Frances Inglis Does Not Deserve to be on Trial for Murder. . . No, wait . . .

The UK press has been all atwitter about a sensational murder trial now under way in London. I’m not sure why, given the general cheerleading done by the UK media for assisted suicide and euthanasia.

On trial at the Old Bailey is Frances Inglis:

In 2007, Inglis’ son, Thomas, had been involved in some kind of altercation and was being taken to hospital by ambulance. His injuries were apparently minor. However, Thomas jumped from the ambulance, hit his head on the road, and sustained severe brain damage. He’s been in a deep coma ever since, although medical consensus was that since the accident he had been making some improvements and could well have recovered some function.

Too bad his mother was Frances Inglis. She immediately became obsessed with ending his life, repeatedly making the case to anyone who would listen that she did not think any treatment was in her son's best interest. She visited her son almost constantly and was described by Thomas’ brother, Alexander, as “obsessive and negative.”

She took matters into her own hands – twice.

Only 10 days after the accident, Inglis decided that she had to “put her son out of his misery.” So she injected him with a lethal dose of morphine. While Thomas was successfully resuscitated, he had been without oxygen long enough that his brain damage was much worse.

Frances Inglis was not a happy camper.

Not because she was arrested for attempted murder, but because her son was still alive.

What’s a mother to do?

Why, try again, of course.

And she did.

Out on bail, a condition of which was that she go nowhere near Thomas, she disguised herself as Thomas' aunt, fooled the nurses, and injected Thomas with a fatal dose of heroin.

Horrific, I think we can all agree. However, I must say that I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

Let’s be clear, shall we?

Frances Inglis and the pro-euthanasia and assisted suicide crowd are pretty much on the same page of the playbook:

They both see killing people as a way to put them out of their misery.

They would both agree that Thomas’ life was not worth living.

They would both think killing OK because there’s little or no quality of life for people in this condition.

They would both acknowledge that people in persistent nonresponsive states are as good as dead, so killing them is not a problem.

I think Frances Inglis is getting a bad rap.

If she had pulled a Debbie Purdy and fought passionately in the press to take Thomas to Dignitas in Switzerland for assisted suicide, just as the parents of Daniel James did, she’d be a free woman.

She’d also be a hero instead of a murderer.

Pro-Death Propaganda Steals the Show in the UK

I’m human, just like everyone else, and so when I make a prediction that turns out to be correct, I have been known to say, “I told you so.”

Last January 12th I wrote of assisted suicides at Dignitas in Switzerland, which are hardly gentle and loving:

Here’s the kicker: This nightmare will hardly engender much shock or outrage, I’m afraid.Why? Because the spin and pressure will be to pass laws to make places where people kill themselves nice and comfy, clean, and warm.

Well, I told you so.

A while back, I wrote that the UK was now ground zero for the pro-death movement, currently focusing on the thin end of the wedge, assisted suicide. Assisted suicide is a wedge because the ultimate aim of the pro-death movement is not only legalization of assisted suicide, but also the eventual legal availability of euthanasia for anyone, at any time, for any reason.

I have also written quite a bit about the Swiss killing group, Dignitas (here, here, here, here), who are happy to help kill people – for a price.

Dignitas has become infamous lately because of the many people from the UK who have flocked to their killing facility (read: grubby apartment, strange looking people) in Switzerland. Many of these cases have been widely reported in the media. Dan James. Craig Ewert. The list goes on and on.

I predicted that instead of revealing the lie that assisted suicide is a heinously selfish and soulless act, the pro-death spin would be that the UK laws would be made to be the culprit – that’s it’s not fair or kind to ship people off to unfamiliar places in Europe to commit assisted suicide. They should be allowed to do it at home in familiar surroundings.

Ergo, it’s the LAW that’s the problem, not helping killing people.

Today I’m saddened, but not surprised, that the UK pro-death spin was exactly what I said it would be. 

Read on.

The pressure is building inexorably in the UK to overturn the laws that make assisted suicide illegal on at least two fronts.

The first is the persistent Debbie Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis. She has already made the decision to got to Dignitas to be killed, and wants her husband to be there. She has petitioned all of Britain’s lower courts to clarify whether he will be prosecuted for aiding and abetting her suicide when he returns to the UK. They have all refused to do so. Tomorrow, Purdy takes her case to the highest court in the land, the House of Lords.

It’s important to note that others who have done this have not been prosecuted, but Purdy wants more: She wants the law to say unequivocally that there will be no legal action.

Second, a major piece in today’s edition of London’s Mail reported that there are currently almost 800 people lined up to be killed in Switzerland. 34 have been cleared by their doctors for assisted suicide because they are terminally ill and supposedly competent to make the decision. Others have already set their dates with death. 

