Don’t turn our doctors into killers, says the Star. Like several of the opposing factions to the bill, it cites Canada as exemplifying the slippery slope, with one in twenty deaths there being by assisted dying.

This argument that the bill will open up unforeseen consequences for the disabled, and indeed for the unfortunate residents of bad care homes, is common, Archbishop Welby, facing down former Archbishop Carey, said that assisted dying was in effect a sword of Damocles over the disabled and aged. We should add that many Canadians choosing state sponsored suicide cite feeling a burden on family and caregivers as their motive. Canada surely vindicates Welby.

This argument really is cogent and necessary, but is it sufficient for a Christian view which sees humanity made in the image and likeness of God, leading to the doctrine of the sanctity of life? As Frost says this a doctrine that has permeated and grounded western civilization. Is it not simply wrong to kill people even those begging to die? Hospices and care giving was the Christian answer, but Christianity is fading fast with its practical altruistic legacy of looking after the sick and dying.

Lord Frost has pointed to our society’s reliance on Judaeo Christian ethics for all its institutions and to the perilous situation of breaking with this tradition of the sanctity of life for a callous utilitarianism. So far his is the deepest theological apologia for the classical Christian ethic of life  on offer, we trust Christian leaders will step up to the challenge soon.

Read it all.

Ask MPs to oppose assisted suicide ✋

Some helpful tips here 👇 https://t.co/wr1LYSQylr

— Better Way (@betterwayUK) October 24, 2024

“It’s very important that we discuss it here in the Senedd today because although the private member’s bill is going forwards in Westminster, if it were passed the implication would be very important in Wales because we have responsibility for health and social care.”

Ms Morgan said it is important to have safeguards to ensure people meet specific criteria, with medical people present when the decision is made….

Carys Moseley, a public policy researcher and analyst for Christian Concern based in Cardiff, said the group was “concerned” about the motion.

She said: “We’ve got a visual display of the actual cases that have been happening in different jurisdictions in the western world.

“These are tragic cases – diabetes being treated as a long-term illness in Oregon, assisted suicide the fifth leading cause of death in Canada – these are very grave issues.”

She said the public question the issue more when they hear about other countries.

“Once you introduce this choice – dying – there is a pressure then which eventually becomes a duty to die,” she said.

“There isn’t such a thing as (going on) ‘your own terms’, because it affects all the doctors that become responsible for killing patients or assisted killing rather than preserving life.

Read it all.

The Welsh Senedd, which has a progressive majority, has overwhelmingly voted down a motion to legalise assisted suicide. The more people learn about assisted suicide the less they like it. pic.twitter.com/fww05M1fLi

— Yuan Yi Zhu (@yuanyi_z) October 23, 2024

The Bishop of Newcastle, Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, wrote on X/Twitter: “By all means let’s have the debate. Consideration should also be given to proper investment in pal­liative and social care. And let’s call it what it is: assisted suicide. It’s a slip­pery slope and an absolute de­­grada­tion of the value of human life.”

The Bill was also condemned by leaders of the Church in Wales, who said in a statement on Tuesday that the Christian faith had always been rooted “in the reality of pain and mortality”, as well as “the incalculable value of each human person, irrespective of social standing, access to resources, or physical or mental ability. . . In that spirit, shown to us in the person of Jesus, we give our heartfelt support to the extension of the best possible palliative care to all who require it, so that no limits are put on the compassion which we show as individuals and as a society.”

“This is an extremely difficult issue over which different people, including Christians, will have arrived at differing views with the best of intentions,” said the statement from the Archbishop of Wales, the Rt Revd Andrew John, with the Bishops of Bardsey, Llandaff, Monmouth, St Davids, St Asaph, and Swansea & Brecon.

Read it all.

Bishops warn of ‘duty’ to die if Leadbeater Bill is carried https://t.co/owjUo4W5Xz

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) October 16, 2024

… legalising assisted suicide would disproportionately impact many millions of vulnerable people, who might perceive themselves as a burden on those around them and the health service. My concern is that once you can ask for assisted suicide, it soon becomes something that you feel that you ought to do. Permission slips into being duty. This does not represent true choice for all, and I worry that no amount of safeguards will ensure everyone’s safety at the most vulnerable point of their lives.

A good death and compassionate care should be available to everyone, but the Bill being introduced today will not achieve that.”

Read it all.

Not half.

