Tuesday, June 27, 2006
China's Crackdown on Sex-Selection Abortions Stalls
From LifeNews
The headline assumes that they were earnest about this in the first place. Looking at the recent developments, China's intent here is unclear at best.
The Chinese government has decided it will not prohibit abortions used to prevent the birth of girl babies even though sex-selection abortions have contributed to a stark gender imbalance that is creating a host of social problems. The nation's state-owned media reported the plan to scrap the idea.
China now has 119 boys for ever 100 girls, a gender imbalance that is far from the normal 103-100 ratio seen in industrialized nations across the globe. The imbalance has given rise to a culture of massive sex-trafficking and the kidnapping of teenagers and young adults to be forced into marriage.
Though it has started to crack down on the use of ultrasound machines to determine the gender of an unborn child, Chinese lawmakers could not agree on penalties for sex-selection abortions for those who get around the policy.
Zhou Kunren, the vice-chairman of the parliamentary Law Committee, told China-run media that lawmakers could not come together to finalize the amendment to the nation's criminal law. He indicated some lawmakers want to pass the sex-selection abortion ban to fix the gender imbalance but others disagree.
"However, other experts argue it is inappropriate to criminalize such practice because pregnant women enjoy the right to know the sex of the fetus," he said.
Somehow I'm skeptical that what scuttled this policy was the individual rights of women in China. Why would Chinese policymakers allow this practice to continue when it is so obviously destructive to their society? The only benefits I can see are a surplus of unmarried men that can be conscripted into the People's Liberation Army, and the way it contributes to the Chinese goverment's depopulation goals.
The headline assumes that they were earnest about this in the first place. Looking at the recent developments, China's intent here is unclear at best.
The Chinese government has decided it will not prohibit abortions used to prevent the birth of girl babies even though sex-selection abortions have contributed to a stark gender imbalance that is creating a host of social problems. The nation's state-owned media reported the plan to scrap the idea.
China now has 119 boys for ever 100 girls, a gender imbalance that is far from the normal 103-100 ratio seen in industrialized nations across the globe. The imbalance has given rise to a culture of massive sex-trafficking and the kidnapping of teenagers and young adults to be forced into marriage.
Though it has started to crack down on the use of ultrasound machines to determine the gender of an unborn child, Chinese lawmakers could not agree on penalties for sex-selection abortions for those who get around the policy.
Zhou Kunren, the vice-chairman of the parliamentary Law Committee, told China-run media that lawmakers could not come together to finalize the amendment to the nation's criminal law. He indicated some lawmakers want to pass the sex-selection abortion ban to fix the gender imbalance but others disagree.
"However, other experts argue it is inappropriate to criminalize such practice because pregnant women enjoy the right to know the sex of the fetus," he said.
Somehow I'm skeptical that what scuttled this policy was the individual rights of women in China. Why would Chinese policymakers allow this practice to continue when it is so obviously destructive to their society? The only benefits I can see are a surplus of unmarried men that can be conscripted into the People's Liberation Army, and the way it contributes to the Chinese goverment's depopulation goals.
Monday, June 26, 2006
Bioethics Rumble in Albany
According to his blog Wesley Smith will soon be taking a much deserved vacation, but not before he joins a bioethics conference in Albany along with Nigel Cameron who has written a bioethics column for Christianity Today. Wesley has predicted some "respectful fireworks", which will be good because right-to-die-friendly bioethicist Art Caplan will be there. Art recently eulogized Dr Ron Cranford in the most glowing of terms.
Hopefully one of my favorite pro-life bloggers, Chana Meira will be able to attend and will give us a report. If any other blogger/readers plan to be there, I'll be happy to post your feedback.
Hopefully one of my favorite pro-life bloggers, Chana Meira will be able to attend and will give us a report. If any other blogger/readers plan to be there, I'll be happy to post your feedback.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Euthanasia Law Being Considered in India
From Hindustan Times
SEEKING TO legalise mercy killing in the case of terminally ill patients, the Law Commission has suggested to the government to consider if a legislation can be enacted under which life-support systems can be withdrawn in the patients' "best interests".
In a report, the commission said that under such circumstances, no criminal case should be made against the patient, the doctor or anyone else for the decision.
Sources said the report asked the government to study if a patient could be "competent" to take a decision on "withholding or withdrawing" medical treatment, including artificial nutrition and hydration.
The commission submitted its report recently to the Law Ministry, which has sent it to the Health Ministry for its views. "Ultimately the cabinet has to decide whether such a bill should be brought in Parliament," the sources said.
