LIFE Lines

Professor John Keown is a world-renowned British bioethicist, a qualified barrister and distinguished philospher and ethicist who has published widely on many aspects of euthanasia. He current teaches at Georgetown University in the USA, and his work has been cited by both the US Supreme Court and the British Court of Appeal. He writes in today's Daily Telegraph about why we must not relax the law on assisted suicide.

Gordon Brown has a powerfully argued piece in today's Telegraph arguing that assisted suicide is the wrong solution to severe suffering. Like LIFE, he believes that improved hospice and palliative care is the answer.

The mother of a very sick child says some important and moving things about suffering, life and meaning, while journalist and writer Dominic Lawson asks "Who are we to decide that a dependent life is a pointless life?"

A fantastic article at the journal First Things outlines how, even with huge public funding, embryonic stem cell research is failing to produce the goods, with money now increasingly being diverted to ethical and successful adult stem cell research.

An extract:

The climate change negotiations in Copenhagen last month produced little of note. One worrying aspect was the growing acceptance of, and even praise for, China’s barbaric one child policy, and a suggestion or the West’s own that is just as anti human.

Across the European Union pro-lifers in member countries are collecting signatures for this petition in defence of the right to
life of the human embryo, to coincide with the 60th Anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. It is vital that the United Kingdom supports this initiative.

The European Union is the only vehicle for receiving such a petition from European citizens and this is primarily addressed to the President of the EU, but it is intended to send copies to the Council and Commission as well.

Compulsory sex education has now arrived. No opt out. Not anymore. Problem solved. By that I mean the problem of the Government’s failed strategy to tackle the teenage pregnancy and sexual health crisis, the one they’ve invested in the order of 300 million pounds in. You see, what was frustrating the success of their scheme was that sex education was not compulsory. Nought point nought four percent of parents, that’s 0.04%, refused to let their children attend classes. Another huge problem was that faith schools, which make up a third of schools, didn’t teach about contraception.

Looking at the situation in the UK today, it’s easy to get disheartened in the face of all the challenges facing the cause of life. However, history shows us that ours is not the only cause fighting seemingly insurmountable odds and the weight of public opinion. Take this selection of quotes:

“An Indian is not a person within the meaning of the Constitution.”

Legal scholar George F. Canfield, The American Law Review of 1881

“Pro-life? That’s a lie! You don’t care if women die!” is a chant commonly heard outside pro-life meeting places. And this news item, reported with customary sympathy by the BBC, would seem to confirm the reasoning behind it. 70,000 women a year killed by those heartless fanatics who insist on restricting reproductive choice!

But there are some important facts that the news piece omits, as one commentator has pointed out.

The tide has turned on assisted suicide. At least, that’s what we’re being told. An eight hundred strong wave of ailing people has signed up to die an early death in the infamous Dignitas clinic, Switzerland. There is overwhelming public support for a change in the law, it is claimed, albeit by those who are pushing legalized voluntary euthanasia. They all want to die a good death. Peacefully. But tell me, who doesn’t?