assisted suicide, so Bluestein sought to procure help in Vermont, where it is legal. Vermont, however, has a residency requirement, so Bluestein has sued Vermont, seeking to have the residency requirement deemed unconstitutional.

"Thanksgiving is typically a joyous time for the Bluestein family. Their Bridgeport, Conn., home is filled with laughter, music and even a cooking competition," the article began. "But last fall, the mood was somber. 'I think next year will be the year that Grandma will die,' Lynda Bluestein, 75, recalled telling her husband, children and grandchildren as they gathered in the living room."

You need to have a heart of stone not to be moved by Bluestein's story. And that is the problem.

Like all good journalists, Fadulu interviewed people on both sides of the contentious issue.

"It's just unfair, and it doesn't really make sense to restrict some sort of medical practice just based on ZIP code or residency," said Amitai Heller from the pro-assisted-suicide group Compassion & Choices.

"Rather than trying to address the needs of vulnerable people, we offer them the possibility of killing themselves," said Brian Kane, a senior director of ethics with the Catholic Health Association.

Obviously, my sympathies are with Kane's argument precisely because it is what the church teaches and it coheres with the value of human life and dignity that we Christians believe is integral to our understanding of the faith.

The voices of experts, however, can't compete with the emotional punch of Bluestein's comments. She recounts her own mother's final days when her mom was so fatigued from chemotherapy, she did not even want to see Bluestein and her brother. "We had no time with her at the end of her life," Bluestein said. "I don't want my children, who are now 45 and 47 years old, to have those memories of me at the very end."

This emphasis on personal, deeply emotional testimony always privileges the libertarian argument in an ethical debate. No one wants to be considered heartless, and the reporter did not interview others who might be impacted negatively by medically assisted suicide.

[…]

This same disparity between highly emotional testimony from women contemplating an abortion and the testimony of experts stalks journalistic coverage of that issue as well. The person most affected by the abortion decision, the unborn child, is never interviewed. The pro-life argument can be made by a parent or an activist or an expert, but that argument will be of a different character from the testimony of someone who has just faced a crisis pregnancy. Trying to refute someone's experience with an argument is almost impossible in a society that is anti-philosophic like American society.

Journalism is in the midst of a significant debate about how, and even whether, it can embrace the standard of objectivity. "Increasingly now, journalists — particularly a rising generation — are repudiating the standard to which we routinely, and resolutely, hold others," wrote Martin Baron, former executive editor of The Washington Post in a recent essay. "These critics of objectivity among journalism professionals, encouraged and enabled by many in the academic world, are convinced that journalism has failed on multiple fronts and that objectivity is at the root of the problem."

Baron, invoking the great journalist Walter Lippmann, defends objectivity as an essential goal of journalism, not because journalists can ever truly be free from bias, but because we can't. Quoting from the book The Elements of Journalism, Baron rightly notes: "The method is objective, not the journalist."

Baron does not address the problem I raise in this essay, the tendency to advance a sectarian cause by failing to appreciate the imbalance between a subject telling a story and an expert articulating a principle. I wish he had! The way we Americans consciously and unconsciously favor individual choice over societal claims is so deep, it is easy to ignore, especially when a person who seems most immediately affected by a given decision stakes a claim and the negative consequences of the decision are remote and mediate, but arguably just as consequential.

That is precisely the problem with coverage of assisted suicide. The only solution will be for journalists to recognize the imbalance between a first-person account and all other testimony, acknowledge that imbalance to the reader as well, and search diligently to learn about those who are affected adversely, albeit more remotely, by things like assisted suicide.

The rest of us, too, need to recognize the way certain cultural dispositions like pragmatism color our worldviews. And, as Catholics, to make sure we are forming our conscience in light of our faith with its very different biases and perspectives.


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+JMJ+

Limited access to medication is 'hidden euthanasia,' pope says

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Pope Francis blesses a religious sister at the end of a meeting at the Vatican with representatives of the Religious Association of Social and Health Institutes April 13, 2023. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

Vatican City — Failing to provide needed medication to elderly people is a "hidden and progressive euthanasia," Pope Francis said.

