Life Matters!

"Reporting a number that will surprise some," Editor & Publisher informs us, "the Gallup Organizations today said its latest poll found that 75% of Americans support euthanasia—allowing a doctor to take the life of a patient who is suffering from an incurable disease and wants to die. This, Gallup noted, was up 6% since 2004."

While the anti-life media casts the fight against euthanasia as a cause of "rightwing fundamentalists" in the divide-and-conquer strategy described in my latest op-ed for Spero News, faith-based opponents often play into their hands by stereotyping euthanasia supporters as "leftwing secular humanists." Yet Gallup reports that "even evangelical Christians said they backed euthanasia, at 61%, as did 71% of rural residents."

Weekly churchgoers also support the concept (51%). So do self-described conservatives (63%), though that trails liberals (82%).

The wording of poll questions is crucial, but one would have to swallow camels while straining at gnats to find much solace in Gallup's query:

When a person has a disease that cannot be cured, do you think doctors should be allowed by law to end the patient's life by some painless means if the patient and his family request it?

Even more disturbing is the conclusion of Editor & Publisher's account:

In another interesting finding, 59% of the overall sample said they would consider ending their own life, if in severe pain, by some painless means.

The man who is prepared to murder himself—under the "appropriate" circumstances—will be quite willing to sanction ending the lives of others, whose condition is worse than his own, especially when it is rationalized by secularists and religious alike in the practice CURE calls "ecumenical euthanasia."

Supplemental Reading:

• For a more detailed breakdown of the survey results, see David Moore, "Three in Four Americans Support Euthanasia," Gallup News Service, May 17, 2005.

As posted on Blogs for Terri:

"'Euthanasia' is an act most often practiced on our pets," Ken Concannon begins his column in the Arlington Catholic Herald.

We have them "put down," or "put to sleep," or "euthanized" when they become so ill that there is no likelihood that they will ever get better. We tell ourselves that we deliberately end their lives to end their suffering. And maybe we do, [but] then again, a crippled and incontinent German Shepherd in your house can be incredibly inconvenient. When we end his suffering we also end ours, while telling ourselves we’re doing it for him.

In the end, it is a matter of power.

Regardless of whether we euthanize our disabled pets to ease their suffering or to end the inconvenience they cause, we do it because our society recognizes euthanizing pets as acceptable behavior. We do it because the lives of animals are not sacred. We do it because they have no inalienable right to life. We do it because we can.

On the other hand, Concannon continues:

Christian tradition, combined with the awful history of the Nazi euthanasia programs of the last century, has taught us that euthanizing human beings is inherently wrong. Human life is considered sacred. We are consequently held to a higher standard when it comes to caring for the weakest among us. We cannot euthanize the sick and the elderly when they become incontinent and are in pain—even to end their suffering. Euthanasia for human beings is illegal almost everywhere.

On the books, that is—scarce consolation to its growing number of victims, for as Concannon reports, "the efficacy of euthanizing human beings is now discussed in university classrooms, in legislative bodies, and in court rooms."

The euthanasia movement is on the rise. It is now legal in Belgium and the Netherlands. Assisted suicide, a form of passive euthanasia, is legal in Oregon. American courts have lately been siding with what Pope John Paul II called the "culture of death." Our courts have recently thwarted federal efforts to undo Oregon’s assisted suicide program, and to save a disabled Florida woman from "right to die" activists.

Terri Schindler Schiavo's "awful death" serves as a testament to the deceit inherent in the Culture of Death that is engulfing the West, Concannon concludes.

While euthanasia activists spin euphemisms about the "quality of life" and the "right to die," they are trying to get us to forget that our lives, unlike those of animals, are sacred.

Alas, they are succeeding.

"A secret organisation headed by a retired family doctor is illegally providing terminally ill British people with thousands of pounds to enable them to travel to a Swiss suicide clinic," Daniel Foggo reports in today's London Telegraph.

The Last Choice—or TLC—was set up two months ago by Dr Michael Irwin, a former chairman of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (VES), to operate as an underground benevolence network for British people seeking to kill themselves.

Some benevolence!

TLC has been covertly channelling funds to them to finance trips to the clinic in Zurich, run by the controversial Swiss charity, Dignitas, which provides people with "doctor-assisted suicides."

Some charity!

