From right-to-die to involuntary euthanasia

Strikes me that you have the same thing with abortion. Many women are forced to have them by their boy friends, parents, husbands, and pimps. This would not happen near as often if they were illegal.

The pro life movement has got to get beyond the idea that putting women in jail will bring a halt to abortion. Abortions have always and will always take place. But their number can be significantly lessened if our society provides better child care and health services for women who want to bring their babies to term.

If they can demonstrate that patients are being killed without their consent, well, methinks some prosecution is in order, no? Maybe it’s time to ask “why not”?

Then you see what happens with euthanasia; how many doctors and nurses are left who are willing to engage in it. My hunch is that a good prosecutor could blow the lid off the whole deal, unless (yikes) the culture is so debauched, it doesn’t care about clear cases of premeditated murder.

Um, Kacy, the abortion rate is an order of magnitude higher than it was before Roe v. Wade, and even at that point, there were a number of states who had legalized that barbaric practice. Yes, prohibition could do a lot of good, even if it’s not perfect.

But kudos for pointing out, along with Bror, that the casual disregard for human life really got going with legalized prenatal infanticide, and that it is indeed a big reason why the euthanasia movement got started.

No, the casual disregard for human life has long been part of American culture, beginning with slavery and the degregation of blacks, the genocide of Indian tribes, our use of fire bombs and atomic weapons in WW2, napalm and agent organge in Vietnam, our slaughterhouses in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. We also see it in our country’s refusal to provide affordable health care to all.

Kacy,
Perhaps we should just get beyond the idea that putting murderes behind bars will help keep people safe too.
Actually it is the Dr.s that perform the abortions I would like to see go to jail, much more so than the women.
But no here is arguing that improving childcare and lowering the expense of medical care etc, would not also help reduce the abortion rate.

Kacy @ 5,
Hmmm. War is war. Sometimes they have to be fought. Actually they have to be fought to preserve and defend the lives of the innocent. When they are fought they are ugly. But I think I would think a bit deeper about the whole issue than to say our use of x was because of a disregard for life. It is very well possible that because we used those extreme measures we saved many more lives than would have been lost if we drew the war out longer.

Bror, I appreciate your comments about improving child- and medical care (as well as making it available to all), but I’m sure we’ll hear from some hairy knuckle-draggers that we’re suggesting … communism.
But I’m not sure how our slaughtering of hundreds of thousands of women and children in Japan and Germany saved innocent lives. Germany held out to the end, and it was known even in ’45 that the atomic bombs were unnecessary to hasten Japan’s surrender.
But who gives the US such life or death power over millions?

Um, government funding of healthcare IS a socialistic/Communistic idea, Kacy. If knowing the truth makes one a knuckle dragger, that would then conversely imply that to be “fully evolved,” one must deny reality.

Would this be the new “Survival of the Looniest” or something?

But seriously, it is important that government healthcare is a socialistic idea in that its basic precepts deny basic human nature, and because the customer doesn’t see the cost, supply and demand can only be reconciled through rationing, including euthanasia and death panels. Like socialism and Communism in general, it’s a barbaric idea.

This is more about defending with war than “right to die” but I think it’s worth saying.
I appreciate this quote from Ronald Reagan and his Memorial Day, 1986, speech given at Arlington (note: HE did speak there!)
“If we really care about peace, we must stay strong. If we really care about peace, we must, through our strength, demonstrate our unwillingness to accept an ending of the peace. We must be strong enough to create peace where it does not exist and strong enough to protect it where it does.”

So the slavery of blacks (their humanity was denied);
the genocide of Indian tribes;
our use of fire bombs and atomic weapons in WW2;
napalm and agent organge in Vietnam, our slaughterhouses in Iraq and Afghanistan; and
country’s refusal to provide affordable health care to all;

justifies fifty to sixty million children riven in their mother’s wombs. Got it.

@10 Figured you’d miss it.
The US has long been a culture of death, not life. If we want to reduce abortions, we need to develop a culture of life; that involves much more than putting women in jail.

Sorry@10; meant @11.

Well said, “hairy knuckle-draggers” @ 10.

Kacy @ 8 has fallen into a style of argumentation often favored by those on the left — to personally demean and insult those who hold certain beliefs not favored by the left, rather than engaging in intelligent and meaningful discussion. Apparently, this is a strategy intended to embarrass people away from those “Neanderthalian” positions. It’s not that easy Kacy. We require substantive discussion on this blog. Insults will not help you make your case.