This is all bad enough, but, again, let’s look at the media propaganda:

The number of Britons thinking of travelling to the Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland has almost reached 800. The figure is ten times the level of seven years ago.

Spin 1: The numbers are increasing, we must do something, this is a growing problem! There is a demand for assisted suicide by the British people!

Well, to me, we might want to ask why there is such a demand. Could it be the pro-death mission of fear, especially playing on peoples’ fear of abandonment, is meant to make more people want to die by assisted suicide?

More:

There is massive public support for a change in the law to allow assisted dying, with polls regularly showing more than 80 per cent of the public want it made legal.

Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, which campaigns to allow assisted suicide, said: 'There is clearly a growing demand for a well regulated, legal right for people with terminal illness who are mentally competent to end their life if they choose to.'

Spin 2: If the majority want it, it must be right. Laws should be changed if 8 out of 10 people think they should be changed. That’s how we’ll make it safe and legal for you to have someone help you kill yourself.

Really? Let’s remember that history is full of examples where some very nasty things happened based on popular opinion. Sterilization comes to mind. I’m willing to bet that most of the 80% are significantly misinformed – no, lied to – and that they are responding to pro-death propaganda.

Let’s continue:

The 1961 Suicide Act criminalises anyone who aids, abets, counsels or procures someone else's suicide, and some relatives have been questioned by police.

Oh my gosh!!! The police questioned some relatives related to their possibly breaking the law? What’s next? Public executions? (Pardon the sarcasm).

I repeat: In all these very high-profile cases, what the UK authorities have actually done is turn a blind eye to these goings-on. Seems to me that if they had followed the letter of the law diligently, a lot of relatives who helped kill people at Dignitas would already be charged, found guilty, and be in jail.

But it’s the spin, you see - implying that those big bad Bobbies are hauling off vanloads of poor grieving relatives to languish in the basements of Her Majesty’s Prisons.

Ergo:

Baroness Jay said: 'It's a tragic anomaly that people who are giving a last loving assistance to a loved one find themselves under the threat of imprisonment.'

So, you know what comes as the climax of the piece, don’t you?

Read on:

Lesley Close, who went to Dignitas in 2003 with her brother John, a sufferer from motor neurone disease sufferer, said: 'More and more British people will be travelling to Switzerland to die because more people are aware of the compassionate and peaceful death you can achieve there . . . The interest in Dignitas underlines the case for reform of the law. We need the same facility here.'

Big bad law. Big bad Bobbies. So uncaring of those saints who are helping kill people.

Nice gentle, compassionate Dignitas, where all is dappled light and calm.

However, the truth will out, in my opinion, because there’s no future in assisted suicide.

Dignitas’ Assisted Suicide for Healthy People

I’m often more than a little bemused when naiveté inevitably results in shock and disbelief.

Why? Because there are two groups of people who generate shock among those who listen to them:

First, there are those who deliberately seek to shock our sensibilities for the sheer delight of seeing the reaction produced. Like grown ups who tell potty jokes at polite dinner parties.

Second, a much more dangerous group: people who say things that are not necessarily meant to shock, but are simply said because they are true. These people mean what they say, and say what they mean.

And then act on what they have told us they would do.

Saying what they believe is not the biggest problem, though – it’s that people react by thinking they cannot possibly mean what they are saying, and so either ignore it, or are disproportionally incredulous.

Incredulous is exactly how the UK press have been acting over statements made by Dignitas founder Ludwig Minelli.

You do remember Dignitas, don’t you? In case you missed previous posts about this outfit, see here, here, here, here, and here.

I’m shocked that the UK press is shocked. Minelli is just saying what he believes, how he intends to proceed, and what his actions will mean.  Minelli wants to  stretch the envelope of whom he helps kill.

He's as serious as a heart attack (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Minelli’s comments are also a rare glimpse past the pro-death spin and propaganda of “dignity,” “autonomy,” and “compassion” into the horrific abyss of twisted pro-death values and deceit.

The Times of London fretted that Minelli ". . . now wants to kill people that are perfectly healthy." 

(Sidebar: That’s the ultimate goal of all this pro-death stuff – death on demand anywhere, any time, for anyone).

Let’s look at what Minnelli actually, and accurately, said:

Ludwig Minelli described suicide as a “marvellous opportunity” that should not be restricted to the terminally ill or people with severe disabilities.

Just to make sure you see the spin: Suicide is not nihilistic, selfish, and probably avoidable. It’s a wonderful act that people should embrace. Oh yes, and by the way, we don’t need to be selfish about it – why should only terminally ill people or those with severe disabilities have access to this “marvelous opportunity?”

See how magnanimous? Marvellous opportunities should be available to all, otherwise it’s discriminatory, don’t you know.