Payments of up to £2,000 per person are allocated to cover flights, hotels, cremation and doctors' fees...

TLC...has also been providing escorts to accompany the clients to the clinic and has been offering them advice on how to arrange their own deaths at Dignitas.

"Such actions," The Telegraph notes, "are criminal offences under the 1961 Suicide Act, which states that anyone who 'aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another' is liable to up to 14 years' imprisonment."

Dr Irwin, 73, from Cranleigh, Surrey, is not a stranger to the attentions of the police. Eighteen months ago, he resigned as chairman of the VES after admitting conspiring to help to end the life of a man in the Isle of Man. Dr Irwin, who was arrested but not charged over the incident, had travelled to Patrick Kneen's home at his request, armed with a lethal dose of sleeping tablets, but had found Mr Kneen too ill to ingest them.

Irwin should have been charged with his crimes long ago. It is high time to remedy that error!

Yesterday, Judge George Greer was rewarded with an engraved clock—today's equivalent of 30 pieces of silver—by the West Pasco Bar Association. The Special Justice Award was bestowed "in part for his handling of the emotionally and politically charged Schiavo case," according to Lisa Davis and Geoff Fox in The Tampa Bay Tribune, who noted that not everyone approved the dubious honor.

Some of the same protesters who stood vigil outside a Pinellas Park hospice as Terri Schiavo slipped away moved north Thursday, trying to keep her memory—and their mission—alive. As they displayed signs outside the security gate of Heritage Springs Golf and Country Club, they wanted Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge George Greer to hear them loud and clear: "Jesus Would Feed Terri,'' one sign read.

And Nuremberg would have hung Greer, since Terri did not "slip away" but was starved and dehydrated to death by her murderers.

As Greer and banquet attendees approached Heritage Springs, they passed the 15 protesters and their signs with slogans such as "You Are Awarding A Murderer'' and "Wanted: Honest Men for Black Robe Jobs.'' One girl held a sign that read: "Judge Greer Should Say Sorry to God.''

Perhaps, it was one of the Kimball girls.

Mary Kimball, of Tampa, held signs with her husband and seven of her children, ages 12 years to 18 months. "The injustice goes on,'' Kimball said. "They're spitting on Terri's grave. That's what this is.''"They're putting a big toad on her grave,'' added Kimball's daughter, Rosie, 10.

If Terri even has a grave. Notwithstanding a court order, her parents have not been told where—if anywhere—it is. And, in any case, there is no body to bury.

"Upon accepting his award, Greer received a standing ovation," Davis and Foxx report, which tells you a great deal about the lawyers and judges inside.

As for the people in the street, Greer acknowledged their presence to his fan club. As Terri's stalwart defender, Cheryl Ford, reminds us, Greer callously joked "as he digested a meal at his banquet and received an award for signing the execution via dehydration and starvation of a disabled woman":

These past several years have been a bit trying. You see my friends out there at the gate. I thank you for not inviting them in.

We are not your friends, Judge Greer. We are Terri's, and we shall remain so. And we shall fight your brand of TAB tyranny as long as God gives us breath.

As posted on Blogs for Life by my co-author Richard (and also on Hyscience):

Once upon a time you could go to a doctor and a hospital and count on them to do everything to save a life. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore, and "checkbook euthanasia" seems to be more and more the order of the day. That is something that all of us must do everything possible to reverse!

Houston's ABC affiliate, Channel 13, reports:

The mother of a critically ill baby is trying to figure out where to take her child after being told by doctors at Memorial Hermann Hospital that they would stop treating her in 10 days.

The five-month-old little girl was diagnosed with leukemia just weeks after her birth. Since then, she's undergone a number of different medical treatments and contracted an infection. Doctors and her parents disagree on what should happen next....

"Her mind is fully there," said the baby's mother, Tamiko Dismuke-Howard. "She knows when we are there. I can't give up because she won't give up."

Tamiko picked up a letter from Memorial Hermann Thursday night. It says simply that doctors believe all medical treatment, other than to ease Knya's pain and suffering, would be useless. Her parents have 10 days to find another hospital for Knya or her medical care will stop.

"We will not give up," said Charles Howard, the baby's father. "We are going all the way."

CURE urges our readers—bloggers, in particular—to heed Richard's plea to "please help to pass this around the Internet!!!"