I really do try to write about other issues. But the awfulness keeps on coming. Yesterday, I called attention to the Canadian bioethicist who claimed that lethal jabs are no different than hip replacements. Today, I came across an awful story out of Australia in which Tony Lewis, age 71 and experiencing Motor Neurone Disease — what we call ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease — has asked for euthanasia because he was denied sufficient financial support for his disability. From the Hello Care report: A Queensland man with Motor Neurone Disease has chosen to access voluntary assisted dying after being de
Canada has leaped into euthanasia’s moral abyss with a smile on its face. Since 2015, killable categories have expanded dramatically, from those whose death is “reasonably foreseeable” — a category that was already so broad you could drive a hearse through it — to the chronically ill, people with disabilities, the frail elderly, and, starting next year, the mentally ill. More than 16,000 Canadians were killed by doctors and nurse practitioners last year. It’s the fifth-most-common cause of death in the country. Many commentators point to these and other facts about Canada’s euthanasia regime t
Freedom of religion is on the ropes in increasingly authoritarian Canada — despite a specific charter guarantee of “freedom of religion and conscience.” Indeed, an Ontario court ruled previously that doctors can be coerced under threat of professional discipline to perform lethal jabs or abortions against their religious beliefs and conscience objections. Why? The court ruled that the unenumerated right of patients to receive any legal procedure paid for by the government superseded the specific charter protection. If doctors don’t want to kill, the court also ruled, they can either provide an
Once someone is considered killable or supported in suicide, they may become objectified so as to be used instrumentally. Such is the case with people requesting to be euthanized. The idea is that they are going to die anyway, want to die — even as they do not receive suicide prevention — so we might as well get good use out of them such as by conjoining their hastened deaths with organ harvesting. This abandonment (in my view) is rife in Canada, where in Ontario, a patient approved for a lethal jab will soon receive a call from the organ procurement society asking for their organs. The Nether
Work continues apace toward the goal of gestating babies outside a woman’s body. Scientists have now implanted human embryos in “organoids” made of tissues that mimic the uterine lining. From, “Researchers are Getting Organoids Pregnant,” published in the MIT Technology Review: In three papers published this week by Cell Press, scientists are reporting what they call the most accurate efforts yet to mimic the first moments of pregnancy in the lab. They’ve taken human embryos from IVF centers and let these merge with “organoids” made of endometrial cells, which form the lining of the uterus. Th
To the surprise of absolutely no one, New York Governor Hochul has said that in January, after some minor changes are added, she will sign the bill legalizing assisted suicide.
What’s really happening to women and girls in China? In this episode, I sit down with Reggie Littlejohn, Yale-trained attorney and founder of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, to expose what many experts call the greatest crime against women in the world. Women’s Rights Without Frontiers is a global coalition fighting to end forced abortion, gendercide, and sexual slavery in China. Reggie is widely recognized as an international expert on China’s One-Child Policy—now the Three-Child Policy. Reggie is also the founder and president of the Anti-Globalist Alliance, an international counterforce t
With a scribbled signature by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the Land of Lincoln became the 12th state (plus the District of Columbia) to legalize physician-assisted suicide. The new law, which takes effect in September, euphemistically describes assisted suicide as “medical aid in dying”—a pretense that prescribed poisonous overdoses are somehow equivalent to administering healing treatments. Give me a break. The point of “care,” is well, care. The point of assisted suicide is immediate death. So, why do I insist on using “assisted suicide” instead of “medical aid in dying?” Because this issue
On Monday, December 15, Wesley J. Smith appeared on Ave Maria in the Afternoon with Marcus B. Peter to discuss the recent legalization of assisted suicide in Illinois.