On we go:

Mr. Minelli said that anyone who has “mental capacity” should be allowed to have an assisted suicide, claiming that it would save money for the NHS.

Breathtaking. 

If you have “mental capacity,” suicide’s the thing for you. Note, the mental capacity term is not an accident: Even newborn infants have “mental capacity.” Ergo, assisted suicide for all!!!

If what Minelli means is that assisted suicide should be available for people in their right mind, that’s only a stepping stone to killing people who aren’t in their right mind (e.g., Alzheimer’s patients) when others decide that, were they in their right mind, they would want to commit suicide.

The last part is not a joke – it’s how they justify euthanizing people with impaired “mental capacity” in the Netherlands.

But here’s the coup de grace: Killing people saves the state (the British National Health Service) money.

There. 

No more pretence.

No more backtracking (as many pro-death people do) that saving money is never the intent, although sometimes an unintended consequence, of assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Does anyone really think that the bean counters in any health organization won’t see this as a very tempting idea? Can we say Useless Eaters, anyone?

But, now, finally, to the reason for the fuss (see, nobody these days is too upset about someone spinning assisted suicide & euthanasia as a “marvellous opportunity” or that killing people will save money – that’s old hat).

Everyone got their knickers in a tangle because Minelli was "revealing plans to help a healthy woman to die alongside her terminally ill husband."

Minelli explained:

“The husband is ill, his partner is not ill, but she told us here in my living room that, ‘If my husband goes, I would go at the same time with him’,” he said.

So, Mr. I'll-kill-you-for-any-reason-as-long-as-you-ask is going to do what any champion of a worthy cause would do: He’s going to challenge the Swiss law that bars assisted suicide for healthy people.

Now there’s a really brave, kind man.

Coming soon to a place near you.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

The Swiss Way Part I: The Dingy Business of Killing People

I’ve detailed in past posts how people, especially from European countries where assisted suicide is illegal, have been flocking to Switzerland to kill themselves. The Swiss killing machine, Dignitas, is the only pro-death Swiss organization that kills foreign visitors.

They want as many people dead as possible, you see. It’s where Dan James and Craig Ewert went to their deaths.

Just for the record, this macabre tourism happens enough that it even has a name – “euthotourism.” 

Sidebar: A sharp entrepreneur is proposing a travel/death package for Kenyans to Switzerland, all inclusive!!

Nice.

However, “dignity” is not exactly what people have been finding among the Alps and the cuckoo clocks.

Read on.

A little over a year ago, Maxine Coombes decided the extent of her motor neuron disease meant it was time to die. She scrimped and saved the $15,000 for her final trip and travelled to Dignitas accompanied by her sister and her son, Paul Clifford.

Returning to the UK after Coombes’ death, Clifford didn’t see what happened next as dignified at all.

London’s Daily Mail reported what Clifford found. He

said the family had had a “terrible” experience and likened the flat where his mother died to a “backstreet abortion place” with graffiti-covered walls.

To add to his shock, when [Paul’s mother] raised concerns that her son might struggle to cope with her death, a member of staff said he, too, could die at a “cut price” rate.

“When we arrived at the place it was a block of flats, with a buzzer marked Dignitas but there was no answer. We were standing there for about three-quarters of an hour until a man arrived wearing a leather jacket with a sports bag over his shoulder, a dirty blue Tshirt, jeans with the knees cut out and smoking a roll-up [joint]. There was paint and graffiti on the walls outside, and the same on the door to the apartment. Inside there was a coffee table, four chairs around it, a bench, and a little washbasin.

After Coombes died, Paul described his interaction with the Dignitas representatives:

“He wanted us to go out of the room while he checked she was dead. We had to sit on a flight of stairs which stank of urine. We went back in but two police officers, the state prosecutor and two staff and a medical examiner arrived. We were asked loads of questions, with my mum still slumped there . . . in her wheelchair. We were there for at least two and a half hours.

During the questioning, Mr Clifford said, [a Dignitas assistant] rolled a cigarette while a female member of staff with a red “punkrock” hairstyle took her dog out for a walk.

After the police were “satisfied” with their answers, the pair had to leave again. When they were let back in to spend a few minutes with his mother’s corpse, they found her on a bench “going blue”, covered in a “dirty blanket like half a curtain”, with “her clothes chucked on the floor”.

The banal casualness of death.

Dirty, stinky, routine.

Unremarkable. Cold.

Just like brushing your teeth: A necessary waste of time.

Here’s the kicker: This nightmare will hardly engender much shock or outrage, I’m afraid.

Why? Because the spin and pressure will be to pass laws to make places where people kill themselves nice and comfy, clean, and warm.

Decency and love have disappeared.

Barbarity is cool.