Assisted Dying Legislation is 'Dangerous' says Archbishop Welby – BBC News https://t.co/NhK26S8S9c

— Erica Wooff (@ericauk) October 16, 2024

As this debate unfolds there are three points I would like to put before you. I hope that you will take part in the debate, whenever and wherever you can, and that you will write to your Member of Parliament.

The first point is this: Be careful what you wish for.

No doubt the bill put before Parliament will be carefully framed, providing clear and very limited circumstances in which it would become lawful to assist, directly and deliberately, in the ending of a person’s life. But please remember, the evidence from every single country in which such a law has been passed is clear: that the circumstances in which the taking of a life is permitted are widened and widened, making assisted suicide and medical killing, or euthanasia, more and more available and accepted. In this country, assurances will be given that the proposed safeguards are firm and reliable. Rarely has this been the case. This proposed change in the law may be a source of relief to some. But it will bring great fear and trepidation to many, especially those who have vulnerabilities and those living with disabilities. What is now proposed will not be the end of the story. It is a story better not begun.

The second point is this: a right to die can become a duty to die.

A law which prohibits an action is a clear deterrent. A law which permits an action changes attitudes: that which is permitted is often and easily encouraged. Once assisted suicide is approved by the law, a key protection of human life falls away. Pressure mounts on those who are nearing death, from others or even from themselves, to end their life in order to take away a perceived burden of care from their family, for the avoidance of pain, or for the sake of an inheritance.

Read it all.

This Wednesday a bill will be introduced to Parliament proposing a change in the law to permit assisted suicide. As this debate unfolds, I ask you to play your part in it. Write to your MP. Have discussions with family, friends and colleagues. And pray.https://t.co/mgjUOwehms

— Cardinal Nichols (@CardinalNichols) October 10, 2024

The Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, the joint lead bishop on health care for the Church of England, echoed Bishop Smith’s concern.

She said: “No amount of safeguards could ensure the safety of the most vulnerable in society, should there be a change in the law allowing for assisted suicide”

Bishop Mullally, a former chief nursing officer for England, said: “I worked for many years as a nurse in the NHS, including as a cancer specialist, and I understand first-hand the crucial importance of compassionate care and dignity for all patients, including those who are most vulnerable and reaching the end of their lives.

“In the Church of England, we are backing urgent calls for adequate funding and resourcing of palliative care services, to ensure the highest possible standards of care for all. This should include action to ensure that our hospices receive the level of state funding that they are so badly lacking at present.”

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Letby and Shipman murders show NHS workers cannot be trusted on assisted dying https://t.co/51pSDKdIzO

— Anna Gaudreault (@ladevita12) October 5, 2024

In the context of our responsibilities as a wider society, we are grateful to the medical, nursing and care staff who support our loved ones in their last weeks, days and hours. Sadly, however, palliative care is underfunded and limited in Scotland, and our Parliament should focus its energies on improving palliative care rather than on contemplating assisted suicide or euthanasia.

The private member’s bill to introduce assisted suicide for those aged sixteen and over, recently published in the Scottish Parliament, amounts to a rejection of the common responsibility we owe to each other and to those who are ill and dying.

Campaigners call it ‘assisted dying’ when what is really meant is assisted suicide. Palliative care and the process by which families and communities accompany and support those in the final moments of their lives is what we all usually mean by assisted dying. What is now being proposed is that doctors hand a lethal concoction of drugs to a patient to kill themselves. It is a direct, intentional action to end the patient’s life and truly crosses a Rubicon in Scotland.

Read it carefully and read it all.

We heard the Scottish Catholic bishops letter against the assisted suicide bill in Scotland read out at Mass at Castlebay, Barra this morning. A very well-argued document which deserves wide dissemination.

— john milbank (@johnmilbank3) April 28, 2024

We must transfer our collective faculty for care and compassion from thwarted or struggling adults to those children who need us. This need not be a matter of cruelty or stigma, but rather of reordering our priorities to what we know to be true. This is urgent: If we can’t even mount a normophilic defense of a baby’s need for his or her mother, we will have few resources left to defend our own organismic fundamentals in the face of the seemingly endless ambitions of biotech. Some are already preselecting IVF embryos based on genome analysis. Others propose the accelerated “evolution” of humans by means of in vitro gametogenesis. Others again propose gene-editing embryos. Just recently a breakthrough was announced in the synthetic creation of human embryos: in theory, children wholly without ancestors.

