A Michigan jury has rejected Harlan Drake's insanity defense and found him guilty of first degree murder for killing abortion protester James Pouillon and businessman Mike Fuoss.
Joe Carter examines how the Netherlands has become so enamored with assisted suicide and euthanasia.
Over a period of forty years, the Dutch have continued the search for where to draw the line with euthanasia, shifting from acceptance of voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill, to voluntary euthanasia for the chronically ill, to non-voluntary euthanasia for the sick and disabled, to euthanasia for those who are not sick at all but are merely “suffering through living.” While the initial impetus may have been spurred by a desire to give expanded rights to the person who faces extreme suffering or imminent death, the effect has been to concentrate power into the hands of state-sponsored medical professionals. And while the justification for assisted death is usually the supposed well being of the suffering patient, the Dutch have redefined natural dependency into an unacceptable or unwanted social burden.
By conflating the duty to reduce suffering with the perceived necessity to eliminate all suffering, Dutch physicians have increasingly resorted to euthanasia as a novel form of sympathectomy. A sympathectomy is a medical procedure that is sometimes required after a localized trauma or peripheral nerve injury, when a person may feel a syndrome of pain and tenderness that can only be relieved by the excision of a sympathetic nerve. In a similar manner, when faced with the many pains, heartaches, and disabilities that eventually afflict most of us in one form or another, the Dutch are resorting to the excision provided by euthanasia.
AUL has responded to the criticisms by Commonweal's Matthew Boudway of their legal analysis on abortion and health care.
David Christensen takes down the meme that the federal government already subsidizes abortion because the federal government doesn't tax employer-based health care plans.
There are several errors in this argument. First, the employer tax exclusion does mean that a business is being taxed less so they can purchase health care plans. Being taxed less by the government is different than the government making direct payments, through tax credits, grants or other expenditures. So the employer tax exclusion for health care is different than the Federal government pays someone to purchase of health plans. There is a difference between government spending of public funds, and the government taking less of your money. Matt conflates the two.
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