Columnist Tom Utley in the UK Daily Mail says he’s wary of Debbie Purdy’s efforts to challenge Britain’s assisted suicide law. Purdy (left, celebrating court victory with husband Omar Puente) has multiple sclerosis and says she plans to kill herself at Dignitas, a controversial euthanasia clinic in Switzerland. She says she wants to make sure that her husband will not be prosecuted if he aids her in making arrangements for assisted suicide.

Utley thinks Purdy is really trying to legalize assisted suicide in Britain — a prospect he finds alarming.

In the Netherlands, MPs voted in 2000 to legalise euthanasia, assuring the world: ‘This is only for people who are in great pain and have no prospect of recovery.’

Within three years, more than one per cent of all deaths in Holland were being deliberately inflicted by doctors.

We saw the same phenomenon here with abortion. When it was legalised in 1967, we were assured it would be carried out only if continuing the pregnancy would mean risk to the life or mental health of the mother, risk to the physical or mental health of existing children or ’substantial’ risk of the child being born ’seriously handicapped’.

Today, abortion is widely seen simply as an alternative to contraception, and 500 fetuses are killed every day. Do we really want to go down that road with euthanasia?

If so, how long will it be before doctors start bumping off old women like my grandmother, who say they want to die but don’t really mean it?

Related story: Woman wins right to review of law on assisted suicide

“In none of the endless presidential candidates’ debates has there been a meaningful discussion of the rights of disabled Americans,” says columnist Nat Hentoff in a column in the Sacramento Bee.

Hentoff takes Barack Obama to task for his recent statement of regret at having voted with the Senate to ask the federal courts to review the case of Terri Schiavo. By making the remark, Hentoff says,

Obama casually and ignorantly revealed his misunderstanding of the basic issue in the highly visible and still-resonating official death sentence of a disabled woman.

Hentoff says Obama failed to understand the basic message of 29 major disability-rights organizations on the case: that this was not a right-to-die case, but a case about a woman’s right to continue living.

Says Hentoff:

[Obama] should be proud of the Senate vote he now recants — and learn a lot more about the disabled.

Perinatal hospices support families with a terminal prenatal diagnosis

From MSNBC.com:

Advances in prenatal screening mean that more families are receiving difficult diagnoses, and are making choices about whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy. Perinatal hospices aim to support families who receive a terminal prenatal diagnosis and decide to continue the pregnancy.

MSNBC spends time with Jeanne and Steve Deibert of Seattle, whose son Robbie was diagnosed in utero with Trisomy 18, a chromosomal condition that is usually fatal. Less than ten percent of babies who have it live for a year or more.

The Deiberts developed a plan to allow their son to live “with love and honor,” and worked with a Seattle perinatal hospice program to make it happen. They brought him home from the hospital and welcomed him into their lives. Robbie lived for 29 days.

“Robbie taught us to love what we have, when we have it, because time is measured,” Steve said in the eulogy he delivered at his son’s funeral. “Robbie has taught us to hold on tight– and to let go.”

The story is accompanied by a list of resources, but neglects to mention an important one:

The Trisomy 18 Foundation, which can be found at www.trisomy18.org.

From the Winnipeg [Manitoba, Canada] Free Press:

Manitoba’s college of physicians has waded into an emotional debate over whether doctors or a patient’s family get to decide when life-sustaining medical treatment should be stopped.

A new policy from the college says the ultimate decision lies with the doctor. (more…)