A WOMAN THANKS DOCTOR FOR NOT HELPING HER SUICIDE

See the short clip below from the film Fatal Flaws, courtesy of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and Dunn Media.

AN EXCERPT FROM A BOOK I AM WRITING

My wife LaRee and I have been married for forty-five years. We've known each other since early childhood. Our lives together have been touched by every major Life issue of our time. Our love affair began in the months following my father's death in 1970. Below is a short excerpt from a book I am writing. It deals with our experiences with abortion, disease, disability, profound grief and euthanasia—but mostly about the transcendent power of love.

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In the early Spring of 1970, it was time to return to the log cabin and prepare it for summer. It was torture. Everything reminded me of dad: His fishing rod hanging in the tool shed, his shoes sitting at the door in the cabin just as he left them the previous fall, a book left open on the arm of his chair. It was like plunging a dagger into my chest. 

I took dad's boat out on the lake and went to a secluded little cove where I often fished with him. The water was cold, clear and still. Dead brushes from the previous year lined the shore. Birds chirped in trees celebrating a new Spring.  Then I heard a loon's lonesome call in the distance and I collapsed on the floor of the boat and sobbed.  I don’t know how long I laid there. All I remember was crying until there were no more tears to shed. Looking up at the sky, I wondered if Dad could see me. I whispered “How will I carry on without you?”

Chapter 6

The telephone rang. It was a call that would change my life forever and bring a new and different kind of love: Romance.  It was LaRee—the girl I had been sweet about since I was four-years-old. Her voice was like a hymn. She said she wanted to express her condolences about my father’s death.  She made my heart leap and took my breath away. For years she lived three thousand miles away in the city of Ottawa. Instantly I wanted to see her. I asked when she was planning to come across Canada to visit her poor, ailing, elderly grandparents living next door (very thoughtful of me, don’t you think? Yeah right!)  Her grandparents were not particularly old and they certainly were not poor, nor ailing. LaRee agreed to come when school was out for the summer. We exchanged photo-booth pictures (four for a quarter).  I spent a wad of quarters behind the curtain trying to get the right worldly and sophisticated pose. Every day I ran to the post office looking for a letter containing her picture.  When it came, the sight of her beauty almost knocked me over!  There was no pixy cut and tricycle that I remembered from bygone years. She was stunning!  Her beautiful brown eyes made my heart melt.  All I could think about was LaRee. 

The day she flew to Alberta. I was a bundle of nerves. When her grandparents went to get her from the airport, I watched from my bedroom window. When they arrived back, LaRee got out of their car unaware I was watching her. It was like seeing a movie star. She stood mere feet away. Somewhere deep in my heart a small flame of hope was lit. Was she the one to drive back my crushing sorrow with the magic of romance? After all, we were only seventeen.  Did I need love too much to be loved?  Self-doubt made me afraid that my desperate heart would chase her away.

... With great uncertainty, I walked to her grandmother’s house, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door with a trembling hand.  Something whispered inside me that the door was opening to my future. Could me be we ? Was it all just wishful thinking on my part? Did LaRee believe wishful thoughts can come true?

I entered her grandparents’ house. LaRee turned and looked at me with her beautiful brown oriental eyes.  She stole my breath and my heart. My wishful thought was that her heart did the same. LaRee did not know I was in love her before we met that day. 

She could be the missing piece of my life and my desperate heart ached for her to love me. But could she? Would she? Hearts too desperate for love often chase love away.  Could she love a desperate heart? Was her heart desperate for love too? Was she the light I hoped for or was she just a summer flame that would extinguish in September after she went back east?  Would I hear that mournful loon cry again when LaRee left at the end of summer?

A THOUGHT ABOUT FULLNESS OF THE HUMAN FAMILY

Remember, everyone has something to give to the Human Family. Encourage and include people with disabilities to share their gifts, talents and unique abilities—even if it's just their presence. 

THE ONLY LEGITIMATE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENTS

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government." - Thomas Jefferson

If human life is not worth protecting, what is? Those things that care for, advance and protect all human

life is the only legitimate reasons for governments to exist. These principles must be the motivation for all legal and policy actions of a government for its people.

A DIFFERENT AND BETTER CHOICE

My father
& me

I have always had a good imagination, beginning in early childhood. My father often ruffled my hair and referred to me as his daydreamer. My mother often yanked my ear and called me a scatterbrain. A strong imagination can be a blessing, it can also be a curse. 

A dream is worth dreaming when it brings beauty to

life but not when it causes pain. To hope in a hope that can not be or will not happen is no hope at all. I hoped for love and it was beautiful because it was possible and it came true.

I dreamed of health but it only brought pain. But

savage attacks of multiple sclerosis also taught me that sometimes dreams were all I had. When the truth of my circumstance was too much to bear, I retreated to dreams. I dreamt of how things could have been or might have been.

It was in that dreamland that I discovered a reality on a different dimension, a dimension that made the realities of this world pale in comparison. Ironic. The Author of all reality met me in my pain and invited me to unite my suffering with His salvific suffering. 

And so I replaced ethereal dreams with the

objective reality of Jesus Christ because he met me in my deepest anguish when nobody else could or would. He understood me more completely than I understood myself. He loved me when I was unlovable.

That is why my first loyalty is to Christ. That is why I speak of Him when I give speeches. A secular disability group once asked me to give a keynote address to their annual national conference. The spokesperson said, "We want you to speak but we don't want any of that Jesus crap." I responded, "If I can't speak of Christ, then I have nothing to say. He is my hope." She withdrew the invitation.

An agnostic or atheist might respond that all my talk of dreams and belief in God are nothing more than a cruel disease affecting my mind. If that be the case then leave me to my dreams, let me believe in something higher than what is here. I am content. Cynics would strip me of my belief in Christ—if it

was possible—and let me sink in despair then offer me the secular progressive's solution to my anguish: A lethal injection.

No thank you. I choose a different and better reality: Jesus Christ.

WHAT AMERICA SHOULD LEARN FROM CANADA

Wesley J. Smith

Wesley J. Smith is one of North America's top bio-ethical thinkers. He has written and spoken extensively about the perils of assisted-suicide not only to the sick and disabled but also to the moral underpinnings of western civilization itself. 

Read his latest column in the American publication National Review Online: "Canadian Hospital Waiting Room Promotes Euthanasia" Canada legalized medically assisted suicide in 2016. Already the tentacles of euthanasia can be found in a Canadian ER. How many others? Legal euthanasia puts the sick and disabled in peril and threatens the proper place for palliative care. Canada legalized assisted suicide under the guise of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). What we got was euthanasia by lethal injection.

If the United States should learn anything from Canada it is not to be like Canada. 

SO YOU SAY YOU'RE PRO-CHOICE?

So you say you're pro-choice. Choose adoption, not abortion. Choose life, not death. Never choose death for yourself or another life. You may regret making life denying decisions. You will not regret making life-affirming decisions. It's really quite simple. You may say that it's easier said than done. Everything is easier said than done.

Here's a truth every person must understand. You

are valuable even when you've ceased to believe it. Decisions should not be made when you are submerged beneath the waves depression or dire circumstances. Your unborn baby is valuable even if he/she is unwanted. You may not want to be a parent but there are thousands upon thousands of childless couples who desperately want to be parents. 

So you say you're pro-choice? Choose to live and let live. All I am saying is give life a chance. -- MDP