No one is coming to save us. We cannot wait for the “silent majority” to rise up and demand a return to common sense, or mumble about postponing action until we’ve re-Christianized the West, or until we’ve devised a fully worked-out post-Christian metaphysics of human nature. We may lament the Christianity-shaped hole in our discourse, but just because much of modern culture is post-Christian doesn’t mean we no longer have a nature. All we’ve lost is our common framework for naming that nature. We must speak the truth anyway. And wherever possible, we must redirect law and policy from the abolition of human nature to its flourishing.

Should this project be accused of oppressing or stigmatizing “the vulnerable,” we must recall that in reasserting the necessity of norms we are not attacking the most vulnerable. We are defending them. Normophobia imposed on babies and children an obligation to sacrifice their needs for the sake of our wayward desires. We must lift this burden from their little shoulders.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Of Note: "Children’s needs have not changed just because adult desires have grown more unruly." https://t.co/awSIeT6jFW @moveincircles

— Inst. Family Studies (@FamStudies) March 13, 2024

In a statement, the Roman Catholic lead bishop for life issues, the Rt Revd John Sherrington, an auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese of Westminster, welcomed the committee’s decision “not to recommend the legalisation of assisted suicide”.

He continued: “As highlighted in the Committee’s report, experts have noted that there have been major problems in safeguarding the vulnerable and those without full mental capacity when assisted suicide and/or euthanasia has been introduced in other jurisdictions.

“Recognising the distress and suffering of those who are sick and vulnerable, I welcome the Committee’s recommendation that the accessibility and provision of palliative and end of life care needs to be improved — something the Catholic Church has consistently called for.”

Read it all (registration or subscription).

The Bishop of London @bishopSarahM has welcomed a report by MPs which calls for palliative and end-of-life care to be made more widely available https://t.co/5liE9iClCh

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 1, 2024

Sir Stephen has been Labour MP for East Ham in London since 1994, having first come to the area as part of a Christian mission to the East End while a university student…

He is on record as opposing legislation to introduce assisted dying, saying in a Westminster Hall debate in July 2022: “If we were to legalise assisted dying, we would impose an awful moral dilemma on every conscientious frail person nearing the end of their life. . . If ending their life early were legally permissible, many who do not want to end their life would feel under great, probably irresistible, pressure to do so. There is no way to stop that happening.”

On the Labour List site, he writes that “the radical individualism of some Conservatives” can prompt support for the legalisation of assisted suicide, “even at the risk of dire societal outcomes for the vulnerable. But in my view that should not be the position of those of us on the left.”

Read it all.

The Labour MP Sir Stephen Timms @stephenctimms has urged members of his party to give “careful thought” to the issue of assisted dying, arguing against that idea that it might be a party-political matterhttps://t.co/nXXt4xalNi

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 25, 2024

It is unsurprising that euthanasia consistently breaks its boundaries, always presented as an expansion of choice as the route to kindness. This is rooted in liberalism’s fundamental presuppositions, for as George Grant wrote, “it is the very signature of modern man to deny reality to any conception of good that imposes limits on human freedom … man’s essence is his freedom. Nothing must stand in the way of our absolute freedom to create the world as we want it. There must be no conceptions of good that put limitations on human action.” If there is no ultimate value towards which our lives point, then “the vaunted freedom of the individual to choose becomes either the necessity of finding one’s role in the public engineering or the necessity of retreating into the privacy of pleasure”. We are reduced to utilitarian measures of the good, achieved through harm reduction and happiness maximisation, materialistically defined.

The result of the liberal conception of the human person is expressive individualism, where “persons are conceived merely as atomized individual wills whose highest flourishing consists in interrogating the interior depths of the self in order to express and freely follow the original truths discovered therein toward one’s self-invented destiny”. This conception of the human person privileges cognition, will, rationality and autonomy in defining full personhood. Our nature as embodied souls is largely ignored: if one cannot employ one’s body to achieve the desires of one’s autonomous, rational, willed cognition, then one cannot achieve full personhood.

As a result, the constraints of our existential finitude made so explicit by disability are seen as immoral barriers to maximal autonomy attained through rational will. The unchosen bonds of interdependence, obligation, reciprocity and mutual loyalty that comprise the texture and meaning of life are denigrated. Liberalism discards the weak just as the Greco-Roman world once did, now done for reasons of supposed benevolence. From Locke onwards, liberalism has always seen some more capable of, and suited to, forming political society than others. Mill took this furthest in his proposal of colonisation and slavery for those less capable of freedom.

