More Proof That Assisted Suicide Activists Will Seek to Force Doctors to Participate
The culture of death brooks no dissent, I have repeatedly warned. That means the assisted suicide agenda, if it is widely successful, will one day seek to force all doctors to participate in the mercy killings of their patients--either by doing the deed personally, or referring them to a death doctor they know will write the poison prescription (or eventually, lethally inject the curare).
More proof: Barbara Coombs Lee of Compassion and Choices (formerly Hemlock Society), is in a dither about the Bush conscience clause regulation that prevents employers from discriminating against medical professionals who refuse to participate in assisted suicide (as one example) on moral grounds. From her blog:
That meddlesome regulation encouraging healthcare workers to obstruct needed treatment considered offensive to their personal beliefs, went into effect January 19. It's still in place. I'm determined to continue blogging about this issue until it is repealed.
Congress, the administration, or both must act to restore the needs of patients to their rightful priority over the morality of providers...We're in a clash between ideologues and pragmatists--people who place their own dogmatic beliefs above all, and people inclined to rely on pragmatic solutions in times of need or crisis.
So, doctors who believe in the orthodox view of the Hippocratic Oath, who understand that assisted suicide is not a medical treatment regardless of how it is redefined, are to be told to get with the program or go sell shoes for a living. There are to be no opt outs.Then Lee goes paranoid:
But the stated purpose of this rule is to urge ideologues into action. It encourages them to go to work where they can impose their beliefs on the maximum number of medical patients.Yea, like people want conflict. Besides, she has it exactly backwards: The purpose of the rule is to protect doctors and nurses against the those who seek to reduce medicine from a profession governed by rigorous ethical standards and unyielding principles of patient protection, into a technocracy of highly trained service providers--exactly the devolution, it is worth noting, that will be needed to effectuate a regime of socialized health care.
Labels: Assisted Suicide. Conscience Clauses. Barbara Coombs Lee
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 3:28 PM
18 Comments
18 Comments:
So she's saying the "pragmatists" are the good doctors? Yah, that's just what I want a doctor to be when I'm in crisis--a pragmatist! (Not.)
This chick's wonky. Has anyone else noticed that the pro-euthanasia crowd is getting more and more paranoid in their ramblings? Personally, I think it won't be too long before Compassion and Choices goes too far and jumps the shark.
Doctors: don't give in, stand up for your right to practice medicine within the confines of your conscience
I hope they go off the deep end like PETA has, andundermine theirown credibility completely.
(Unfortunately, I doubt this will happen b/c there are so many "legitimate" groups and individuals claiming the same kinds of crap about conscience clauses.)
Ha, isn't funny she belongs to an organization called Compassion AND CHOICES?
Yeah, shouldn't docs have their own choice and disagree with mercy killings? Apparently choices are good as long they are the same as hers...
I agree with Lydia..If I am ever in a time of crisis, the last thing I want to have on my side is a "pragmatist" who wont hesitate to put me to sleep when deemed "neccesary" and "compassionate".
She's saying what THEY're doing, imposing their views on the maximum number of medical patients, etc.
Medicine already HAS been reduced.
On "choices": Yeah, well this is liberals for you. The first time I ever heard the Michael Savage show it was by accident; I'd seen people walking around with Savage Nation caps and not known what they referred to. Anyway, I just happened to hear his show for the first time two or three years ago when he was saying that the day before he had tried, really, sincerely tried, to think like a liberal, but he couldn't, because it made his head hurt, because there was no logic to it.
T.E. and Holyterror: I widh they would. But I think they're having more and more influence. There isn't much farther they can go; they already are off the deep end. And people are going along with them. In contrast, PETA isn't off the deep end, can't be off the deep end, because their hearts are in the right place and they are on the right track. They're not Kevorkians. In fact the more "off the deep end" as it's called here they get, the more I like them. They're trying to do something and it's not an easy fight. They're not trying to get the disabled or the elderly euthanized, or to promote assisted suicide. They're trying to stop suffering, and the more compassion we show animals, the more we are able to show to other humans. I seriously disagree that those who favor compassion to animals and value their life are not pro-human life. Life is life. Valuing it in one form leads to valuing it more in every form. Not the opposite. Which is why human exceptionalism shoots itself in the foot and goes in a circle.
Hey I was just looking at the flags with the numbers of how many from each nation have visited SHS. If each number is a new person, and the numbers don't reflect every time anyone visits the site whether they have before or not, it looks like the number from the U.S. has more than doubled since I first saw it, and increased by 50 per cent, from about 20K to 30K, by 19K, in like the last week! The number from Greece has done likewise, England (if they don't call it that any more well that's part of the problem) and Canada have increased but maybe by not as much(?), and all the numbers for all the national flags look higher. I know I tell people about SHS and a lot of people must be doing likewise but the increase looks like more than word of mouth could account for. How do people find it? Imagine all the people who would visit if they knew about it.
Oops that should have been increased from about 20K to 30K, by 9K, not 19K, sorry for the typo.
