LIFEAlerts

Assisted suicide has been rejected in Connecticut for the tenth time, after a close vote by senators on the State General Assembly’s judiciary committee. The disability rights group Second Thoughts Connecticut and The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition USA strongly opposed the plans. They warned “offering suicide prevention to most people while offering suicide assistance to an ever-widening subset of disabled people is lethal disability discrimination”.

Source

Palliative care doctor Suzanne Walter and her patient Diethelm Harck started a court case to legalise euthanasia in South Africa. Walter was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2017, while Harck was diagnosed with motor neuron disease in 2013. Both wish to end their lives when they feel they cannot handle their illnesses any more. Due to their medical conditions, special arrangements were made in March for the evidence of Harck and Walter to be heard first via a commission headed by Judge Neels Claassen. Their application for an order directing the government to enact legislation which will allow for physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, is due to proceed in the South Gauteng High Court for six weeks from May 3.

Source

The ECHR points out in a judgment opposing a Danish euthanasia activist, Mr. Lings, to the justice of his country that the European Convention on Human Rights man “does not enshrine the right to assisted suicide”. Svend Lings, an activist doctor, was sentenced in September 2018 for having prescribed lethal products to two people who wanted to commit suicide. He claimed to be the victim of a violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights relating to freedom of expression. The judges of the ECHR considered that freedom of expression was not in question. The Court further held that the Danish state indeed had a duty to protect the most vulnerable members of society.

Source

On March 28, 2022, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum entered into a settlement agreement that guaranteed the non-enforcement of the residency requirement in Oregon’s “Death with Dignity Act.” This statute limited physician-assisted suicide access to residents of Oregon. Oregon Right to Life Executive Director, Lois Anderson, warns against the short physician-patient relationships and the push to eliminate any waiting period for life-ending drugs. He says that the residency requirement at least protected some patients from predatory practices going unnoticed in the current execution of the law. “Oregon has launched its new industry—death tourism.”

Source

Natural law is not a physical law or a law that man has imposed on himself. It is a universal moral law, intrinsic to man, instilled in his conscience. We have all heard children exclaim “that’s not fair!” or shared similar emotions over international events. These experiences show the commonality of an awareness of good and evil. This allows us to conclude two things: Human life is sacred; all men have a common destiny and a common law instilled in their consciences. If human life is sacred, then anything that protects, for example the prohibition of murder; is good. The idea that there is no objective law is a disastrous manifestation of the current postmodern relativism.

Source

The statement is that patients with terminal anorexia nervosa deserve the same attendant care and rights as all other patients with terminal illness. The article studies three cases to elucidate this condition then proposes clinical characteristics for a terminal eating disorder: diagnosis of anorexia nervosa, older age (over 30), previous participation in high quality care, and clear and consistent determination by a patient who possesses decision-making capacity. What doors will be opened if “terminal” is redefined?

The bioethics writer Wesley J. Smith argues in the National Review “When psychiatrists give up on their mentally ill patients — and indeed, are allowed to help them commit suicide — who will defend the value and continued importance of their lives?”.

Source

An amendment to the Government’s Health and Care Bill sought to force the Government into drafting an assisted suicide bill within a year of the Health and Care Bill becoming law. The Association of Palliative Medicine (APM) has warned that the public is being “scared” into supporting assisted suicide through an excessive focus by the media on cases of suffering at end-of-life, This can lead to the perception that there is no hope and create the false choice between a painful, drawn-out and unnecessarily unpleasant death and assisted suicide or euthanasia. But this is not the case at all. Good palliative care is, or should be, an option for everyone at the end of life.

Source

Freud correlatively differentiates between three fundamental prohibitions, three universal taboos which form the basis of the conditions of existence of culture: the taboos of cannibalism, incest and murder. Since the dawn of human history, this triple prohibition separates the state of culture from the state of nature, writes Freud.

Source