Postscript to the 11-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“ As we have seen, the seeds of assisted suicide and euthanasia were sown decades ago. However, the pro-death movement can no longer hide behind altruism and good faith. It is a cultish behemoth that seeks to destroy what does — or should — matter most: the dignified preservation of …

Part 11 in the 11-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“ While the Netherlands and other European countries have descended slowly into the complete acceptance of medicalized killing, the slippery slope has become way steeper in Canada. For many years Canadian opponents of legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia waged highly visible campaigns to inform the public of the dangers …

Part 10 in the 11-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“ As we have seen throughout this series, “survival of the fittest” ideas and eugenics have historically shaped the modern global movements promoting assisted suicide and euthanasia. There is little doubt that the pro-death movement has made significant inroads, and has especially affected people with medical issues and other …

Part 9 in the 11-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“ As noted in Part 8, sentiment in the U.S. supporting assisted suicide and euthanasia grew exponentially after 2000. After the states of Oregon (1994) and Washington (2008) legalized assisted suicide, others quickly followed: Vermont (2013), California and Colorado (2016), Washington, D.C. (2017), Hawaii (2018), New Jersey (2019), Maine …

Part 8 in the 11-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“ With assisted suicide and euthanasia now in the cultural mainstream, the pro-death lobby began to seize the moment. But which was the easier issue to move forward: assisted suicide or euthanasia? Assisted suicide means that someone wants to end their life and someone else provides the means for …

Part 7 in the 11-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“ By the end of the 1970s, while assisted suicide and euthanasia were still illegal in the U.S., bioethics continued to expand as a philosophical field, coinciding with a growing awareness of both the right to refuse treatment and the widespread use of advance directives and living wills. In …

Part 6 in the 11-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“ Just as medical science pivoted to more “scientific” uses of genetic testing and an increased emphasis on mitigating genetic diseases, the field of bioethics exploded. Bioethics is a philosophical area of study that, among other topics, examines ethical and moral issues around patient wellbeing, medical intervention and death …

Part 5 in the 11-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“ When Allied forces liberated the camps between the summer of 1944 and the spring of 1945, what they found shocked the world. The first liberated camp, Majdanek, in Poland, quickly revealed the horror of end-stage eugenics. The Allies’ advance was so swift that the Nazi camp personnel fled, …

Part 4 in the 11-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“ The secret official and organized killing under Aktion T4 at the six killing centers continued. However, by late 1941 things were starting to fall apart. The general public were starting to realize what was happening. People living near the killing centers increasingly noticed that the grey buses with …

Part 3 in the 11-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“ Unofficial killing began in earnest before Aktion T4 was implemented. In the beginning, Germans with disabilities (including infants and children) were admitted to hospitals across the country for “treatment,” where they were killed in a variety of ways: lethal injections, starvation, and by deliberately shutting off heat to …