Montana Joins the Culture of Death

It’s not unexpected, but unfortunate nevertheless.

Just announced, the Supreme Court of Montana has decided that assisted suicide is legal in Montana. That makes Montana the third state in the US to so rule.

ISDB filed an amicus brief opposing assisted suicide in Montana, along with many other groups. I watched the arguments before the Montana Supreme Court in early September, and was not hopeful that our side would succeed.

So there we have it. Creeping culture of death, now legal.

That, plus the pernicious pro-death provisions of the healthcare bill that may well be passed, means we are entering a new era of disposable humanity.

My greatest frustration? That many people with disabilities apparently cannot see how they will soon be in the sights of the pro-death lobby.

In my more perverse moments, I can’t wait to say, “I told you so.”

More rationally, if more people with disabilities don’t stand up along with those of us who are trying to get the word out, then the future is very dark indeed.

Happy New Year.

You Shouldn’t Have to be Euthanized Because You're Different

Blogging about the culture of death doesn’t make for cheery reading, especially around Christmastime.

Perhaps telling you about Faith will provide a different perspective.

Faith was born without two limbs, and was immediately rejected and abused by her mother. Faith was unable to fight back. Her early weeks were a nightmare. There was nobody to help.

Everything about Faith meant that she, from the beginning, had a poor quality of life.

Rejected by her mother.

Abused by her mother.

Two limbs gone, a double whammy.

She’d never get those limbs back. Her future meant looking very different than others, unable to do things that others took for granted, and she would need to be cared for differently than those with all their limbs.

If the pro-death crowd has their way, euthanasia would be the easy answer for cases like Faith, especially if the radicals succeed in getting us to believe that we should euthanize those who might suffer in their future.

But that’s not the end of the story, because Faith was rescued by someone who believed that while she couldn’t be fixed, she most definitely could be helped.

Fast forward several years:

While Faith never got her limbs back, she has a great life. Faith is loved and clearly an inspiration to all her meet her. She astounds people with how she has adapted to a life without limbs. Her family can’t imagine life without her.

All this would have not happened if she had been euthanized just in case she might suffer because of her limbless condition.

I’m so glad Faith is with us to inspire all those who meet her.

Faith is a dog with no front legs.

She’s also a minor celebrity because she walks upright - just like humans do. She’s been on Montel and Oprah, and gone on tour with Ozzy Osbourne. When she’s not being a media star, she brings joy to many, especially in cheering our injured war vets who have lost limbs - just like her.

A legless dog with a powerful lesson for the pro-death lobby:

Being different doesn’t mean you should die.

Killing Children Now in Case They Might Suffer in the Future

Fairly often I’m taken to task by some of my friends for suggesting that state-sanctioned eugenics is alive and well in the 21^st century. I have a question to ask them:

Explain to me that what I’m about to report is not eugenics in its purest, simplest, and ugliest form.

First, a standard definition of eugenics:

the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, esp. by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics).

The Nazis took eugenics a step further to take care of all those pesky people with medical and other disabilities who were inconveniently alive, believing that they were so debilitated that they had no acceptable quality of life.

The Dutch are now doing the same. (Google translate will give you a close English version).

Read on.

On Monday, a Dutch medical researcher, Hilde Buiting, called for another step down the slippery slope to pure insanity by calling for the government and the medical profession to change the rules on euthanizing newborn infants.

NOTE: I said change the rules, not devise the rules, because euthanizing newborns in the Netherlands has been officially allowed for quite a while, via the so-called Groningen Protocol of 2006.

In 2006 the argument was the same as what I’ll share below: Killing newborns was already happening in Dutch hospitals, but it was unregulated and therefore uncontrolled.

PRESTO!! Develop a medical set of rules that lay out when doctors may kill newborns. The Groningen Protocol makes killing newborn infants OK!! (An act of love and mercy, you understand).

I really wish I were making this up.

So now, in 2009, the Dutch are again pushing toward expanding euthanasia beyond the Groningen Protocol.

Sidebar: The Dutch already have precedent in killing adults to rely on for how they are now trying to justify killing more newborns. Initially, adult assisted suicide and euthanasia was officially only allowed for the terminally ill in unbearable and uncontrollable suffering. Now, years later, adult assisted suicide and euthanasia have morphed to where medical killing can be carried out for a host of other reasons, even if people are not terminally ill and even if they have no physical illness.

With me so far?

Here’s the new proposal from Ms. Buiting:

The current guidelines state that there must be actual grave suffering on the part of the newborn,. . . In practice, physicians look not only to the actual suffering of the sick newborn, but also to the grave suffering foreseen in the future. This reality should be included in the considerations in adapting the guidelines. . . . Given that we in the Netherlands find it important to exercise social control over the active killing of newborns, the guidelines should therefore be adjusted.

See the change? Now they want to kill newborns because of what they might suffer in the murky future.

Oh, and don’t forget about the “social control” part either.

That’s a chilling step past killing newborns that are already suffering, and like the Nazis, this is, as Ms. Buiting so cavalierly noted, a medical and government-sanctioned form of exercising social control.

Again, I ask, how is this not state- and medically sanctioned eugenics?

Prove me wrong, I beg of you, so that I can stop thinking that the unthinkable is now not only thinkable but doable; that we now want to judge newborn infants as so medically disabled that they should be killed by the white-coated, stethoscope-carrying grisly necromancers divining future suffering in order to kill infants now.

Useless Eaters . . No, Wait, “Complete Lives”

As jackbooted healthcare legislators attempt to force on us a bill that most people don’t want and that we can’t possibly pay for, we had better understand what this will likely mean.

First: The government will become your doctor.

Here’s how it will work:

You go to your doctor with symptoms a, b, and c.

After tests, your doctor or a specialist makes a diagnosis which determines what medical treatments are necessary.

The government is paying for your treatment, so the government decides which treatment you should get - if any at all.

The treatment the government decides you should get may well be based on a proposed treatment allocation idea called the Complete Lives System and devised, among others, by Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, President Obama’s Special Advisor for Health Policy.

The policy is laid out on a recent article in the Lancet. This from pages 428-429:

When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated . . . the complete lives system justifies preference to younger people . . . Additionally, the complete lives system assumes that, although life-years are equally valuable to all, justice requires the fair distribution of them.

Here’s what this means in plain language:

1. The Complete Lives System will divide Americans into those who are more worthy of treatment and those who are less worthy of treatment. Top priority will go to those between 15 and 40 (because they have the best potential for longer, healthier, and more productive lives, that is, “complete lives”).

2. The youngest and oldest will have less chance of a shot at medical treatment because, statistically, the chances of them attaining "complete lives" are much lower than among 15-40 year- olds.

3. Oh, yes, and even those lucky 15-40 year-olds who make the privileged cut might not get what they need, because “complete lives” will have to be distributed “justly” across the population.

There it is:

Living, or have great potential for a “complete” life? Between 15 and 40? The Government will likely OK necessary medical treatment (unless, of course, what should have been coming to you needs to be “justly" given to someone else).

Living, but don’t have such a great potential to get to a “complete” life? Younger than 15? Older than 40?

You are judged incomplete. You are damaged. You have little potential for attaining completeness.

Complete, you live.

Incomplete, you die.