Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

Always Care, Never Kill: How Physician-Assisted Suicide Endangers the Weak, Corrupts Medicine, Compromises the Family, and Violates Human Dignity and Equality

Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D. writes:

Abstract

Allowing physician-assisted suicide would be a grave mistake for four reasons. First, it would endanger the weak and vulnerable. Second, it would corrupt the practice of medicine and the doctor–patient relationship. Third, it would compromise the family and intergenerational commitments. And fourth, it would betray human dignity and equality before the law. Instead of helping people to kill themselves, we should offer them appropriate medical care and human presence. We should respond to suffering with true compassion and solidarity. Doctors should help their patients to die a dignified death of natural causes, not assist in killing. Physicians are always to care, never to kill.

The full article follows the Abstract.

QUICK TAKES

Jonah Goldberg - "Liberals and Eugenics"

Mary O'Grady - The U.S. vs. Honduran Democracy

John Bolton - "A  Deepening Crisis between U.S., Israel"

George F. Will - "There's A Simple Fix for Immigration"

SUPREME COURT JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG THINKS EUGENICS A GOOD IDEA?

- Update 7/17/09 - Michael Gerson - What did Justice Ginsberg mean in her latest comments about abortion?

- (Original Post) - Jonah Goldberg writes:

Here’s what Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine: “Frankly I had thought that at the time [Roe v. Wade] was decided,” Ginsburg told her interviewer, Emily Bazelon, “there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

Really?  What populations would that be?  Goldberg wonders, too, and has some ideas.   [more . . ]

Eugenics: Making a Strong Comeback?

See Gene Veith on The Eugenics Agenda. Veith produces excerpts from Michael Gerson's article, The Eugenics Temptation.