Of course Governor Pritzker signed the assisted suicide bill. Was there ever any doubt? Assisted suicide has become part of the progressive policy agenda. The new Illinois law (SB 1950) contains many of the usual provisions and supposed safeguards. Once the law goes into effect next September, these putative protections will quickly be redefined as “obstacles” to a good death and the inevitable process of legal loosening will commence. This is the point at which I usually urge doctors to refuse participation in the killing of their patients. The law does permit doctors to refuse to actually pr
One of my greatest frustrations has been the general silence of suicide prevention organizations in the face of the legalization of assisted suicide in various jurisdictions. To me, this failure has been an abdication of such groups’ core responsibility because it ignores some suicides, does not oppose facilitation of the suicides of the ill and disabled, and does not grapple with the adverse impact that assisted suicide advocacy can have on suicidal people generally. That silence has now ended. The International Association for Suicide Prevention just issued a (not quite strong enough) positi
When you hear the word feminism, what comes to mind? This episode launches a multi-part series digging into the real history of feminism: what the early feminists actually believed, how modern feminism drifted, and the bioethical fallout in the realms of sex, contraception, abortion, and women’s place in society. In this powerful conversation, legal scholar, mother of seven, and one of the most compelling voices speaking into women’s rights Erika Bachiochi uncovers the forgotten roots of the early feminist movement. These women understood something our culture has lost: that equality is someth
The Slovenian National Assembly tried to legalize assisted suicide. But the country’s voters had a different idea. From the Euractiv story: Slovenians on Sunday voted to suspend a new law to legalise assisted dying in a referendum held after critics mounted a campaign against the legislation. Around 53 percent of voters had rejected the law, while 47 percent voted in favour, meaning its implementation will be suspended for at least one year. Slovenia’s parliament had approved a law in July allowing assisted dying after a 2004 referendum supported it. But the new vote was called after a civil g
The future that some of us predicted about assisted suicide deployed as a resource saver has come to the U.K. Even as the House of Commons has passed a legalization bill — currently being debated in the House of Lords — the country’s hospice system is collapsing. From the BBC story: Some 380 hospice beds out of around 2,000 lie empty in England because of financial pressures, say bosses. Hospice UK has told BBC News this is up from 300 a year ago and illustrates the severe challenges facing the sector. Beds are left empty to save money — since staffing and caring is costly — and so are unavail
Editors of many of the world’s top scientific and medical journals are destroying or — better stated, perhaps — have destroyed the public’s trust in scientific and medical leadership because these journals can no longer be deemed objective purveyors of truth. Nature and its associated science journals (Nature Portfolio), supposedly the most elite of the lot, are among the worst offenders. For example, in 2024 Nature endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in part because of her support for abortion. Nature also endorsed Biden in 2020. To say the least, blatantly engaging in partisa
The Illinois Legislature has just passed an assisted suicide legalization bill, tying a black bow along with New York’s legalization bill passed a few months ago. Both measures still await signing by the states’ respective governors, which I fear is quite likely as the death agenda is firmly ensconced in blue state liberal/progressive policy on assisted suicide. Should the bills get signed into law, more people will live in jurisdictions (including three of our most populous: California, New York, and Illinois) that validate some suicides and allow doctors to facilitate such deaths than live i
Assisted suicide is not yet legal in Scotland — I have traveled there three times to fight that agenda — but it is a looming threat again. And now, an amendment to the legalization bill has been proposed that would prohibit prevention efforts at or near places where suicidal people’s lives would be ended. From the ADF International press release: A Scottish parliamentarian and member of the Health Committee, Patrick Harvie MSP, has proposed an amendment to Scotland’s controversial “assisted suicide” bill that would criminalise discussion of suicide prevention within a large, undefined public a
When assisted suicide is first proposed for legalization, we are assured by death activists that strict guidelines will protect against abuse. But they don’t mean it. Once the laws pass, the supposed protections — which are always flaccid to begin with — are soon redefined by activists and the media as “barriers,” et voila, the laws are soon loosened. It’s all a con, but people seem to fall for it every time. This pattern can be seen vividly playing out in Victoria, Australia. The state was the first in that country to legalize assisted suicide, and now the government is making more people eli
What if everything you’ve heard about the abortion pill isn’t the full story? Nearly two-thirds of all U.S. abortions are chemical abortions. Board-certified OB-GYN Dr. Donna Harrison, Director of Research for the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), joins Bioethics Babe to pull back the curtain on chemical abortion — from how mifepristone (RU-486) and misoprostol actually work in a woman’s body, to the hidden complications women face, to the behind-the-scenes schemes at the upper echelons of power that took place to get the abortion pill to America. Did y
Fetal personhood is a controversial issue that deserves respectful debate. But the New England Journal of Medicine just published a screed by two Ph.D.s associating its advocates with past slave-holding racists and — by strong implication — devaluing unborn human life as having zero intrinsic value.
