euthanasia

The Measure of Humanity

by Arland K. Nichols

Pope Benedict writes in Spe salvi, “The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer.” These words recently took on new meaning for me as I encountered the story of Edwarda O’Bara, who…

Let’s End the Death Penalty, Now

by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

This essay originally appeared on March 11, 2009, as Abp. Chaput’s syndicated column. It is reprinted with permission, as part of Crisis’s symposium on capital punishment. For the view of Christopher Ferrara of The Latin Mass Magazine, see this piece….

Royal Euthanasia?

by Michael Cook

You would think that having a personal physician would guarantee excellent health care. However, the conviction of Michael Jackson’s doctor for involuntary manslaughter suggests that this is not necessarily the case. Prosecutors described Dr Conrad Murray’s care of the pop…

Of Daleks and Utilitarians

by Rev. Richard Umbers

Instructing doctors to kill the dying rather than waiting for them to die is icky. But think of the quality of the organs they could donate! This is the argument some Belgian transplant surgeons used to justify taking organs from…

Reason Is the Enemy of the Euthanasia Movement

by Michael Cook

Facebook can be useful. Browsing through its weekly birthday update, I learned that Nick Tonti-Filippini, a bioethicist who serves on various Australian government committees and teaches at a Catholic institute in Melbourne, turns 55 today. Some of those years…

Bishops Betrayed on Assisted Suicide

by Patrick J. Reilly

Even as the nation’s bishops react with alarm to a recent Montana Supreme Court ruling allowing physician-assisted suicide, their efforts are being undermined by ethics and law professors at several Jesuit universities. Last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops…

Recycling Euthanasia Organs in Belgium

by Michael Cook

If you have an organ transplant in Belgium, there is a small chance that you will owe your life to someone else’s death by euthanasia. The complex job of matching donors and recipients in Belgium — where euthanasia has been…

Exposing Euthanasia through the Arts

by Barbara Nicolosi

“I killed my brother. But it wasn’t murder. I did what I had to, to stop his pain.” – Dr. Remy “Thirteen” Hadley, House “Can you not read the signs of the times?” Perhaps Christ’s most ominous warning, it echoes…

Prescription Death: Refuting the ‘Right to Die’

by Margaret Cabaniss

As health care costs continue to rise and a growing number of Baby Boomers approach old age, end-of-life issues are looming larger than ever in the public debate. What is “the right to die”? How should we, as a society,…

‘Death Dignified by Christ’

by Margaret Cabaniss

Over at First Things, David Mills tells the poignant story of his father’s death — one that, by any modern standard, would have been considered humiliating and undignified. It wasn’t pretty, Mills admits, but he says that his father’s willing…

Batman, Pro-Life Crusader

Well, you don’t often get pro-life pieces at the Huffington Post. Though to be honest, the piece I found isn’t explicitly pro-life. In fact, it doesn’t mention abortion or euthanasia at all. But the ideas he expressed are thoroughly pro-life…

Friday Free-for-All

by Margaret Cabaniss

Good morning! Time for your Friday links: Holland proposes extending the option of euthanasia to healthy people over 70 who simply “consider their lives complete” and want to end it. ‘How I found God and peace with my atheist brother’:…

Laying the Netherlands to Sleep

by Joseph Meaney

On my most recent visit to Amsterdam for the World Congress of Families (WCF), I was once again struck by the remarkable façade of peaceful, tolerant prosperity the Dutch maintain. Although its famous openness to lust and license is ever…

Royals and Catholics… Again

by Joanna Bogle

So here we are again, with another discussion about Catholics and the royal family. We have been here before, each time some royal falls in love with a Catholic, or even when royal marriages in general are discussed. …

Exposing the Death Dealers

In his first book, The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life, National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru fills a gap, providing the first general overview of life issues written for a popular…

Teaching Euthanasia

by Patrick J. Reilly

The intense battle to prevent Terri Schiavo’s husband from removing her feeding tube was horrible enough. To think that some American Catholic universities — and their ethics, theology, law, and medical professors — bear some responsibility for Schiavo’s slow death…