The Scots: Let’s Allow Assisted Suicide For CHILDREN

It’s coming thick and fast now, folks.

Killing people, that is, especially in the UK

If you’re going to be an overachieving country, it might as well be in the realm of assisted suicide.

Dan James. Valerie Grosvenor Myer.

And tonight’s Sky Real Lives channel airing of the filmed assisted suicide of Craig Ewert.

Remember, in all these cases, part of the pro-killing argument was that it wasn’t the act of assisted suicide that was bad; it was those pesky laws in the UK that prevented it.

So, aided and abetted by the largely uncritical media, the clarion call came from the seat of the former Empire: We need to change the law.

Not wanting to be seen as retrograde neanderthals to their English cousins, the Scots have stepped in to take the lead.

Scotland’s The Herald reports today that a Scottish MP, Margo MacDonald, is planning to introduce legislation that would legalize assisted suicide for children.

No, I’m not kidding. Wish I were.

Here’s MacDonald’s rationale: In Scotland, when parents divorce, and the children are 12 or older, the court takes into consideration the child’s choice as to which parent they wish to live with. Under some circumstances, the living choice is offered to younger children.

So, goes MacDonald, why not give the same legal status for choices about living or dying?

Get a load of the proposed legislation’s slimy rationale:

The outlined proposal would allow patients with degenerative, irreversible conditions to approach a doctor who would be specially registered to help terminate life at the patient's request.

OK, that’s standard let’s-kill-you-when-you-have-a-bad-disease language.

But, listen to this:

Assisted suicide would also be possible for patients who unexpectedly became incapacitated to an "intolerable" degree, or who simply find their life "intolerable" - although the latter case would require the doctor to seek a second opinion from another health professional.

So, now, if you think any “incapacitation” you have is a drag, or even if you think your life is just yucky, you have a way out. Remember, because we don't want to be too hasty, for this aspect of the legislation you’ll have to find not one, but two doctors who agree you should be done in. (Shouldn’t be difficult with a little doctor-shopping for medicos who share the pro-killing view of the world).

And now, potentially, in Scotland, you don’t even have to wait until you’re legally an adult.

Children have rights too, you know.

The New Reality TV: Assisted Suicide is "Love"

Well Jack Kervorkian must be proud, as must the 58% of Washingtonians that celebrated their win in making assisted suicide legal in their state barely a month ago.

You’ll recall that Kervorkian started a trend in making suicide a living room experience when he filmed killing Thomas Youk in 1998, and paraded the grisly deed on CBS’ 60 Minutes a few weeks later.

It’s baaack!!

Britain’s newspapers are all abuzz today over the planned screening on the Sky Real Lives channel tomorrow night of the documentary Right To Die - The Suicide Tourist, which shows, in part, the assisted suicide of 59 year-old Craig Ewert.

Ewert, from Britain, was diagnosed with motor neuron disease a while back and given a few years to live. The disease progressed fairly quickly to where he was confined to a wheelchair. 

(Sidebar, my good friend in South Africa, Tony, who also has motor neuron disease, and is in much worse shape than Ewert was, has a vastly different opinion than Ewert).

No worries, mate, Switzerland’s Dignitas can help. For a £3000 fee, of course.

Ewert made the decision to end his life before he was in a position where he couldn’t kill himself. As he put it:

Once I become completely paralysed then I am nothing more than a living tomb that takes in nutrients through a tube in the stomach - it's painful. . . . Let's face it, when you're completely paralysed and cannot talk how do you let somebody know you are suffering?

To avoid this difficult situation, he travelled to Switzerland accompanied by his wife.  (Assisted suicide is illegal in Britain). The documentary shows Ewert, his wife at his side, drinking a fatal dose of drugs and using his lips to press the button (helpfully held to his lips by his loving wife) that stopped his ventilator.

He was dead in less than an hour. Just ike that.

Two points among many, if I may:

One: All the buzz is about Ewert’s suicide on TV, there, for all to see, rather than the act of suicide itself, which the British media regularly, and fawningly, presents as a perfectly reasonable thing for people to do. Methinks they protesteth too much.

Two: As with the Dan James case a few weeks ago (courtesy of the same diligent, deadly, Dignitas) the spin of the media is this:

What a shame that this poor man had to kill himself so far from his home and the comfort of his surroundings, without his whole loving family by his side to hold his hand and hug him as he slipped away from his pain and torment. What kind of barbaric society is Britain that it still has laws outlawing this ultimate act of loving sacrifice?

Bad, bad, naughty law. Needs to be changed.

OK, maybe it’s just me, but we’ve obviously moved to seeing assisted suicide as a good thing, and laws and people that oppose it as those nasty intolerants.

Interesting, very interesting.