This time, the Speaker of the Assembly Fabian Nunez is co-sponsoring the bill to legalize assisted suicide in California. Oh well: The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Back to the battlements to defend decency and ethics in . . . . Continue Reading »
Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, who tried to legalize assisted suicide last year and will again this year, has another pet cause: Outlawing the sale of incandescent light bulbs in the Golden State. So in Levine’s world, a doctor should be able to write a lethal prescription to kill a patient, but if . . . . Continue Reading »
This is great news: The bill to legalize assisted suicide in Hawaii is apparently close to failing. What makes this so impressive is that a few years ago it came within two or three votes of passing the legislature and going on to the former governor who wanted his legacy to be assisted suicide . . . . Continue Reading »
“Manslaughter, I could understand how they would arrive at that. But murder? This? They must have been an astonishingly cruel jury!” Jack Kevorkian told reporter Jack Lessenberry. “You tell them I said this,” he went on. “I don’t want to be a martyr. I want to be free. And that’s why . . . . Continue Reading »
It is the unfortunate nature of man that financial imperatives often supersede important moral and ethical principles. We often tolerate or even celebrate inherently unethical and immoral actions as long as they make a buck. Simply put, mammon has the power to distort moral intuitions. Take the . . . . Continue Reading »
Seduced by Death: Doctors, Patients, and the Dutch Cure By Herbert Hendin. Norton, 256 pages, $27.50. Somewhere there may be a swimming coach who has never been in the water, but it is difficult to imagine that he is a very good one. Similarly, judges, legislators, and voters are making literally . . . . Continue Reading »
“Administration Asks Court to Reject Assisted Suicide,” the headlines ran after Acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger filed on November 12, 1996 the Justice Department’s amicus curiae briefs urging the Supreme Court to uphold the states’ authority to prohibit physician-assisted suicide. . . . . Continue Reading »
At year’s end, the eyes of the world turn again to an infant who is, so Christians believe, the revelation of God to man and of man to himself. In the words of John’s gospel, “In him was life, and the life was the light of man. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not . . . . Continue Reading »
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