SEEKING TO legalise mercy killing in the case of terminally ill patients, the Law Commission has suggested to the government to consider if a legislation can be enacted under which life-support systems can be withdrawn in the patients' "best interests".
In a report, the commission said that under such circumstances, no criminal case should be made against the patient, the doctor or anyone else for the decision.
Sources said the report asked the government to study if a patient could be "competent" to take a decision on "withholding or withdrawing" medical treatment, including artificial nutrition and hydration.
The commission submitted its report recently to the Law Ministry, which has sent it to the Health Ministry for its views. "Ultimately the cabinet has to decide whether such a bill should be brought in Parliament," the sources said.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
The Baby Boomer Death Manifesto
In his op-ed piece in The Guardian Richard Smith gives us the unabashed party line of his generation's secular take on the meaning of life and death.
He starts by confirming my suspicion that the right-to-die movement has an "war of attrition" strategy in pushing euthanasia in the UK:
In 1978 I published one of my first articles in a medical journal - on abortion. It prompted howls of protest, and so did every article on abortion for the next 10 years. But slowly the protesters, some of them very well organised, ran out of steam. We moved - do I dare say progressed? - over a 50-year time scale from refusing termination of pregnancy in a woman whose life was threatened by pregnancy to, effectively, abortion on demand.
I feel I'm watching a similar progression with euthanasia. Len Doyal, "one of Britain's top medical ethicists", arguing that active euthanasia can be acceptable is another step along the path. Len may be in the vanguard, but much of the population is close behind. Other countries and states - the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Oregon, the Northern Territories - are ahead, but surely a post-religious country like Britain will quickly follow. Lord Joffe's bill on physician-assisted suicide may have been put on ice, but it'll soon be warmed up.
His claim is that in the UK the push is by "the people", but I think it is more accurate to say that it is the boomer hive-mind that is represented by the media:
The progression is mostly led not by doctors or ethicists, but - as it should be - by the people. Why not euthanasia, many think. "I don't want to hang around demented, incontinent, a burden, incapable of joy. I'll get out while the going's relatively good. I'll not be shoved in one of those miserable homes. I'll call the shots." This view is becoming particularly strong as the "baby boomers" confront their deaths. We've had much more privileged lives - and much more choice - than our parents, and we'd like to keep it that way to the end.
That last line is a classic.
Smith says the guiding principle of boomers is autonomy, or as Frank Sinatra would say, doin' it "my way". However that autonomy doesn't extend to the doctors that they require to participate in their perceived right to an autonomous death:
Doctors (and the Pope) have always seen a difference between active killing and either "masterly inactivity" that culminates in death or giving people a high quantity of a drug to help relieve symptoms knowing that the dosage will kill them. Philosophers generally don't see a difference. But it's the doctors and not the philosophers who are doing (or not doing) the business, and they feel they have special rights. One response has been to suggest "philosopher assisted suicide". You don't need to know much medicine to hand somebody a lethal cocktail.
And there's the rub. It's OK to kill yourself. Why shouldn't a doctor help you out? Isn't that what doctors are supposed to do? Aren't we meant to be creating a "patient-led NHS"?
In other words, just do it our way...
He starts by confirming my suspicion that the right-to-die movement has an "war of attrition" strategy in pushing euthanasia in the UK:
In 1978 I published one of my first articles in a medical journal - on abortion. It prompted howls of protest, and so did every article on abortion for the next 10 years. But slowly the protesters, some of them very well organised, ran out of steam. We moved - do I dare say progressed? - over a 50-year time scale from refusing termination of pregnancy in a woman whose life was threatened by pregnancy to, effectively, abortion on demand.
I feel I'm watching a similar progression with euthanasia. Len Doyal, "one of Britain's top medical ethicists", arguing that active euthanasia can be acceptable is another step along the path. Len may be in the vanguard, but much of the population is close behind. Other countries and states - the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Oregon, the Northern Territories - are ahead, but surely a post-religious country like Britain will quickly follow. Lord Joffe's bill on physician-assisted suicide may have been put on ice, but it'll soon be warmed up.
His claim is that in the UK the push is by "the people", but I think it is more accurate to say that it is the boomer hive-mind that is represented by the media:
The progression is mostly led not by doctors or ethicists, but - as it should be - by the people. Why not euthanasia, many think. "I don't want to hang around demented, incontinent, a burden, incapable of joy. I'll get out while the going's relatively good. I'll not be shoved in one of those miserable homes. I'll call the shots." This view is becoming particularly strong as the "baby boomers" confront their deaths. We've had much more privileged lives - and much more choice - than our parents, and we'd like to keep it that way to the end.