It is not such a stretch from liberalism’s definition of the individual’s capacity for personhood to advocating the killing of disabled infants deemed incapable of fulfilling this. As Leon Kass has written, it is no surprise that those Germans who coined the phrase “life unworthy of life” were two liberals: a jurist and an academic. Better to curb the depersonalised source of the suffering with all haste. James Burnham viewed liberalism as the ideological legitimator and enabler of Western suicide. I’m not sure he meant for the title of his book to be taken so literally, across so many countries.

Read it all from 2022.

As assisted suicide is in the news again, re-upping my piece for @TheCriticMag from last year, in which I argue that assisted suicide is not only wrong in itself, but that it’s the logical endpoint of the liberal view of the human person https://t.co/ZMK8sy5Pyh

— Henry George (@intothefuture45) December 22, 2023

Assisted suicide is banned in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. While there is no specific offence of assisted suicide in Scotland, euthanasia is illegal and can be prosecuted as murder or culpable homicide.
Rantzen says she’s joined assisted dying clinic

Mr Stride, one of 27 Conservative MPs who voted for the 2015 bill, said he thought some MPs could be wondering “whether this should be something we look at again”.

“The government has not decided to bring forward legislation,” he told the Today programme on Wednesday, “but if Parliament in some form or another decided that it wanted to have a fresh look at this, given it was some years ago that we last did so, that’s not something that I would be resistant to.”

Read it all.

Glad this article calls this for what it is: assisted suicide. I have argued against this in all my episcopal roles and will continue to do so. Investment in palliative care is essential. It will so often be the vulnerable who would suffer most in this. https://t.co/g94iLf0yQZ

— Bishop of Newcastle (@BishopNewcastle) December 20, 2023

Five years ago, Tiffany Gardner learned she had another father. She already had two.

One had colon cancer and died when Gardner was 4 years old. Her adoptive father taught her to drive and walked her down the aisle at her wedding. At 35 years old, when Gardner received news of a third, “I remember the room spinning,” she said.

Gardner had been in her mother’s kitchen. During the conversation, her mother let go of a long-held secret about the man Gardner had long believed to be her father. He was in an accident, her mother said. He had to relearn how to walk and talk. I couldn’t get pregnant. The doctors said the accident had likely left him infertile. We used a sperm donor.

“I felt I was falling backwards trying to process the moment,” recalled Gardner, a lawyer in the Atlanta area and the mother of three boys. Among her feelings was a desire to meet her newly uncovered biological father. It didn’t take long to find him online.

Read it all.

“There’s nothing comparable to your genetic parent breaking up with you." Amazing journey from @AmyDMarcus on how we're defining family in the age of assisted fertility technologies and DNA testing. https://t.co/bLm7bgMuzo via @WSJ

— Stefanie Ilgenfritz (@stefaniei) June 16, 2023

There is no near-term prospect of the synthetic embryos being used clinically. It would be illegal to implant them into a patient’s womb, and it is not yet clear whether these structures have the potential to continue maturing beyond the earliest stages of development.

The motivation for the work is for scientists to understand the “black box” period of development that is so called because scientists are only allowed to cultivate embryos in the lab up to a legal limit of 14 days. They then pick up the course of development much further along by looking at pregnancy scans and embryos donated for research.

Robin Lovell-Badge, the head of stem cell biology and developmental genetics at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said: “The idea is that if you really model normal human embryonic development using stem cells, you can gain an awful lot of information about how we begin development, what can go wrong, without having to use early embryos for research.”

Read it all.

This is a significant development that raises important questions about both the boundaries of human life and the future of the family. https://t.co/nLuWEdWJ6q

— Matthew Lee Anderson (@mattleeanderson) June 15, 2023

Hannah Daniel, the ERLC’s policy manager, told Baptist Press, “We believe all people are made in the image of God and possess immeasurable worth and value. Life is precious from the earliest moment of conception to natural death. Those who are struggling physically, mentally or emotionally should be met with the highest quality of care and compassion, not given assistance to end their life.”

The legislation “would have established Nevada as a destination for assisted suicide, and we joined arms with Nevada Baptists in urging Governor Lombardo to veto it,” she said in written comments.

