Compassion and Choices (formerly Hemlock Society) has been mighty peeved lately that so many ethical doctors are refusing to supply assisted suicide prescriptions to their patients. As I noted yesterday, Montana’s doctors are apparently refusing to cooperate with the suicide agenda, and so C and C has issued a pitch for willing death doctors to jump to the fore in Montana with their prescription pads in hand.
It’s ethical. Really! And polls show that many doctors support “aid in dying,” don’t you know? (Unmentioned is that virtually every professional medical organization in the world opposes euthanasia/assisted suicide.) And, why, did you know that assisted suicide is consistent with the Hippocratic Oath? From its blog:
“The Hippocratic Oath demands this foremost from physicians: Do No Harm. Prolonging the suffering of a dying person is doing harm. Offering a choice to end the suffering, if that is what the person desires, is the way to do no harm.”—Dr. Richard Ikeda, M.D., Director, Health for All Community Clinics, Sacramento.
Such redefining of the Oath is a typical obfuscating tactic for this movement. But here is what the Oath actually states:
I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone. I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion. But I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts.
This was at a time—unlike today—when people did literally die in agony with nothing physicians could do to help. And still, assisting the suicides of patients was considered unequivocally wrong.
The blog ends with a plaintive call for Death Doctors to come forward:
The majority of physicians, who support legal aid in dying, are now able to practice medicine according to their own deeply held values and beliefs, without fear of government interference. The court has removed government restrictions on physicians who support aid in dying but have had to tell their patients “no” in the past.
In Oregon, C and C facilitates the great majority of assisted suicides, with many lethal prescriptions written by doctors who never treated the patient but were only consulted by patients (generally, at the referral of C and C) to access assisted suicide—not receive actual medical care. Several years ago, I wrote about the shocking internal memo from a (now former) administrator of Kaiser Permanente Northwest (HMO), asking plan doctors to assist the suicides of plan members who were not their own patients. The same will probably happen in Washington, and now, the group is advertising for death doctors to come forward in Montana.
Assisted suicide is Kevorkianism. Calling Dr. Death!
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