That last line is a classic.
Smith says the guiding principle of boomers is autonomy, or as Frank Sinatra would say, doin' it "my way". However that autonomy doesn't extend to the doctors that they require to participate in their perceived right to an autonomous death:
Doctors (and the Pope) have always seen a difference between active killing and either "masterly inactivity" that culminates in death or giving people a high quantity of a drug to help relieve symptoms knowing that the dosage will kill them. Philosophers generally don't see a difference. But it's the doctors and not the philosophers who are doing (or not doing) the business, and they feel they have special rights. One response has been to suggest "philosopher assisted suicide". You don't need to know much medicine to hand somebody a lethal cocktail.
And there's the rub. It's OK to kill yourself. Why shouldn't a doctor help you out? Isn't that what doctors are supposed to do? Aren't we meant to be creating a "patient-led NHS"?
In other words, just do it our way...
The Baby Boomer Death Manifesto
In his op-ed piece in The Guardian Richard Smith gives us the unabashed party line of his generation's secular take on the meaning of life and death.
He starts by confirming my suspicion that the right-to-die movement has an "war of attrition" strategy in pushing euthanasia in the UK:
In 1978 I published one of my first articles in a medical journal - on abortion. It prompted howls of protest, and so did every article on abortion for the next 10 years. But slowly the protesters, some of them very well organised, ran out of steam. We moved - do I dare say progressed? - over a 50-year time scale from refusing termination of pregnancy in a woman whose life was threatened by pregnancy to, effectively, abortion on demand.
I feel I'm watching a similar progression with euthanasia. Len Doyal, "one of Britain's top medical ethicists", arguing that active euthanasia can be acceptable is another step along the path. Len may be in the vanguard, but much of the population is close behind. Other countries and states - the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Oregon, the Northern Territories - are ahead, but surely a post-religious country like Britain will quickly follow. Lord Joffe's bill on physician-assisted suicide may have been put on ice, but it'll soon be warmed up.
His claim is that in the UK the push is by "the people", but I think it is more accurate to say that it is the boomer hive-mind that is represented by the media:
The progression is mostly led not by doctors or ethicists, but - as it should be - by the people. Why not euthanasia, many think. "I don't want to hang around demented, incontinent, a burden, incapable of joy. I'll get out while the going's relatively good. I'll not be shoved in one of those miserable homes. I'll call the shots." This view is becoming particularly strong as the "baby boomers" confront their deaths. We've had much more privileged lives - and much more choice - than our parents, and we'd like to keep it that way to the end.
That last line is a classic.
Smith says the guiding principle of boomers is autonomy, or as Frank Sinatra would say, doin' it "my way". However that autonomy doesn't extend to the doctors that they require to participate in their perceived right to an autonomous death:
Doctors (and the Pope) have always seen a difference between active killing and either "masterly inactivity" that culminates in death or giving people a high quantity of a drug to help relieve symptoms knowing that the dosage will kill them. Philosophers generally don't see a difference. But it's the doctors and not the philosophers who are doing (or not doing) the business, and they feel they have special rights. One response has been to suggest "philosopher assisted suicide". You don't need to know much medicine to hand somebody a lethal cocktail.
And there's the rub. It's OK to kill yourself. Why shouldn't a doctor help you out? Isn't that what doctors are supposed to do? Aren't we meant to be creating a "patient-led NHS"?
In other words, just do it our way...
He starts by confirming my suspicion that the right-to-die movement has an "war of attrition" strategy in pushing euthanasia in the UK:
In 1978 I published one of my first articles in a medical journal - on abortion. It prompted howls of protest, and so did every article on abortion for the next 10 years. But slowly the protesters, some of them very well organised, ran out of steam. We moved - do I dare say progressed? - over a 50-year time scale from refusing termination of pregnancy in a woman whose life was threatened by pregnancy to, effectively, abortion on demand.
I feel I'm watching a similar progression with euthanasia. Len Doyal, "one of Britain's top medical ethicists", arguing that active euthanasia can be acceptable is another step along the path. Len may be in the vanguard, but much of the population is close behind. Other countries and states - the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Oregon, the Northern Territories - are ahead, but surely a post-religious country like Britain will quickly follow. Lord Joffe's bill on physician-assisted suicide may have been put on ice, but it'll soon be warmed up.