If you have spent any time on this blog, Kacy, you will know that the many private shelters and other forms of assistance for expectant mothers in need, available from pro-life supporters who put their money where their mouth is, are legion. No expectant mom who makes her needs known will not be helped. The fact is that organizations like Planned Parenthood make hundreds of millions of dollars every year from the abortion industry. Universal healthcare would not change this pressure to abort, and, in fact, might increase it, in order to improve the bottom line for the U.S. government.

As for this statement: “Germany held out to the end, and it was known even in ‘45 that the atomic bombs were unnecessary to hasten Japan’s surrender. But who gives the US such life or death power over millions?”, my reading of WWII history tells me that the conventional wisdom at the time was that, short of the dramatic action of dropping the atomic bombs, conquest of Japan would require a homeland invasion expected to result in 1 million or more American casualties. I would be interested in your cite to a historical account which substantively supports your view that the bombs did nothing to hasten the end of the war in the Pacific. I would also be interested in your rationale as to why the U.S. didn’t have the right to kill to end the war, given that the war was a defensive one, initiated by Japan through the unprovoked murder of over 2300 Americans.

@Hairy Knuckle-draggers
Kacy said “No, the casual disregard for human life has long been part of American culture,…” He was not defending abortion but simply making the case that its practice does not surprise within a culture averse to human life.

@14 You doubt economics is the leading cause of abortion. But remember that woman who served you at Starbucks, who helped you exchange that paint at Office Depot, who checked you out at the supermarket? She makes the minimum wage with no benefits, like a hundred million or so Americans. She would love to have a child, but she’s too busy on her feet all day, being bullied by bourgeois, upper middle class white people, as she makes them rich. She is a real person, one whom Christ loves. The bourgeois, upper middle class stockholders — when they aren’t drinking gin and tonics on the beach — work hard to make sure she can’t join a labor union and that her minimum wage doesn’t increase.

Bourgeois, upper middle white class values may work for you and those in your white circle, but they exploit, bully, and intimidate the rest of us. If the people who serve your every whim — at the Starbucks, the restaurant, the convenience store, the supermarket, the cabbie who drives you to the airport — could speak freely without fear of losing their jobs, they’d tell you. And frankly, they do a lot more “honest work” than the bourgeois, upper middle class people I see, with their personal phone calls and air-conditioned desk jobs and little “meetings” all day long. They can’t call clients and “cancel appointments” or “tell them I’ll be a little late.” They’d be fired. My only hope is in Christ to make things right when he returns.

if the casual disregard for human life is indeed part of American culture, it is being expressed with every abortion; ditto, the use of unborn humans for medical experiments; ditto, the movement toward euthanasia.

The left is always outraged at the sins of the past and then using them to justify the sins of today.

Thank you Don S. Especially appreciate your remarks regarding Japan.

http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/2010/atomicdec.htm

There’s some followup on the atomic bombs.

@17 you said “if the casual disregard for human life is indeed part of American culture, it is being expressed with every abortion; ditto, the use of unborn humans for medical experiments; ditto, the movement toward euthanasia.”

Now you got it, except I concede that some abortions may be necessary for the mother’s life; this has forever been an exception, even when abortion was illegal, pre-Roe v. Wade.

I didn’t realize I was part of the ‘left.’ Is that what you call those who disagree with you?

Bror,
Abortion “Many women are forced to have them by their boy friends, parents, husbands, and pimps.” So this is the new emancipated woman, pushed around by the men in her life?
The decision and responsibility are hers alone.
Women are regarded as children nowadays in this regard.

Shouldn’t that be hairy knuckled dragger?

#16. Whaaaaat? Economics causes abortion; also murder, also stealing; also wars. Doubt economics causes war — lebensraum baby.

I didn’t realize I was part of the ‘left.’ After reading your comments, I would have to say, walks like a bourgeois duck, quacks like a bourgeois duck, and acts like a bourgeois, it’s a bourgeois duck.

So let me follow the Left’s logic here: Rape is caused by the economic situation. It’s likely that sending rapists to jail doesn’t do anything to reduce rape.

