What’s Wrong with the World

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What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Pro-life suites: Some life issue links

Presumably people know that when they come to a site called "What's Wrong With the World" they are mostly going to hear bad news. This is inevitable and also very sad. We are now coming almost to Christmas, the time in which we remember that "the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." And let it here be said that the reason that we talk about the darkness is not to wallow in it nor to despair but rather to fight for health, goodness, and beauty--the love of parents, the innocence of children, the holiness of saints.

That being said, I feel mildly duty bound, before taking a little break from nay-saying (which I am sure will bring relief to all of us), to give those who don't read my personal blog one more budget of bad news on the front of various life issues.

The Canadian Supreme Court is apparently going to rule on whether Canadian doctors have unilateral authority to withdraw wanted "life support" from patients, with a Muslim patient's life on the line. I thought they already had that authority. Pastor Joshua's case would seem to indicate as much. But maybe they just want multiple precedents or a clearer precedent to shut up the families. Make no mistake: Even though Hassan Rasouli is on a ventilator, if he should be able to breathe on his own after it's withdrawn, a ruling in favor of the docs in this case would give them the unilateral power to dehydrate him to death.

Belgium is about to start "allowing" minors and people with Alzheimer's disease to "commit suicide." Scare quotes intentional. How do you say "informed, rational consent"? This is definitely a "choice devours itself" moment: When minors and people who are by definition, by the very nature of the condition that makes them want to die, not in full possession of their mental faculties are "allowed" to "choose" to "commit suicide" we've definitely crossed an important Orwellian line. Remember: Choice devours itself when some "choice" favored by the left, such as death or abortion, is actually forced upon the very person who was supposedly being given the benefit of choosing it. And the phenomenon continues when the high priests of Choice either deny that this is happening and hence reward those who are doing it (as in the case of forced abortion in China) or make excuses for it. "Suicide" for Alzheimer's patients and kids is a perfect example.

And here's one more that I think I missed reporting here at W4: An IVF clinic has now found a way to be more efficient in its operations and hence offer them at a reduced price. It simply mixes up whole batches of embryos from donor sperm and eggs rather than trying to make embryos that are the biological children of the couple attempting to conceive by IVF. The embryo batches are then parceled out amongst prospective gestational parents, which means that fewer embryos are wasted or have to be cryo-preserved. The embryos are also all made from "pristine" eggs and sperm (don't you love that term?)--that is, from donor eggs and sperm of people who probably aren't infertile. (If the embryos were created in the lab from the eggs and sperm of the couple trying to conceive, it might be that some problem with their own eggs and sperm was the cause of their fertility problems in the first place, which therefore might make the IVF technique unsuccessful.) Note: The batches of embryos thus created are initially the property of the clinic. It's bad enough--very bad indeed, in fact--that in "standard" IVF the manufactured embryos are treated as the property of the parents. Embryos are not property. But the fact that IVF does involve treating people as property is made all the more explicit and evident here, when an entirely impersonal entity--namely, a fertility clinic--literally owns these parent-less embryos from the outset and literally sells them to infertile couples. Until an attempt is made at implantation, the embryo is not in the custody of anyone even pretending to be, wanting to be, or trying to be the child's parent. It would not be too much of a stretch to call this human trafficking.

Aaand, that's a wrap, for the time being.

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