"So often, an elderly person needs four or five medicines, and they can only get two. This is a progressive euthanasia, because they are not given what they need to care for themselves," the pope told the leaders of religious institutes working in health care.

While financial reasons sometimes prevent elderly people from receiving the medicine they need, he said that "everyone has the right to medicine."

The pope met at the Vatican April 13 with members of the Religious Association of Social and Health Institutes, which represents more than 250 hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation centers and other health care centers operated by religious institutes throughout Italy.

Especially in countries like Italy, which has universal health care, the pope said Christian organizations have "the duty to defend the right to care, especially for the weakest members of society," such as the elderly and those whose medical needs are cast aside due financial or cultural reasons.

"There are people who, due to a lack of means, are not able to care for themselves," he said. "People have difficulty accessing health services due to very long waiting lines, even for urgent and necessary visits."

"These are the most important for us," said the pope. "These are the ones at the front of the line."

Christian health care institutions which were created "to care for those that nobody wanted to touch," he said, calling on the representatives to take care of those left behind by today's "throwaway culture."

Francis underscored the increased need for intermediate care in response to the "growing tendency of hospitals to discharge the sick in a short time," a practice that he said addresses a patient's immediate problems but not longer-term illnesses.

Intermediate care often refers to inpatient treatment centers for individuals who require medical attention but not the continuous care and supervision provided by a hospital.

[…]


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Post by Del »

Wosbald wrote: 13 Apr 2023, 09:40 +JMJ+

Limited access to medication is 'hidden euthanasia,' pope says

Especially in countries like Italy, which has universal health care, the pope said Christian organizations have "the duty to defend the right to care, especially for the weakest members of society," such as the elderly and those whose medical needs are cast aside due to financial or cultural reasons.
This is the problem with "universal healthcare." Government doesn't really want to care for people with expensive needs, and they often view death as a suitable form of treatment.

If we have "universal care," we are going to need a great deal more charity care... as many people will not have private insurance to cover themselves when they need it.
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Source: Crux
Link: cruxnow DOT com/pope-in-marseille-live-coverage/2023/09/pope-on-euthanasia-abortion-you-dont-mess-with-life
Pope on euthanasia, abortion: ‘You don’t mess with life’

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ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Francis condemned both abortion and euthanasia Saturday, saying about end-of-life issues that the lives of the elderly must not be “cancelled” by an ideological colonization that seeks to eliminate pain.

Pope Francis spoke to journalists on board his Sept. 23 return flight from Marseille to Rome, after making a brief overnight visit to the city to close a conference on the Mediterranean that focused largely on migration, including several bold appeals from the pope for a more compassionate and welcoming stance in Europe.

Asked about a controversial law France is preparing to consider on euthanasia, the pontiff, who condemned the practices of abortion and euthanasia in his final Mass on Saturday, said he did not address the issue in his private conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron earlier that day.

He said he and Macron discussed the issue of euthanasia during one of Macron’s three previous visits to the Vatican, and on that occasion, “I told him my view, clearly, [that] you don’t play with life, not at the beginning, and not at the end. You don’t play with it.”

“It’s not just my opinion, it’s safeguarding life, because then, you end up with the politics of non-pain, a humanistic euthanasia,” he said. He once again referenced a 1903 futuristic romance novel titled The Lord of the World by a British convert to Catholicism which, Francis said, depicts “how things will be in the end. It takes away the differences of everyone, and also, they take pain, etc., and euthanasia is one of these things.”

“Sweet death, selection before birth. This shows how this man saw current conflicts,” the pope said, saying, “today let’s be attentive to ideological colonization that ruins human life and goes against human life.”

[…]

Speaking of the plight many elderly people who are lonely or abandoned face, he said, “Today the lives of the elderly are cancelled,” and that when youth don’t speak to elderly in their lives, “they are cancelled … they are old, they are useless.”