So according to the Left we should legalize rape and institute communism. Otherwise we’d be saying that rape is worse than murder.

Kacy @5. I would expand on your observation that “casual disregard for human life has long been part of American culture”. Casual disregard for human life has long been part of human culture. Certainly part of the culture of the Japanese, who we bombed, or the Nazis, who we also bombed. It seems very much a part of the Islamic radicals who’ve caused so much mayhem in recent years. Jesus said that, when evaluated by God’s standard, we are all murderers. I’m proud to be part of a country – a political experiment, actually – that provided the framework out of which abolition of slavery could arise and, at terrible cost, prevail, and out of which segregation could be rendered passe. I’m optimistic that, despite a vigorously slanted media, ultimately the same tendencies in our country will abolish the holocaust that is legalized abortion.

I’m white, I’m bourgeois, and I’m beautiful, baby.

I’m white, bourgeois and proud. I have worked hard to get where I am in life (as modest as my station is) and have had to make HARD choices and sacrifices. I started out at the bottom of the ladder like everyone else,(minimum wage crappy jobs, entry level management etc.) and with some moderate risk taking have parlayed that into a house in a nice neighborhood and a couple cars, a wife and three wonderful children.

Hey if people don’t want to work at Home Depot or Starbucks for minimum wage, then they need to make the decision to better themselves, and put in the hard work and sacrifice to make something better for themselves. You actually have that option in the US.
I do not feel the slightest guilt when I am served by employees of the aforementioned establishments. This is what they agreed to do when they accepted the job. If it wasn’t enough money they could have turned down the job, or worked there until they could land something better, or work really hard to get promoted.

My present job isn’t all that great, but it pays the bills and allows me to work on my own businesses, which will greatly improve my standard of living.
No one owes me a living. I don’t have a ‘right’ to a job or a house. Those things are earned. If I haven’t yet made the decisions and sacrifices that will land me that high paying job, it’s not unfair because my neighbor has a lot better job than I do.

Kacy, it’s like the Monopoly game, you start with very little and try to improve your standing through hard work and shrewd choices. Don’t begrudge those who have worked their way up to the good jobs.

Oh, and about WWII, the Japanese were fighting to the last man. Read ‘With the Old Breed’ by E.B. Sledge who was a Marine who fought in the battles of Peleliu and Okinawa. The Japanese snipers would target any of their own soldiers who were captured or surrendered, because defeat was such a disgrace. How do you vanquish an enemy like that? The atomic bombs saved millions of lives, both Japanese and American.

Kacy @16

Is economics the leading cause behind abortion? You see, I was that little clerk behind the counter and pregnant. Once I was pregnant I was able to qualify for Medicaid and the government paid for most of my care. They recommended I drop the health insurance that I was paying for but I didn’t because it was covering my hubby, who was in school. I saved the government $60k, even though that baby wound up costing them $300k.

But mynow upstairs neighbor was an even worse boat at one point. She divorced her abusive husband. The government paid for food and she received grants and loans that covered her living expenses while in school. She worked behind the counter, starting at minimum wage, and just like me, spent five years there, received numerous pay raises, and two promotions.

If there really is a person who is aborting based merely on economics, then they are just scared to look beyond their little world and see the good out there. It’s more of a fear of the unknown, their plans for a perfect economic life gone askew that havsthem killing their babies. It’s a fear that can be nullified if only they’d talk to a pregnancy councelor rather than an abortion salesperson.

Somebody wiser than me said that killing our unborn would only be the start and that the disabled and dying were up next. I”ve been amazed to watch the Netherlands and Belgium fall so fast into the killing zone. Honestly, it’s a lot worse than I thought it would be. Wasn’t this a country that was respected by other because of the fights their doctors put up against the Nazis, refusing to kill the disabled and elderly like they wanted? We’re always just one generation away from….

So, if the bourgeois, upper-middle class white stockholders are the cause of all of America’s miseries, why don’t we put them in jail? Or better yet, euthanize them?

Wouldn’t the social state of America be just wonderful if we could eliminate the Devil?

@24 Whoa…Do you speak for New Reformation Press?
If your post illustrates the resultant social concern of someone thoroughly steeped in orthodox Lutheranism, count me out.
@25 I’m glad things worked out for you, but many, many others out there are in desperate straits.

#28 Murder is never the appropriate response to poverty.