You remember all that talk that it was ridiculous for us to fret that legalizing assisting in the suicide of the terminally ill would lead to even greater calamities.
Well Holland is treating the slippery slope argument like its own slip-and-slide because they just got a running start by considering expanding the legalization of assisted suicide to the old.
You’ve gotta’ love the Hollish for morphing their homeland into a testing ground of bad ideas.
Assisted suicide for anyone over 70 who has simply had enough of life is being considered in Holland.
Non-doctors would be trained to administer a lethal potion to elderly people who ‘consider their lives complete’.
The radical move would be a world first and push the boundaries even further in the country that first legalised euthanasia.
The Dutch parliament is to debate the measure after campaigners for assisted suicide collected 112,500 signatures in a month.
Euthanasia has been available for the terminally ill in Holland since 2002 in cases of ‘hopeless and unbearable suffering’ certified by two doctors, but this would be a far bigger step.
Supporters say it would offer a dignified way to die for those over 70 who just want to give up living, without having to resort to difficult or unreliable solitary suicide methods.
The assistants who administered the deadly cocktail of sedatives would need to be certified, campaigners said.
And they would have to make sure that patients were not acting on a whim or due to a temporary depression, but from a heartfelt and enduring desire to die.
So Holland is considering “certifying” killers. This is essentially granting “Double O” status to sickos. But while 007 only takes out sexed-up members of evil syndicates with bad puns for names, these “certified” agents will be taking out old people for the crime of being old.
So instead of certifying…I don’t know…Hollish folks to help other elderly Hollandites they’re just certifying killers.
Will these Hollanders be paid by the suicide? A commission? In which case, you could imagine they’ll be hanging out in bars and hospitals asking folks if they’ve had a bad day. They’ll be advertising late night infomercials in the hope of catching some poor old guy who’s having trouble sleeping. Maybe they should get a percentage of the money the government would have spent on the old person had they lived a longer life? Maybe they could collect scalps like cereal box tops and send them in to be paid.
So many possibilities. Gotta’ love the Hollanders for giving us directions on the road to Hell.
March 12, 2010 at 5:35 am
Natural selection at work. Why fight a herd that wants to cull itself? Just a bunch of hedonistic oldsters in Birkenstocks, baked out of their minds. If they all decide to clock off at 70, that's so many less years spent corrupting the young, so bully to that.
But, I do salute their modern contributions to the global community. Like shampoo sinks. Wooden shoes. Track lighting.
Single tear.
March 12, 2010 at 12:39 pm
This issue isn't even worth a single tear, IMHO, no matter how many 13 year-olds post YouTube vids about it.
March 12, 2010 at 2:48 pm
This issue isn't even worth a single tear, IMHO, no matter how many 13 year-olds post YouTube vids about it.
Indeed. That is to say, euthanasia and abortion are objective evils and has little to do with how much crying in the microphone we can do about it. In fact, crying in the microphone is a bad policy for the pro-life movement as this pro-lifer notes.
March 12, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Great link, rom!
"Suck it up, sweetheart!" is the best catch phrase for the pro-life movement I have ever heard.
March 12, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Craig and Rom, you're both off. Craig for your obvious trollerisms, and Rom, let me caution you…No, its not like Hillary would like to paint it at all with that post. She's right for being critical of subjective morality, but she obviously is posting on points she's never looked into. Silent No More is a wonderful and healing ministry. And it takes the experiences of those who have lived the lies of the culture of death through the healing and conversion to a powerful witness for life. It's like saying that the men and women have little more to offer the pro life ministry than converts do to the Catholic Church. I heartily disagree with Hillary's post and your response. Was Augustine allowed to be remorseful of his past sins? Yes, and he used his literature to "cry into the microphone". For each of us, in the body of Christ, there are different means of ministry to help save the unborn. Just because it may not work for your "sensibilities" doesn't mean that it doesn't have an effect, even a positive one, on the pro-life movement.
March 12, 2010 at 5:05 pm
You have to be 70? I can't believe a country as progressive and open-minded as Holland would engage in such blatant age discrimination. What is this world coming to?
March 12, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Hear Hear Patty!
Clanging gongs do little to spread the Good News. We should have compassion for a culture that is destroying itself when it is taking human lives with it. I'm sorry, but we need to have outrage for this. If we cannot, then we are not pro-life, merely anti-abortion.
If this becomes legal, we all know that it is not just the willing that will be going to their deaths. How many elderly will be pressured into it, either explicitly or implicitly? It will become a social pressure to "relieve your loved ones of the burden."
Many of the comments so far have shown an alarming lack of Christianity. Yeah, we might not be surprized that Holland is doing this. We might indulge in a bit of shadenfreude at the thought of a culture of death killing itself off. But these are human lives. All the pro-life posturing in the world will not make any difference if we are the priest who walks by the man dying by the side of the road.
March 12, 2010 at 9:40 pm
Thank you, drive though… oh wait. We should have thought this though a bit better. Anybody want an '82 Impala?
I am sorry, the who subject is so surreal, sad and stupid that I can't figure out what else to do besides joke about it.
March 13, 2010 at 5:23 am
Why stop at 70?
This is really sad. Not surprising but sad.
Just imagine the potential problems with this. The forced euthanasias. And what if someone wants to kill someone over 70? It would be easy to set it up as suicide.
March 13, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Who "consider their lives complete."
Right.
Like those who have themselves mutilated because they "consider their families complete."
I know it's incendiary, and probably off-topic, but the more I think about it the less off it seems to me. If it's okay to prevent children from being conceived, then prevent them from being born, then off them years later when they stop producing…
Either life is valuable or it's NOT.
March 14, 2010 at 5:34 am
I just learned of this last year, but Canada is facing a similar detrimental ruling with Bill C-348… and I can't say where we are on it's decision either. There's more at LifeSiteNews .
There has been hardly any coverage that I know of, especially in local news stations, of this terrible ruling. Even talking with secular friends, you have to spell-out-the-consequences before they realize what it entails. Although I suppose it's more 'real' to myself, having family working in healthcare (could you imagine? 'murder or get fired')…
PLEASE, if anyone can, support our Euthanasia Prevention Coalition! http://www.epcc.ca/
March 14, 2010 at 5:36 am
Crap, that was Bill C-384 – stress on the EIGHT FOUR. s-m-r-t.
March 14, 2010 at 3:02 pm
For an old person to resign him or her self to a preference for death is surely symptomatic of a problem, does no one see that? How many of us regularly visit our elders or hold them in esteem? If we honoured or father and our mother in their old age for all they suffered to bring us into existence and help us get started on our own life's journey, would they not want to continue being in our theatre as wisdom providing spectators?
March 15, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Can I just point out that people from Holland are not "Hollanders" or "Hollandites", they are the Dutch?