“You don’t mess with life … whether it’s a law that prohibits a child from growing in the womb” or euthanasia, he said, saying to care for someone in suffering and near death is “something human, human. It’s compassion.”

“Science has arrived to making some painful illness less painful with medicine. You don’t mess with life,” he said.

[…]

The pontiff was also asked about his outspoken messages in favor of migrants during his brief visit and whether, after ten years of repeating the same thing since his July 2013 visit to the Italian island of Lampedusa, a primary destination point for migrants from North African seeking entry into Europe, he feels he has failed.

“I would say not. I’d say that growth happens slowly. Today there is awareness of the migratory problem. There is awareness. There is also awareness that it is something that has arrived to the point of a boiling potato and you don’t know how” to handle it, he said.

The pope condemned situations in which migrants are treated “like a ping pong [ball], sent back. And it is known that many times they end up in lagers, they end up worse than before.”

“It’s a reign of terror. They suffer not only because they need to leave, but the suffer because of the reign of terror there, they are slaves. We can’t, without looking at things, send them back like a ping pong ball,” he said.

Pope Francis again insisted that migrants must be “welcomed, accompanied, promoted and integrated … but don’t let them fall into the hands of these cruel people.”

He said he invited the head of the Mediterranean (group) Saving Humans to attend the upcoming Synod of Bishops on Synodality, saying the organization has “terrible stories” to tell.

Referring to his visit to Lampedusa, Francis said he did not even know where the island was when he decided to go, but had read stories and in prayer felt a tug saying he needed to go.

“In prayer I heard inside, you have to go there, as if the Lord led me there,” he said.


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Source: Crux
Link: cruxnow DOT com/church-in-the-usa/2024/03/new-york-bishops-call-assisted-suicide-bill-dangerous-path
New York bishops call assisted suicide bill ‘dangerous path’

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NEW YORK — While New York legislators argue that assisted suicide legislation would allow terminally ill patients to die with dignity, the state’s Catholic bishops on March 5 countered that it would put the state on a “dangerous path that contaminates medicine and turns the notion of compassion on its head.”

Introduced in the New York State Senate in January 2023, the “Medical Aid in Dying Act” would allow terminally ill patients — those with an incurable or irreversible condition that will produce death within six months — to request medication to end their life.

Similar versions of the bill have been introduced and failed in the New York Senate over the years. This latest version is sponsored by Democrat Brad Hoylman-Sigal and is co-sponsored by 22 other Democrat senators. There are 63 state senators in New York.

The New York State Catholic Conference, which is the public policy arm of the New York bishops, in their March 5 statement against the legislation argued that the practice of assisted suicide is wrong, and that this bill in particular does not contain adequate safeguards.

Dennis Poust, the executive director of the conference highlighted that the bill forces physicians to “knowingly lie” on patients’ death certificates because the bill mandates the underlying illness be listed as the cause of death, not the assisted suicide medication. Poust also highlighted that the bill does not require the patient go through a mental health evaluation, and instead only happens if ordered by the doctor.

“Well-researched euphemisms and poll-driven rhetoric won’t change reality,” Poust said. “This idea would start New York State on a dangerous path that contaminates medicine and turn the notion of compassion on its head.”

Poust’s statement comes at a time when assisted suicide legislation has become prominent nationwide. Minnesota, Massachusetts, Illinois, Indiana, Florida, and Tennessee all states considering some form of assisted suicide legislation, drawing the ire of Catholic leaders. Just yesterday, Virginia lawmakers defeated an assisted suicide bill, and Maryland lawmakers did the same last week.

[…]

The New York bill would require the patient to make an oral request and submit a written request that must be signed and dated by the patient and witnessed by two adults who aren’t the patients attending physician, consulting physician, or mental health professional. The patient can also rescind the request at any time.

As mentioned, it also stipulates that if the patient’s physician must refer the patient to a mental health professional if they determine the patient may lack decision-making capacity. If the mental health professional determines that they don’t, the patient will not qualify for assisted suicide.

