Culture of Death – This Week’s News

The Culture of Death is an apt characterization of our world and as Christians, we are called to resist and speak out against every attempt to undermine the sanctity of life.

That is why every week I share articles, essays, and posts from around the internet of interest to those who care about the value of human life from conception to natural death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This weekly post will inform the reader on a variety of bioethics issues, including abortion, assisted suicide & euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, genetic engineering, biotechnology, and more facets of the culture of death.

The first three recommended articles this week document the growing trend of allowing people to commit suicide legally if they are unhappy, depressed or suffer from any mental affliction.

Canada Will Soon Offer Doctor-Assisted Death to the Mentally Ill. Who Should Be Eligible?

Canada is following the path of The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Belgium.

One year from now, in March 2023, Canada will become one of the few nations in the world allowing medical aid in dying, or MAID, for people whose sole underlying condition is depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, schizophrenia, PTSD or any other mental affliction.

Euthanasia for Mental Illness. Killing People Without a Certain Prognosis

More on Canada’s plan to kill off the mentally ill.

Canada expanded its (MAiD) euthanasia law by passing Bill C-7 in March 2021. Many people are unaware that one of the bill’s provisions legalized euthanasia for people with mental illness alone. This means that a person who is not physically ill or dying but is living with mental illness can be killed by euthanasia.

At that time, the federal government put a 2-year moratorium on euthanasia for mental illness to enable the government to establish protocols for this category of killing. I have stated that the two-year moratorium is unenforceable, making euthanasia for mental illness legal already. Recently an acquaintance told me that her friend’s mother (a person who I do not know) recently died by MAiD after living with chronic depression for more than twenty years. I certainly understand the suffering related to chronic depression, but when did killing become a treatment for chronic depression?

Kirkey points out that, unlike the Netherlands, Canada’s (MAiD) euthanasia law does not require people to try effective treatment before being approved for death. We don’t know if Canada will require people who request euthanasia for mental illness alone to try effective treatment first.

Belgium Reported Euthanasia Deaths Rise. At Least 50 People Die by Euthanasia for Mental Illness in 2021

I guess if you are unhappy with your life, you can choose the country where you can legally end it. This is more evidence of how nations (or states in the U.S.) slide down the slippery slope they introduced once assisted suicide.

The EIB reported that at least 50 people died by euthanasia for mental illness, which was more than double from the 2020 report where there were 21 euthanasia deaths for mental illness.

The EIB reported that studies indicate that at least 25 – 35% of the euthanasia deaths are not reported and therefore illegal. Previous studies also indicate that approximately 2% of all euthanasia deaths are done without request or consent.

Report: Chinese Doctors Have Participated in Organ Donation Executions of Prisoners

This report goes beyond reporting the forced donation of organs from Chinese prisoners. The Chinese Communist Party, as efficient as ever, gets a twofer by employing organ donation surgeries to double as executions. Hmmm… I thought doctors were supposed to heal, not murder.

Shocking allegations about Chinese organ donation have been made in a leading journal, the American Journal of Transplantation. An Australian researcher and an Israeli transplant surgeon claim that “physicians in the People’s Republic of China have participated in executions by organ removal”.

Mathew Robertson, of the Australian National University in Canberra, and Professor Jacob Lavee, of Tel Aviv University, scanned 2,838 papers drawn from a dataset of 124,770 Chinese-language transplant publications from 1980 to 2015. In 71 of these, from medical centres around the country, they found evidence that brain death had not been properly declared and that “the removal of the heart during organ procurement must have been the proximate cause of the donor’s death”.

Big Tech Is Censoring Pro-Life Groups, and the Censorship Could Get Even Worse

“Big Tech” leans to the left and is radically pro-abortion. It’s become a common practice for social media platforms and Google to block pro-life messages.

The future of abortion law in the U.S. hinges on the forthcoming ruling in a Supreme Court case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, but the pro-life movement must begin gearing up to fight another insidious foe—Big Tech censorship.

Organizations standing for the sanctity of life are well aware of the uphill battle they face.

The prominent anti-abortion group Live Action had its content censored online long before the docket put the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion nationwide in the crosshairs.

In 2019, social media platform Pinterest added Live Action’s website to its blacklist of banned sites. The blacklisting meant users were unable to link to Live Action’s content or post it on Pinterest.

Watch the LaBrant Family Pro-Life Video That Instagram and YouTube Censored After It Reached Millions

Another case of Big Tech censoring the pro-life message.

Tens of millions of people follow the LaBrant Family on Instagram and YouTube every week, watching their children grow up and the family live out their Christian faith.

Last week, Cole and Savannah LaBrant took a bold step in publishing their own pro-life documentary on their social media pages, knowing that the controversial issue would bring backlash from some fans.

The powerful 38-minute video encourages Christians to love and support pregnant mothers and their babies, while sharing the disturbing truth about how abortions kill unique, living babies in the womb. Cole also shared a heart-to-heart conversation with his grandmother, who nearly was forced to abort his mother.

Standing up for unborn babies is not a popular stance among those who run social media companies, however, and, this week, Instagram censored the LaBrants’ video, the Daily Wire reports.

“Instagram did take our feed post down,” Cole wrote on his Instagram page. “This is ok, fortunately we have talked with our team at YouTube and they’re keeping the documentary up there, which is most important.”

The LaBrants promised to donate all the ad revenue from the video to pregnancy centers, but Cole said YouTube demonetized it this week.

Religious Left Panel Frets Dobbs Abortion Case Presages ‘Human Rights Crisis’

Reading this made me want to cry and pray for the misled “Christians” who support abortion rights. To think God would bless the killing of innocent, unborn children is to swallow the falsest of teachings.

But, then, Satan is a deceiver.

A “warped vision” of Christian theology is being deployed to justify eliminating a woman’s right to abort her unborn child, according to a panel hosted by the liberal Union Theological Seminary in New York City. “Abortion has become a wedge issue” charged Union Seminary President the Rev. Dr. Serene Jones. “The decisions are racist and strategic, not moral or theological.”

Panelists asserted a “Christian calling to protect the woman’s right to choose” and explored how progressive faith leaders should rise to combat settled law.

Participants asserted that conservative faith leaders and members of the Republican party joined together to support anti-abortion policies for political, not moral, reasons

Abortion: Dissecting a Right Without a Foundation

A penetrating analysis of why it is wrong to claim that abortion is a constitutional right.

Alvare said of pro-life advocates “we get caricatured as sort of idiots.” But “there just is no right to abortion in the Constitution.” Abortion is defended as a constitutional right on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment, and its due process and equal protection provisions. The Supreme Court is now being urged to use equal protection to defend abortion, if due process is judged inadequate.

 Stay strong in your opposition to the culture of death. Support life from conception to natural death.

¹¹ Rescue those being led away to death hold back those staggering toward slaughter. ¹² If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done? (Proverbs 24:11–12 ESV)