The legislation would have allowed a doctor or advanced practice registered nurse to prescribe a lethal dose of a drug for an adult patient. The proposal gained narrow passage in both houses, 23-19 in the Assembly and 11-10 in the Senate. The majorities were far short of the two-thirds vote required to overturn a veto.

In a written veto message, Lombardo, a Republican, said the bill was unnecessary because of “expansions in palliative care services and continued improvements in advanced pain management.”

Read it all.

"Life is precious from the earliest moment of conception to natural death. Those who are struggling physically, mentally or emotionally should be met with the highest quality of care and compassion, not given assistance to end their life." – @hannahedaniel https://t.co/9Ngp5C5Lcd

— ERLC (@ERLC) June 9, 2023

It is not often in life when you have the choice to discover something about yourself, which could potentially rock your equilibrium and throw you into a completely unknown direction. Do you stay comfortable in the known, never really risking what it would take to understand a mystery, or do you trust in a faithful God, taking the chance that after the door has been opened, only one thing is certain: life will never be the same as it was before?

That was the position Father Chris Culpepper (52) found himself in 22 years ago, when as a 30 year-old youth minister at Saint Andrews parish in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, he received a call out of the blue from his parents asking him to come over to talk and go for a walk.

“That’s always how you know something happened in my family when you’re asked to go for a walk–usually it’s good, but sometimes you don’t know. And so, we went for the walk as we always did, and they asked me if I knew a lady named Sharon Kolb. And I mean, I was racking my brain from all facets of my life and just could not come to recognizing the name. And they said, ‘Well, she’s your birth mother.’”

Read it all.

Watch the heartwarming story of a rector who was adopted at birth and reunited with his birth mother later in life. https://t.co/ZOTlWzGYdf Read the full story or watch the full interview at https://t.co/M2J9O8ciEe #nationaladoptionmonth #adoptionstories #Adoption

— ACNA (@The_ACNA) November 8, 2022

How then can we as Christians respond to the matter of physician-assisted death? First, we can call upon reason and the light of nature to affirm absolutely the value of life. Assisted death and suicide is said to be a matter of respect.

But to value a person is to value their existence. A willingness to deliberately end someone’s existence therefore necessarily devalues the person. If people matter, we must not intentionally end them.

Second, our churches can be communities where assisted death is inconceivable because the weak, the aged, the disabled, and the dying are regarded as priceless members of the community. We can be a place where those who suffer enjoy the devoted companionship, love, and support that reminds them of their value and bears them up through pain. This is, after all, what all of us long for.

Third, we can advocate for access to the very best medical and palliative care for those who are suffering or dying. The palliative care movement was started by a Christian physician, Dame Cicely Saunders, and has transformed medical care at the end of life. Yet access to good palliative care in the US, Canada, and the rest of the world is still far too limited.

Read it all.

“Assisted death is no longer seen as a desperate option of last resort but rather as one ‘therapeutic option’ among many … offered to those whose lives are not regarded as worth living.”https://t.co/jqTcFTWzIP

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) October 18, 2022

Krista Carr, executive vice president of Inclusion Canada, is one such Canadian. “Most families of children born with disabilities are told from the start that their child will, in one way or another, not have a good quality of life,” she told the National Post. “Canada cannot begin killing babies when doctors predict there is no hope for them. Predictions are far too often based on discriminatory assumptions about life with a disability.”

Roy’s statement is merely the latest episode in a series of euthanasia horror stories from Canada that are shocking even to dulled Western sensibilities. Canada’s Supreme Court overturned criminal prohibitions on assisted suicide in Carter v. Canada in 2015. Shortly afterward, parliament passed Bill C-14 in 2016, which legalized “medical aid in dying” (or MAiD) for adults with “enduring and intolerable suffering” and a “reasonably foreseeable death.” In 2021, Bill C-7 was passed, which legalized MAiD for those struggling with mental illness. Canada has become an international cautionary tale.

Impoverished people are turning to MAiD out of desperation because they cannot access the resources they need or the treatments they require in Canada’s broken healthcare system. The Toronto Star—the largest and most liberal newspaper in the country—called it “Hunger Games style social Darwinism.” The story detailed how one woman is considering assisted suicide because she cannot find an affordable place to live in her city with wheelchair access. Her tale is becoming a common one.

Sixty-three-year-old Alan Philips, who has lived with chronic pain for almost two decades, recently got approved for assisted suicide after trying for eighteen years to get spinal fusion surgery to relieve his agony. He cannot get the surgery and has been prescribed opioids instead. “I cannot get adequate healthcare,” he said.

Read it all.

Canada will soon offer doctor-assisted suicide to patients who suffer from something which (to quote the law) “cannot be relieved under conditions that you consider acceptable." A nightmarish dispatch from @JVanMaren https://t.co/qevH7bVE3L

— Samuel D. James (@samueld_james) October 19, 2022

Dr Simon Eyre (Chichester), a retired GP, moved a private member’s motion on the subject on Sunday afternoon. “Hospices are suffering from a lack of funding,” he said, and linked this to a pressure to change the law to allow assisted suicide. People might choose to end their lives prematurely rather than face suffering exacerbated by poor-quality palliative care, he said.

“Sanctity of life is central to our understanding as Christians,” he said, and cited Psalm 31: “Our times are in his hands”.

Terminally ill people with depression, and people with disabilities, including learning disabilities, would be put at risk if legislation was changed, Dr Eyre said.

The Suicide Act 1961 prohibits assisted suicide, although directions from the Crown Prosecution Service published in 2010 require that any prosecution be in the “public interest”.

Several attempts have been made in recent years to introduce legislation that would permit assisted suicide in some circumstances, most recently in the form of a Bill in the House of Lords, which failed to reach a Second Reading before Parliament was prorogued in April.

Dr Eyre conceded that palliative care “sometimes fails to deliver”, but said that “the response to this should be to improve palliative care rather than make changes to the Suicide Act.”

Read it all.

“Hospices are suffering from a lack of funding.” https://t.co/opyIeRrAcA

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) July 11, 2022

Following a debate, members backed a Private Member’s Motion (PMM) paying tribute to the ‘enormous and untiring’ efforts of health professionals working in palliative and end of life care.

They called on the Government to guarantee adequate funding and resourcing of palliative care services to ensure the highest possible standards of care for all. Members further affirmed that the law on Assisted Suicide should remain unchanged.

General Synod member Dr Simon Eyre, from the Diocese of Chichester, introducing the PMM, called for the Government to ensure adequate funding for hospices over the next decade.

He said palliative care was currently ‘insufficiently comprehensive’ with only one palliative care consultant per 100,000 of the population.

Read it all.

Synod rejects assisted dying by a large majority – via @ChurchTimes https://t.co/YXZ508Ss4b

— Religion Media Centre (@RelMedCentre) July 11, 2022

Yet even though she is grateful that Roe has been overturned, Prior cautioned Christians against being hasty with how they move forward, saying that Roe’s absence gives us a unique opportunity to create beneficial legislation.

“For example,” said Prior, “we need to learn the difference between between intervening in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, which is going to be fatal to both mother and child and an abortion.” Because Roe was the law of the land for so long, Christians haven’t had to think through how the answer to such questions will impact the laws we create—but now in some states we have new opportunities.

Said Prior, “We’re going to have to educate ourselves quickly and thoughtfully and not just rush to put legislation in place that would be disastrous or uninformed or medically irresponsible. Of course, we want all of these laws to protect all of the human lives involved, but that’s not something that happens quickly and overnight. We have to really understand what it means to be pro-life and how to apply that in principle.”

Read it all.

While the American church has much to be thankful for with the reversal of Roe v. Wade, says Karen Swallow Prior, it is important to move forward with caution, nuance and compassion. @KSPrior https://t.co/PD9l2eKvxs @ChurchLead #KarenSwallowPrior #abortion

— ChurchLeaders.com (@ChurchLead) June 30, 2022

People often say that abortion isn’t mentioned in the Bible. But the command to protect and honor Life is implicit in every word of Scripture.

First, we need to understand that the value of human life is based in our creation by God and in our redemption through Jesus. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Our lives have value not because they are ours but because they are His! For this reason, we must live our lives giving glory to God and living in His statues. In this way, Scripture firmly contradicts the “my body, my choice” mantra of abortion supporters.

Second, because our lives have value in Him, we as His people are called to protect and honor all Life. The clearest evidence of this is in the commandment, “You shall not murder.” (Exodus 20:13) But even earlier, in the book of Genesis, God declares that the spilling of man’s blood is inherently wrong, due to our status as God’s beloved creation: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” (Genesis 9:6)

True, society in general believes that murder is wrong. However, Scriptures show that “valuing” Life goes beyond avoiding the act of killing. Honoring the sacredness of Life means serving those in need and sharing the love of God. Christ demonstrates how we should do this: “For I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in…Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me.” (Matthew 25:41-45) Being a life-affirming Christian means more than opposing death—it means serving those who are hurting, lonely, and broken. It means caring for the “least of these,”—the unborn, the homeless, the single mothers, the elderly, and the handicapped. Because our lives are valuable to God, so theirs must be to us.