The bill also protects health care professionals from civil or criminal liability, or professional disciplinary action by any government entity for “taking any reasonable good-faith action or refusing to act,” including engaging in conversations with the patient about the risks and benefits of end of life options, referring them to another health care provider, being present when the patient administers the medication, or refraining from acting to prevent the patient from taking the medication.

Health care professionals will also not be required under law to participate in providing the medication, according to the proposed bill’s text.

A “justification” section of the bill’s summary states that assisted suicide is a patient’s right.

“These patients, when mentally competent, should be afforded this right. Patients should not be forced to relocate to another state or to leave the country to control how their lives end,” the bill summary states. “Patients seek to die with dignity, on their own terms, typically in their own homes, surrounded by their family and other loved ones.”

Poust, meanwhile, said legislators should pursue alternatives.

“New York State should instead focus on improving palliative care, which is woefully underutilized and provides true compassion and death with dignity to those at the end of life,” Poust said.


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Source: Crux
Link: cruxnow DOT com/church-in-uk-and-ireland/2024/10/english-bishop-says-new-euthanasia-machine-is-shocking-and-deeply-sad
English bishop says new ‘euthanasia machine’ is ‘shocking, and deeply sad’

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LEICESTER, United Kingdom — A suicide in a new euthanasia machine in Switzerland is “shocking, and deeply sad,” according to English Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth.

A 64-year-old American woman ended her life using the 3D-printed suicide machine called a “Sarco Bod” on Sep. 23 in Merishausen, Switzerland.

The inventor of the device, Australian Doctor Philip Nitschke, said it was “an idyllic peaceful death in a Swiss forest” in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

News reports say he watched the death on an internet feed.

“We saw jerky, small twitches of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then. It looked exactly how we expected it to look,” he told De Volkskrant.

Although euthanasia is legal in Switzerland, the use of the “Sarco Bod” didn’t follow the rules established in Swiss law, and several people were arrested after the death.

The head of the Federal Department of Home Affairs Elisabeth Baume-Schneider said it was not legal for two reasons.

“Firstly, it does not meet the requirements of product safety law and may therefore not be placed on the market. Secondly, the corresponding use of nitrogen is not compatible with the purpose article of the Chemicals Act,” she told a Swiss news organization.

Assisted suicide is currently illegal in the United Kingdom, but changes to the law are expected to be pursued under the new Labour government.

“The ‘Sarco Pod’ — from the word ‘sarcophagus’ — was invented in 2017 by the euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke, as a device to help people commit suicide,” Egan said in a statement issued Oct. 1.

[…]

The bishop noted reactions vary to the story of this new form of suicide.

“Some see the Sarco, which is ‘designed to be aesthetically beautiful’ and comes in a range of different colors, as a glorified gas chamber that glamourizes suicide and will lead to many more deaths by suicide. Others, such as Exit International, suggest it offers legislators a new end-of-life option, showing up the limitations of the medical model, e.g. a lethal injection,” he said.

The spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said Nitschke’s “horrendous suicide machine” should never have been used.

“Despite the Swiss government telling Nitschke loud and clear that the use of the suicide pod is illegal, his associates chose to ignore this and move forward with his agenda,” she said.

“It is becoming increasingly clear how unrealistic the safeguards in place are for those who might attempt to use the device in future. This apparently fully automated process is a disaster in waiting. Instead of assisted suicide, we should focus on providing support and care for those in distress. Every life is precious and deserves protection,” Robinson added.

Egan said for Christians, the very concept of the Sarco “is abominable.”

“Our life is a gift from God. No matter how ill or emotionally disturbed we might be, it is not up to us to end it,” he said.

“We know that many in the media and the government are now committed to bringing in assisted suicide, and even euthanasia, for the sick, the elderly, those with mental illnesses and the dying,” the bishop continued.

“The ideology behind all this is the very ideology Britain fought in World War Two! As Catholics, we must pray and do all we can to call people back to their senses. Bringing in assisted suicide will change the culture of our society — for ever,” Egan said.


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