The ‘right to die’ is becoming a duty
Last month, Washington state approved assisted suicide, becoming the second state to allow the offing of people and the first of many after Oregon to fall to the deceptions of the right-to-die movement. This will spread more rapidly now across other states.
It’s already spreading in Europe, where news reports come out weekly (seems like daily, lately) on euthanasia and assisted suicide activism. England is heading down that dark path. But, as is usually the case with these laws, in a sneaky way… The British legislation purports to just clarify the charges against someone assisting in a suicide. But it may actually overturn it.
“We are concerned that radical, so-called right-to-die MPs or peers – urged on by media coverage for assertions that some elderly people have a so-called duty to die – might seek to use the bill to weaken the legal protection of the right to life,” Smeaton says.
“SPUC is calling on the government to give an assurance that its plans are limited to its stated aims of preventing the online promotion of suicide and suicide methods,” he added.
“We are therefore also calling upon the government and parliamentarians to block any attempts to use the Coroners and Justice bill to weaken in any way the Suicide Act 1961 and the existing legal prohibition on assisted suicide,” Smeaton concluded.
And then there’s the now notorious case in Luxembourg, where the Grand Duke is being punished harshly for doing just that, trying to stand for life and against legalization of euthanasia.
Back in February the Luxembourg parliament voted to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, copying the pioneers in this dark trend, neighbouring Belgium and the Netherlands.
However, Grand Duke Henri rejected it on moral grounds.
The Grand Duke’s refusal is nearly unprecedented in his nation’s politics. “I understand the Grand Duke’s problems of conscience,” Mr Juncker declared. “But I believe that if the parliament votes in a law, it must be brought into force.”
A streak of moral sensitivity seems to run in the Grand Duke’s family. In a remarkably similar case in 1990, his uncle, King Baudouin I of Belgium, also refused to sign a law legalising abortion. He abdicated for two days while the measure passed through Parliament.
The constitutional deadlock has been resolved by changing the constitution: the Grand Duke will be stripped of his constitutional veto. Before the Parliament votes on the third reading of the euthanasia bill, it will alter article 34 of Luxembourg’s constitution. From then on the Grand Duke will not actually sanction new laws, but merely enact them. Exercising his conscience has cost Henri and his successors a precious traditional prerogative.
And the ramifications for authorities exercising their conscience on life issues are mounting.
President Tabare Vazquez of Uruguay was out of step with his colleagues in the ruling Socialist Party when he vetoed a bill that would have legalized abortion in the South American nation. Now he is considering stepping down from party leadership because of the criticism he’s endured.
Vazquez vetoed the bill last month, which would have allowed abortions for virtually any reason during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy…
Vazquez is a doctor and said after the veto that more should be done to help pregnant women with unplanned pregnancies other than making abortion available. He voiced “deep discomfort” with the bill because it included elements “with which I disagree, philosophically and biologically.”
Michael Cook stated it eloquently in that MercatorNet article:
Developments throughout the Western world in the last few months have shown that respect for conscientious objection is under threat. After 40 years of idolising whim and caprice masquerading as conscience, the pendulum is swinging back the other way. Governments are trampling on consciences even though they have been shaped by an objective moral law, not personal preference. Countering this trend takes courage.
