Category: Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide

Being Pro-Life 3.0
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Being Pro-Life 3.0

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by on Jul 18, 2012 in Catholic Bioethics, Cloning, Embryo Research & Genetics, Contraception & Abortion, Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured, Reproductive Technology
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This characterization of the many facets of being pro-life is so brilliant I wish I could say I thought of it.  Scott Rae, in an interview with John Stonestreet at BreakPoint.org, brings the pro-life movement into the 21st century in an attempt to get us all to wake up to the perils we are facing. […]

Concluding the Fortnight: Now What?
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Concluding the Fortnight: Now What?

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by on Jul 05, 2012 in Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured, Government & Politics, Health & Fitness
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The Holy Hours and prayers have all been said, the letters written to legislators, the blogs have been written, the teach-ins have played themselves out, and the church bells have all been rung. Now What? Where do we go from here, and will our bishops continue to lead us along the way? These are the […]

Obamacare: Will Supreme Court Have the Last Word?
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Obamacare: Will Supreme Court Have the Last Word?

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by on Jun 27, 2012 in Contraception & Abortion, Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured, Law & Justice
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Anticipation is building to a fever pitch in and around the nation’s capital as various types of leaders jockey for position and posture while waiting for that big moment when the Supreme Court reaches a decision on Obamacare. The questions remain: What will be the fallout and what can we expect? There are three scenarios […]

Calling People "Vegetables": Where Did it Come From?
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Calling People “Vegetables”: Where Did it Come From?

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by on May 04, 2012 in Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured
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The term “vegetative state” became popular at the “birth” of bioethics (1978 Belmont Report). It is traced to the “delayed personhood” arguments used at the beginning of life issues: first the vegetative soul is present, then later the sensitive soul is added, and finally (about 3-4 months) the rational soul is added. Then and only […]

Setting the Record Straight: Tracy Latimer Was the Victim, Not Robert
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Setting the Record Straight: Tracy Latimer Was the Victim, Not Robert

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by on Apr 19, 2012 in Disability, Sickness & Suffering, Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured
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In response to the previous article of mine entitled “Canada’s Seething Prejudice Against The Disabled” I received an Anonymous comment concerning the tragic case of Robert Latimer murdering his disabled daughter Tracy nearly twenty years ago. The comment was typical of people who relied on the gross distortions presented by much of Canada’s secular, liberal […]

Double-Standard for the Demented
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Double-Standard for the Demented

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by on Apr 14, 2012 in Columnists, Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured, Health & Fitness
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The late medical essayist Lewis Thomas once described Alzheimer’s as “the worst of all diseases, not just for what it does to the patient, but for its devastating effects on family and friends.” For anyone who has witnessed the ravages of Alzheimer’s firsthand, as I did during the dozen-plus years that my father battled it, […]

Christ Teaches Us How to Die
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Christ Teaches Us How to Die

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by on Apr 06, 2012 in Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured, Live in Christ
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For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps. (1 Peter 2:21) There are many, many lessons to be learned in the example Christ left for us in his suffering. One of those, I believe, is a lesson in how […]

Canada's Seething Prejudice Against the Disabled
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Canada’s Seething Prejudice Against the Disabled

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by on Mar 29, 2012 in Disability, Sickness & Suffering, Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured
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Earlier this month, Global Television Network in Canada featured a documentary about the so-called “mercy killing” of children with severe disabilities. The very fact that such a topic is even entertained on national television reveals something about the moral state of my country. The documentary featured two parents: the first was Annette Corriveau who wants […]

Sebelius and Paying for Obamacare Through Death and Nonexistence
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Sebelius and Paying for Obamacare Through Death and Nonexistence

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by on Mar 27, 2012 in Contraception & Abortion, Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured
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Recently, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius dropped her guard and gave the American people a good insight into how it is that Obamacare will ultimately stay solvent: The nonexistence of patients who, not being alive, cannot make claims upon the system. From CNSNews.com: During the subcommittee hearing, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) said that contraception provided by […]

What Happened to My Beloved Oxford?
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What Happened to My Beloved Oxford?

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by on Mar 27, 2012 in Cloning, Embryo Research & Genetics, Contraception & Abortion, Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured
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My junior year of college I took a year off from my chemistry studies and went on an adventure.  I spent a year studying English literature, philosophy and Latin at Blackfriars College, a part of University of Oxford.  Academically, I got my butt handed to me.  Once, after spending days poring over a philosophy text […]

Death in Springtime: Recalling Terri Schindler Schiavo
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Death in Springtime: Recalling Terri Schindler Schiavo

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by on Mar 31, 2011 in Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured
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It was the first day of spring in 2005. I was at the florist  in the seaside village where I grew up, assembling a basket of flowering spring plants for my sister who had just given birth. To have my hands immersed in budding greenery, inhaling earthy scents, replaced for a few moments the pall […]

How Does One Judge the Morality of Human Acts?
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How Does One Judge the Morality of Human Acts?

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by on Mar 17, 2011 in Cloning, Embryo Research & Genetics, Contraception & Abortion, Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured
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Created by God as rational and free creatures, human beings determine themselves and establish their identities as moral creatures through their free choices. We make ourselves the kinds of persons who we are in and through the actions we freely choose to do. As Pope John Paul II put it in his moral encyclical Veritatis […]

Baby-phobia Has Reached Epidemic Proportions
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Baby-phobia Has Reached Epidemic Proportions

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by on Mar 15, 2011 in Contraception & Abortion, Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured
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Imagine the crushing judicial power of a modern nation coming down upon you, trying you, sentencing you, and then planning your execution – all while the charges against you remain secret.  You might recall that as the plot of Franz Kafka’s paranoiac novel, The Trial, the protagonist of which is a 30-year-old bank clerk. Under […]

Join Fr. Frank Pavone's Urgent Plea: Release Baby Joseph's Medical Records!
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Join Fr. Frank Pavone’s Urgent Plea: Release Baby Joseph’s Medical Records!

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by on Mar 09, 2011 in Columnists, Disability, Sickness & Suffering, Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Featured
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As I’m sure you know, the now-famous case of Baby Joseph in Canada is becoming critical. He could die in the next couple of weeks if his breathing tube is removed as the hospital and the government intend. Baby Joseph is only 13 months old and often has difficulty breathing on his own. He needs […]

CL3 - hbratton notxt
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What is Catholic Bioethics?

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by on Feb 15, 2011 in Cloning, Embryo Research & Genetics, Contraception & Abortion, Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, Reproductive Technology
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Strictly speaking, there is no such science as “Catholic Bioethics” just as there is no such thing as “Catholic Baseball,” “Catholic Dentistry,” “Catholic Garbage Collection,” or “Catholic Plumbing.” Catholics do these activities, but they are not based upon divine revelation. Bioethics is a species of the science of ethics concerned especially about the beginning and […]

CL26 - hbratton notxt
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Freedom and Voluntary Death

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by on Feb 13, 2011 in Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide
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Arguments for or against voluntary suicide and/or voluntary euthanasia (hereafter referred to as voluntary death) usually presuppose reductionist understandings of human attributes such as freedom.  For example, folks sometimes ask: what is so terribly wrong with a person coming to a substantially-autonomous decision to die?  In more personal terms, why should “you” be able to […]