By Dave Andrusko

Even though you will repeatedly be told otherwise, our Movement has been just as diligent in opposing euthanasia/assisted suicide as it has abortion—and for just as long a time. Proof positive is to go back to the first issue of National Right to Life News in 1973.

But it is also true that when the anti-life virus “jumped” from abortion to euthanasia/assisted suicide, our cause acquired an additional cadre of defenders. Some of THE most eloquent, rich-with-insight writing today flows from the pens [or computer terminals] of those trying to fend off the assisted suicide movement.

One example is British writer Melanie Phillips. One illustration of her capacity to cut to the chase is her “The terminal spin of ‘assisted dying’” which ran yesterday on her blog on the Daily Mail (http://phillipsblog.dailymail.co.uk/2011/10/the-terminal-spin-of-assisted-dying.html).

I really would like you to read the entire essay, so let me just mention a couple of important items.

Phillips does a masterful job explaining why the pro-assisted suicide crowd insists that their objective is “assisted dying” rather than what it is—killing. As she writes,

“But even terminally ill people may well not be dying when they ask to die. If so, the person assisting them with this request is not helping them to die –because they are not dying – but to kill themselves. The reason that last sentence in the HPAD [Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying] paragraph above makes no logical sense whatever is surely because what lies behind it–and what it is trying to conceal — is actually the recognition that, in terms of winning hearts and minds, ‘dying’ sounds good while ‘killing’ sounds bad.”

In some ways her keenest analysis is a sense of anger mixed with astonishment at the utter contempt demonstrated by pro-assisted suicide individuals and groups to those who disagree. It’s all either bogus “slippery slope” arguments or religious arguments left over like debris from the Middle Ages.

Referring to the object of her blog– Professor Raymond Tallis, a “patron of the pressure group Dignity in Dying, previously known as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society”—Phillips observes,

“He has no respect whatever for any such objections. Indeed, he finds it as incomprehensible as it is objectionable that anyone can believe that helping people to kill themselves is wrong. To Professor Tallis, it seems there can only be one reasonable view on this issue – his own. He is accordingly highly indignant that there has been ‘highly organised opposition to a change in the law’.”

And Phillips’ explanation of the price the medical profession would pay should it be commandeered (or join voluntarily) the assisted suicide crusade is itself worth the price of admission.

Again you can read “The terminal spin of ‘assisted dying’” at http://phillipsblog.dailymail.co.uk/2011/10/the-terminal-spin-of-assisted-dying.html

Your feedback is so very important to improving National Right to Life News Today. Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha