Right to Life, Right to Death -- By: Ken Gardoski
Journal: Journal of Ministry and Theology
Volume: JMAT 15:2 (Fall 2011)
Article: Right to Life, Right to Death
Author: Ken Gardoski
JMAT 15:2 (Fall 2011) p. 54
Right to Life, Right to Death
Associate Professor of Systematic Theology
Baptist Bible Seminary, Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania
Introduction1
In her 2009 article “Death Doctors” Kathryn Jean Lopez recounts an interview with euthanasia advocate Dr. Philip Nitschke.2 When Lopez asked Nitschke “whom he aimed to help
JMAT 15:2 (Fall 2011) p. 55
kill themselves, he explained that if one has a right to live, one should also have the right to die, and have the means to do it.”3 Nitschke went on to say this:
Someone needs to provide this knowledge, training or recourse necessary to anyone to wants it, including the depressed, the elderly, the bereaved, the troubled teen. If we are to remain consistent and we believe that the individual has the right to dispose of their life, we should not erect artificial barriers in the way of sub-groups who don’t meet our criteria.4
Nitschke, known as “Dr. Death” for his efforts to legalize euthanasia in Australia, has done something to provide this knowledge: he has developed a barbiturate-testing kit for people who want to end their lives. William Lee Adams comments, “People who are seriously ill don’t want to experiment. ... They want to know they have the right concentration of drugs so that if they take them in the suggested way, it will provide them with a peaceful death.”5 Lopez warns at the head of her article, “Like abortion 50 years ago, euthanasia now is poised at the top of a slippery slope.”6 J. R.
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Stanton describes what the top of the abortion slippery slope looked like back in the late 1960s:
In the confluence of “women’s liberation,” sexual freedom, and concern for ecology, population and pollution, vast forces inimical to the well-being of embryo and fetus were in motion. The American Law Institute was proffering a little “reasonable” liberation of the abortion laws to take care of the “hard” cases, physical and mental health, incest, rape, and genetic defect. The quality of human life ethic gained respectability at the expense of human life itself in socially and academically impeccable circles. As medical indications for abortion evaporated, doctors increasingly invoked mental health as justification for abortion.You must have a subscription and be logged in to read the entire article.
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