His claim is that in the UK the push is by "the people", but I think it is more accurate to say that it is the boomer hive-mind that is represented by the media:
The progression is mostly led not by doctors or ethicists, but - as it should be - by the people. Why not euthanasia, many think. "I don't want to hang around demented, incontinent, a burden, incapable of joy. I'll get out while the going's relatively good. I'll not be shoved in one of those miserable homes. I'll call the shots." This view is becoming particularly strong as the "baby boomers" confront their deaths. We've had much more privileged lives - and much more choice - than our parents, and we'd like to keep it that way to the end.
That last line is a classic.
Smith says the guiding principle of boomers is autonomy, or as Frank Sinatra would say, doin' it "my way". However that autonomy doesn't extend to the doctors that they require to participate in their perceived right to an autonomous death:
Doctors (and the Pope) have always seen a difference between active killing and either "masterly inactivity" that culminates in death or giving people a high quantity of a drug to help relieve symptoms knowing that the dosage will kill them. Philosophers generally don't see a difference. But it's the doctors and not the philosophers who are doing (or not doing) the business, and they feel they have special rights. One response has been to suggest "philosopher assisted suicide". You don't need to know much medicine to hand somebody a lethal cocktail.
And there's the rub. It's OK to kill yourself. Why shouldn't a doctor help you out? Isn't that what doctors are supposed to do? Aren't we meant to be creating a "patient-led NHS"?
In other words, just do it our way...
Monday, June 12, 2006
Hentoff on the Culture of Death
Nat Hentoff is my kind of liberal. He has already shown he is a mensch in his defense of Terri Schiavo, the only voice in her favor I can recall hearing from the Left. Here he takes on the Culture of Death in both its aspects of euthanasia and abortion. It is simply too good and too intense to pick out one quote. Please take the time to read the entire article, it is relatively short and you won't regret it. Compare his principled stand to that of his former mentor, Jesse Jackson.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Busy Times for the Culture of Death
From the Telegraph a report that neighbors of the Swiss assisted suicide clinic want them evicted:
Residents who share a block of flats with Dignitas, the controversial assisted suicide charity, have launched a campaign to evict the organisation from the buiding.
In eight years, more than 450 people have killed themselves with barbiturates in a fourth-floor apartment in Zurich, owned by the Swiss charity. The bodies are put in a zipper bag and transported in the three-person lift, or carried downstairs.
Traumatised by the experience of passing living people going up in the lift, only to come across them hours later descending in a body bag, some residents want to move out of the block.
***
According to Australian ABC Radio, the New Zealand Ministry of Health has declined to charge Philip Nitschke for practicing medicine without a license for his assisted suicide workshops. He will return to continue the workshops, but the Medical Council has threatened to try to make another charge stick.
***
I've posted before that Amnesty International was considering a policy making the killing of babies a basic human right. Now it seems they are ready to push this policy at their next general meeting, according to LifeSite. I agree with Congressman Christopher Smith of New Jersey:
"I would hope they reject it," he said. "They would cease to be a human rights organization and morph into just another anti-child, pro-abortion organization."
The bishop who penned the "Amnesty Prayer" and is a thirty year member has already resigned in protest.
***
Finally LifeNews has a great editorial on adult vs. embryonic stem cell research from JunkScience.com's Steve Milloy
Residents who share a block of flats with Dignitas, the controversial assisted suicide charity, have launched a campaign to evict the organisation from the buiding.
In eight years, more than 450 people have killed themselves with barbiturates in a fourth-floor apartment in Zurich, owned by the Swiss charity. The bodies are put in a zipper bag and transported in the three-person lift, or carried downstairs.
Traumatised by the experience of passing living people going up in the lift, only to come across them hours later descending in a body bag, some residents want to move out of the block.
***
According to Australian ABC Radio, the New Zealand Ministry of Health has declined to charge Philip Nitschke for practicing medicine without a license for his assisted suicide workshops. He will return to continue the workshops, but the Medical Council has threatened to try to make another charge stick.
***
I've posted before that Amnesty International was considering a policy making the killing of babies a basic human right. Now it seems they are ready to push this policy at their next general meeting, according to LifeSite. I agree with Congressman Christopher Smith of New Jersey:
"I would hope they reject it," he said. "They would cease to be a human rights organization and morph into just another anti-child, pro-abortion organization."
The bishop who penned the "Amnesty Prayer" and is a thirty year member has already resigned in protest.
***
Finally LifeNews has a great editorial on adult vs. embryonic stem cell research from JunkScience.com's Steve Milloy