Euthanasia/assisted suicide “protective guidelines” don’t really protect against abuse. They mostly serve as window dressings to make people comfortable with killing the sick. And soon after legalization, the vaunted protections are redefined by activists and the media as “barriers” to death, which become the pretext for loosening the already slack guidelines. The speed at which that happens varies, but the pattern rarely fails. Here’s an example. In Canada, a person is supposed to explicitly request and consent to being killed by a lethal jab. But a dementia patient was recently euthanized at
Why would an atheist be pro-life? In this interview of the Bioethics Babe podcast, Monica Snyder, Executive Director of Secular Pro-Life, shares the evidence-based and non-religious arguments against abortion. With a background in chemical biology and forensic science, Monica explains how science, logic, and compassion shape her pro-life views—without relying on faith. She also shares her best advice on how to dialogue with people who are pro-choice. We discuss: If you’ve ever wondered whether the pro-life position requires religion, this conversation shows why it doesn’t. Subscribe for more i
Once we decided that killing is an acceptable answer to suffering, the kind of suffering that qualifies us to be made dead continually expands. Now, an elderly British couple have committed joint assisted suicide at a Swiss termination clinic to avoid future widowhood and increasing fragility — in other words, to eliminate future suffering. From the Daily Record story: A devoted couple who “couldn’t bear to be apart” have died together at a Swiss assisted dying clinic after sending emails to their relatives to let them know. Neither Michael Posner, 97, nor his wife Ruth, 96, had a terminal ill
I have always believed that liberals should be leading opponents of assisted suicide. After all, two of the core tenets of liberalism are (supposed to be) protecting vulnerable people from exploitation and promoting equality among all people. But other than disability-rights activists, most liberals tend to support legalization based on “choice.” Mega author J.K. Rowling, of Harry Potter fame, is definitely a political liberal. Indeed, her activism pushing against gender ideology is founded in protecting children and securing women’s private spaces. Now, with legalization having passed the U.K
ALS is a catastrophic terminal disease that, within a few years of diagnosis (the physicist Stephen Hawking was an exception), eventually causes total paralysis. It is also a tragic condition that euthanasia/assisted suicide activists zealously wield to justify killing as an acceptable answer to suffering. Now, the understandable fear of ALS is being deployed by academic advocates as a means of breaking the (U.S.) requirement for a six-month terminal diagnosis and self-administration in assisted suicide. In jurisdictions where MAiD [the euphemism for assisted suicide that seeks to turn life-en
When assisted suicide/euthanasia is legalized, people who are eligible to be killed because they are seriously ill may become objectified by their societies. For example, they may be thought of as so many organ farms to be harvested after their lives are ended. Such objectification of the sick can be infectious. In California, there is a new research program called Last Gift that seeks people with “life-shortening” conditions who also have HIV to be experimented on — not to find cures or ways to extend their lives, but to better understand the virus. From the Last Gift research subject solicit
Wesley J. Smith appeared on The Ann and Phelim Scoop, hosted by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, to discuss his latest article, “Study: Mental Illness More Likely After Abortion Than After Childbirth.” Smith explains why the study is both surprising and significant, discusses the findings, and explores why these findings matter regardless of one’s stance on abortion.
An article in the Daily Mail sounds the alarm that permitting infant euthanasia — i.e., infanticide — is under serious consideration in Canada: Canada‘s assisted suicide laws have continued rapidly expanding in recent years, with a group of doctors now pushing for disabled newborn babies to be euthanized.…As assisted deaths have become a major part of Canada’s health care system, the Quebec College of Physicians suggested legalizing euthanasia for infants born severely ill. Canada has jumped so enthusiastically into the euthanasia abyss that I have little doubt that infanticide will eventually
A large scientific study has concluded that women who have had an “induced abortion” were more likely to experience mental conditions than were women who have given birth. The study, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, followed 28,721 women who induced abortions and 1,228,807 who gave birth in hospitals in Quebec, Canada, between 2006 and 2022. The results were striking: In this population-based study of more than 1.2 million pregnancies, having an induced abortion was associated with an increased risk of hospitalization for a mental disorder more than a decade later. Compared wi
Wesley J. Smith joined George Noory on Best of Coast to Coast AM to discuss human exceptionalism and euthanasia. He defines human exceptionalism for listeners and explains why it’s such an essential concept for medicine and ethics. He also discusses how euthanasia has taken the world by storm, how it’s a betrayal of Hippocratic principles, and why he’s against euthanasia in any and all circumstances.