Anyway that's the thing; people don't KNOW what's going on. It's unimagineable. They don't know until they're in the situation, at the mercy of the medical (and "elderlaw," "end of life culture," "social service world," etc., and it's too late. People think Terry Schiavo's situation, or Eluana's, or for that matter Sunny von Bulow's, are rare instances. They are NOT. People get euthanized all the time. Elderly, disabled, even others. People don't believe it because it's so wrong that they can't believe it could even possibly happen. It happens and families and loved ones are so destroyed and broken that they try to put it behind them or whatever people who don't fight do, and NO ONE FINDS OUT. If enough people were aware of what's going on, then maybe there would be a chance to win the fight. Otherwise the idiots are going to keep creeping into a majority. The way things are going on, they might as well be already. If in fact they're not; they do seem to be.
I mean, look who just got elected President, and look how many one would think would have known better caused that to happen. That's how much inherent idiocy there is. And the ones I've noticed, some with initial surprise, are the same ones who made it plain that they believed an older person should have the plug pulled on them and "wouldn't want to live on life support." I'd like to see them lined up and shot, but what with all this freedom and rights and stuff we've got here without regard to merit, and nobody even knowing what merit is, let alone caring, that's not going to happen; it's everybody else that's going to get wiped out.
Yes I know that sounds extreme, but if you'd met the ones I'm talking about you might understand, believe me. What's scary is that they must have analogues all over.
"Compassion and Choices" even sounds grammatically disjointed. Well there you go.
WELL IF SOMEONE CAN MAKE A CHIMPANZEE DRINK WINE AND EAT FOOD WITH TOO MUCH SUGAR AND THEN TAKE XANAX IN A CUP OF TEA AND MAKE THE POOR CHIMP SLEEP WITH A HUMAN IN A HUMAN BED THEY CAN MAKE DOCTORS KILL PEOPLE (as if they don't do enough of that already even without assisted suicide). EITHER WAY THE CHIMPANZEE AND THE PATIENTS, THE ONES AT THE MERCY OF THOSE WITH A DUTY TO CARE FOR THEM, END UP DEAD. HEY WHAT ABOUT LEAVE THE OTHER SPECIES ALONE AND NO DEATH CULTURE? Et Carthago delenda est.
Lee writes "We're in a clash between ideologues and pragmatists--people who place their own dogmatic beliefs above all, and people inclined to rely on pragmatic solutions in times of need or crisis."
The irony is that Lee is the dogmatic ideologue placing her beliefs above all, while the physicians who refuse to follow the culture of death offer pragmatic solutions to the patient during their time of crisis.
Lanthe, just a quick note: I am in favor of treating animals well, limiting our conusumption of meat, and stopping all *unnecessary* animal testing. I have a number of vegan/animal lib -type friends and respect their position if I disagree.
But I tell them all quite vocally that I despise PETA. They have taken to using *people* to achieve their ends of *animal* liberation. They think it is perfectly ok to exploit and demean women in the cause of liberation for animals. They are disgusting and lots of people know it, which unfortunately does hurt their cause.
I agree, holy terror-I am disgusted by the way that PETA exploits women and by the women that go along with it by appearing in those commercials.
Holyterror and SAFEpres: I was offered a full-time staff position by PETA in 1984 and I regret not taking it. I don't find those ads, if I'm thinking of the same ones to which you are referring, as at all exploitative or demeaning Nor do the women who appear in them voluntarily do that for the same reasons women who, it could be argued, are exploited and demeaned in other venues, do what they do in those venues. They do not do it to survive financially, or to advance careers, or to gain recognition. They already have achieved those things, and they put what they have worked for at risk by doing what is controversial and in connection with an organization that many, like Holyterror, despise, and PETA has no leverage that can force them to do it or cost them at they don't do it. They are doing what they believe will be effective in supporting a cause they believe in. It's a whole other thing than what you're talking about. I think it's brilliant and effective. Yes one wishes society were more tasteful. But working with what we've got, it works.
Lanthe, I must politely disagree:
The only reason *I* despise them is because they ask women to do those commercials and public stunts, and they claim it is all fair to exploit women to get your point across. (Which is, remember to stop the exploitation of animals.)
Also, the commercials (non-star) are with paid actresses who could be seen as "doing whateveer it takes for a gig", and the public stunts (being wrapped in plastic and left mostly naked on the sidewalk in the sun, for example) often involve PETA interns. Which is not exactly them most empowered position you can have. So your defense of it does not really ring true, as nice as it seems.
I mean commercials that are dwelling on nakedness...some of the commercials aren't too bad-for instance, I did laugh at the "sex discussion" commercial and the American Kennel Club/Klan commercial even though I disagree. But, I still think that even if the women involved aren't being personally exploited, the commercials exploit women as a group. Moreover, I am reminded of PETA's efforts to get Ben and Jerry's to use breast milk in thier ice cream-something that demeans women, in my view, as it treats them like dairy cows. Anyway...
HolyTerror and SAFEpres: I don't think it's exploitation. When women are used in pornography etc. and it is considered exploitation, there is not philosophical platform, no cause involved. The interns here are committed to do whatever they can for the cause, and the hired actresses could do the same work for an enterprise that is not involved with this cause. I don't see nakedness as exploiting women in the first place, but that's another whole issue, and I'd prefer it were still 2500 years ago. I'm a lot less worried about women's rights than I am about animal rights; the latter are up against a lot more with a lot less on their side. As for the Ben and Jerry thing, PETA didn't expect that Ben and Jerry's would do it; it was to make a point. I don't suppose anyone is interested in my opinion that your average daily cow is a lot more honest and sensible than your average woman, especially considering how exceptional our species is supposed to be....
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