God didn’t “forget” to talk about abortion, assisted suicide, or euthanasia in the Scriptures. The gift of Life is proclaimed in all of God’s commands and in everything that God has created, including us.

Read it all.

Why are Anglicans Pro-Life? https://t.co/oQXLUB6xDW

— The Diocese of Western Anglicans (@westernanglican) June 29, 2022

The U.S. Supreme Court’s courageous decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is a win for life and the Constitution. That historic ruling finally reverses the court’s disastrous opinion in Roe v. Wade—a decision that made up a constitutional right to abortion and resulted in the deaths of more than 60 million unborn children. Because of the court’s ruling in Dobbs, states may now fully protect unborn life.

The Mississippi law at issue in the case, the Gestational Age Act, protects unborn children and the health of their pregnant mothers based on the latest science. It protects unborn life after 15 weeks of gestational age—a point in time when babies can move and stretch, hiccup, and quite likely feel pain. It permits abortions to save the life of the mother or for severe fetal abnormalities. Despite the modesty of Mississippi’s law, the lower courts struck it down because no matter what science showed, or how strong a state’s interest in protecting unborn life was, under the Roe regime, states may not protect life until viability—about 22 weeks of gestational age.

Dobbs is a win for life. Fifty years of scientific progress and innovation establish what the Bible has always taught: Life begins at conception. Ultrasound technology allows expectant parents to see the truth of Psalm 139: Children are fearfully and wonderfully made from the very beginning.

Under Roe v. Wade, moreover, the United States has been an extreme outlier in abortion law and policy. As the chief justice noted during oral arguments, the United States is one of only six nations, including China and North Korea, that allow elective abortions through all nine months of pregnancy. The Washington Post recently ranked the United States as the fourth most liberal abortion country in the world. Most countries do not allow elective abortions at all, and 75 percent protect life after 12 weeks of gestation.

Read it all.

Here's is WORLD Opinions' second special edition editorial from @ADFLegal's Erin Hawley and @KWaggonerADF https://t.co/DPENWC7lgK

— Andrew T. Walker (@andrewtwalk) June 24, 2022

Today the United States Supreme Court ruled that “the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion,” overruling Roe v. Wade (1973). The decision will “return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives … to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.” In the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a five Justice majority of the Supreme Court overruled both Roe and the 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey.[1]

The inherent value of human life is revealed in the Scriptures, and this biblical commitment is reflected in the Anglican Church in North America’s Constitution and Canons which calls all members and clergy “to promote and respect the sanctity of every human life from conception to natural death” (Title II.8.3).

Archbishop Beach commented:

While this decision doesn’t end abortion in the U.S., it will lead to fewer children being killed through abortion. We thank God for this limited victory, and the Anglican Church in North America recommits itself to serving mothers so they can embrace motherhood and welcome their children. We also continue to point the way to God’s healing and forgiveness for all who suffer physically and emotionally from their abortion experiences.

Read it all.

Let us give thanks to God for this decision and continue to work to safeguard and promote life. Let us also continue to care and minister to those who continue to suffer from the effects of abortion in their own lives. Read more at:https://t.co/tht8oSTEAl #SCOTUS

— ACNA (@The_ACNA) June 24, 2022

The Supreme Court on Friday eliminated the constitutional right to obtain an abortion, casting aside 49 years of precedent that began with Roe v. Wade.

The decision by Justice Samuel Alito will set off a seismic shift in reproductive rights across the United States. It will allow states to ban abortion, and experts expect about half the states to do so.

In one of the most anticipated rulings in decades, the court overturned Roe, which first declared a constitutional right to abortion in 1973, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which re-affirmed that right in 1992. The decision followed the leak in early May of a draft opinion showing that a majority of the justices were privately poised to take that step. On Friday, they made it official.

The vote was 6-3. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Alito’s opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts did not join the opinion but agreed with the result and filed a separate opinion. The court’s three liberals, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, filed a joint dissent.

Read it all.

The Supreme Court voted 6 to 3 to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion.

Read the majority opinion of the court: https://t.co/gGGw6aW8zs

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 24, 2022

The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.

The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” he writes in the document, labeled as the “Opinion of the Court.” “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

Read it all.

Breaking news: A majority of the Supreme Court is prepared to overturn the right to abortion established nearly 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade, according to a leaked draft of the opinion published Monday by Politico. https://t.co/kNmy2LFGnU pic.twitter.com/YFzp6Iy2OD

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 3, 2022

A Japanese woman has given up her baby for adoption after discovering the sperm donor lied about his education and ethnicity.

The woman, identified only as a Tokyo resident in her 30s, is suing the man in a case that has cast light on Japan’s widely unregulated sperm donation industry.

She is seeking around 330 million yen (£2m) for emotional distress, claiming he lied in order to have sex with her, in the first legal case of its kind, according to Japanese media.

The woman and her husband reportedly came into contact with the man, who is in his 20s, via a social media sperm donation account while trying to conceive their second child.

Read it all (registration).

A Japanese woman has given up her baby for adoption after discovering the sperm donor lied about his education and ethnicity https://t.co/xbsCPVRiiC

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) January 13, 2022

[Warning: contains difficult subject matter] As Matthew van Antwerpen, a 17-year-old in suburban Dallas, struggled with remote schooling during the pandemic last year, he grew increasingly despondent. Searching online, he found a website about suicide.

“Any enjoyment or progress I make in my life simply comes across as forced,” he wrote on the site after signing up. “I know it is all just a distraction to blow time until the end.”

Roberta Barbos, a 22-year-old student at the University of Glasgow, first posted after a breakup, writing that she was “unbearably lonely.” Shawn Shatto, 25, described feeling miserable at her warehouse job in Pennsylvania. And Daniel Dal Canto, a 16-year-old in Salt Lake City, shared his fears that an undiagnosed stomach ailment might never get better.

Soon after joining, each of them was dead.

Read it all.

As a reporter covering mental health & a mother I am horrified by ⁦@nytimes⁩ reporting. And think if we don’t recognize & stop this we will keep losing people. (huge warning-deals with suicide) https://t.co/eFhSBEfvUQ

— Kate Snow (@tvkatesnow) December 9, 2021

Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) act began to operate in 2016. It is a laboratory for how legalised euthanasia will operate in a largely English-speaking country. And, according to an article in the journal Palliative Care written by five Canadian specialists, it has had a very negative effect upon palliative care.

The authors interviewed 13 doctors and 10 nurses about their impressions. Some of the feedback is unexpected.

First, all of them spoke about an inherent conflict between the provision of palliative care (PC) and eligibility for MAiD. To ensure that their patients remained eligible, they had to withhold medications which would have otherwise removed or alleviated their pain. “Maintaining lucidity and eligibility for assisted death, by avoiding sedative medications, took priority over achieving good symptom control for some patients,” they write. Both the patients and the PC providers found this distressing.

Read it all.

"13 #doctors and 10 #nurses… spoke about an inherent #conflict between the provision of #palliativecare (PC) and eligibility for #MAiD. To ensure that their #patients remained #eligible, they had to withhold [#pain] #medications" https://t.co/xd1X3UHJXU#nursing #medical #VAD

— BioEdge (@bioedge) November 8, 2021

Foes of mandatory coverage of abortion in New York State insurance law will have another hearing after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a New York state court to reconsider their decision. The law’s narrow religious exemption wrongly disqualifies many religious groups which object to providing abortion, critics said.

A group of Anglican nuns is among the objectors.

“We believe that every person is made in the image of God,” said Mother Miriam of the Sisterhood of Saint Mary, an Anglican body. “That’s why we believe in the sanctity of human life, and why we seek to serve those of all faiths—or no faith at all—in our community. We’re grateful that the Supreme Court has taken action in our case and hopeful that, this time around, the New York Court of Appeals will preserve our ability to serve and encourage our neighbors.”

The Sisterhood of Saint Mary, also known as the Sisters of the Community of St. Mary, is aligned with the Anglican Church in North America. It was founded in 1865 and claims to be the oldest Anglican religious order in the United States.

Read it all.

"We’re grateful that #SCOTUS has taken action in our case and hopeful that, this time around, the New York Court of Appeals will preserve our ability to serve and encourage our neighbors.” #ReligiousFreedom #ProLife @BECKETlaw https://t.co/UeeOUmfVke

— Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) November 1, 2021