Few European Babies Leads to Muslim Transformation

The modern culture in Europe is literally dying from a lack of offspring.  To counter the inevitable, looming economic disaster, government planners see immigration as a solution.

"This is a very acute problem because for years Europe has been doing a sort of collective demographic suicide. . . . To change the demographic trends, promoting birth is not enough.  It also has to be done through immigration."
-- Vitor Constâncio, Vice President of the European Central Bank

"I have heard many times from Muslims that their goal is to conquer Europe with two weapons: faith and the birth rate."
-- Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai

For background, read about the dropping birth rates in much of Europe and Russia, but also there's an American trend: Fewer Children, More Animals/Pets.  The fact is that The Religious Procreate, but Others Don't and Where Liberalism Flourishes, the Population Diminishes

The Grim Reality: Ever-dropping birth rate means economic devastation

Also read Childlessness is Effect of Feminism: U.S. Census Bureau Population Survey

-- From "Mapped: how a demographic time bomb will transform the global economy" by Szu Ping Chan, UK Telegraph 1/2/16

Based on UN population estimates, the number of people in the developed world aged between 16 and 64 peaked in 2010, while the number of people aged 60 and over will exceed the number of children for the first time in 2047, and more than double from 841m in 2013 to two billion by 2050.

. . . Birth rates have fallen from five per woman in 1950 to 2.5 today, and are expected to fall to between 1.8 and 2.2 by 2050.

As tax bases and revenues shrink and the number of retirees grows, governments face the choice of borrowing more or giving out less to ensure the numbers add up.

But without change, countries may find themselves sleepwalking into a new reality of permanently lower growth and higher debt.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Europe needs many more babies to avert a population disaster" posted at UK Guardian 8/22/15

Spain has one of the lowest fertility rates in the EU, with an average of 1.27 children born for every woman of childbearing age, compared to the EU average of 1.55. Its crippling economic crisis has seen a net exodus of people from the country, as hundreds of thousands of Spaniards and migrants leave in the hope of finding jobs abroad. The result is that, since 2012, Spain’s population has been shrinking.

Record numbers of economic migrants and asylum-seekers are seeking to enter the European Union this summer and are risking their lives in the attempt. The paradox is that as police and security forces battle to keep them at bay, a demographic crisis is unfolding across the continent. Europe desperately needs more young people to run its health services, populate its rural areas and look after its elderly because, increasingly, its societies are no longer self-sustaining.

In Portugal, the population has been shrinking since 2010. For many analysts, the question now is how low can it go, with projections by the National Statistics Institute suggesting Portugal’s population could drop from 10.5 million to 6.3 million by 2060. According to prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho: “We’ve got really serious problems.”

In Italy the retired population is soaring, with the proportion of over-65s set to rise from 2.7% last year to 18.8% in 2050. Germany has the lowest birthrate in the world: 8.2 per 1,000 population between 2008 and 2013, according to a recent study by the Hamburg-based world economy institute, the HWWI.

. . . Germany needs to welcome an average of 533,000 immigrants every year, which perhaps gives context to the estimate that 800,000 refugees are due to come to Germany this year.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "More people in Europe are dying than are being born" posted at Phys.org (Science X network) 1/14/16

Texas A&M Professor of Sociology Dudley Poston, along with Professor Kenneth Johnson, University of New Hampshire, and Professor Layton Field, Mount St. Mary's University, published their findings in Population and Development Review this month.

The researchers find that 17 European nations have more people dying in them than are being born (natural decrease), including three of Europe's more populous nations: Russia, Germany and Italy. In contrast, in the U.S. and in the state of Texas, births exceed deaths by a substantial margin.

Findings reveal that 58 percent of the 1,391 counties of Europe had more deaths than births compared to just 28 percent of the 3,141 counties of the U.S.

The researchers find that in Europe, deaths exceeded births in most of the counties of Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, as well as in Sweden and the Baltic States. Further south, natural decrease is found occurring in the majority of the counties of Greece, Portugal and Italy.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "UN Report: Int’l. Migration Can Slow, But Not Reverse Europe’s Demographic Crisis" by Barbara Hollingsworth, CNSNews.com 1/14/16

“Europe added the second largest number of international migrants between 2000 and 2015 (20 million, or 1.3 million per year),” the UN report stated. Of those, 75 percent were between the ages of 20 and 64.

But even with this large influx of working-age immigrants, “old-age dependency ratios are projected to increase from 26 to 48 per 100 in Europe” - compared to 38 per 100 in North America by 2050.

“Because international migrants tend to include a larger proportion of working-age persons compared to the overall population, positive net migration can contribute to reducing old-age dependency ratios. However, international migration cannot reverse, or halt, the long-term trend toward population ageing,” the UN report stated.

A 2012 analysis by the Guttmacher Institute found that about a third of all pregnancies in Europe between 1995 and 2003 ended in abortion. Birth rates below the replacement level (2.1 children per woman) have created a demographic crisis in which a declining population of young workers is expected to support a growing number of elderly retirees.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Germany replaces Japan as country with world's lower birth rate" by Louis Doré, UK Independent 5/30/15

[Germany] has dropped below Japan to take the lowest birth rate globally, according to the study by the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI), prompting fears that labour market shortages could damage the economy.

The authors of the study also said that women’s participation in the workforce would be key to the country’s economic future, and warned that a shrinking working-age population could have negative effects.

The falling birth rate means the percentage of people of working age in the country - between 20 and 65 - would drop from 61 per cent to 54 per cent by 2030.

Mr Probst said the country needed young immigrant workers to fill the significant skills gap . . .

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Cardinal: Islam's goal is to conquer Europe by faith and 'birth rate'" by Gregory Tomlin, Christian Examiner 11/9/15

In countries like Austria, Finland, Ireland, Kosovo, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Serbia and the United Kingdom, Muslims are already outpacing non-Muslim birthrates by more than a full percentage point. By 2030, Muslims likely would have made up 8 percent of the continent's population – hardly enough though to tilt the scales in favor of Islam.

That figure, however, will likely be significantly higher now since hundreds of thousands of migrants have flooded into countries like Germany and France. Some countries, such as Great Britain, have also made allowances for Muslim families where a man has multiple wives.

"The main reasons for Islam's growth ultimately involve simple demographics. To begin with, Muslims have more children than members of the seven other major religious groups analyzed in the study. Each Muslim woman has an average of 3.1 children, significantly above the next-highest group (Christians at 2.7) and the average of all non-Muslims (2.3). In all major regions where there is a sizable Muslim population, Muslim fertility exceeds non-Muslim fertility," Pew [Research Center] said in a recent study.

"The growth of the Muslim population also is helped by the fact that Muslims have the youngest median age (23 in 2010) of all major religious groups, seven years younger than the median age of non-Muslims (30). A larger share of Muslims will soon be at the point in their lives when people begin having children. This, combined with high fertility rates, will accelerate Muslim population growth," Pew also said.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

Also read Pope Francis Scolds Selfish Europeans for NOT Procreating

Dr. Death House Calls - Just Dial 6-6-6

Want doctor-assisted suicide in the convenience of your home? The Dutch voluntary euthanasia society plans to create death-mobiles for ill patients who want to die.

-- From "Dutch group proposes 'mobile' euthanasia teams" by The Associated Press 11/16/11

The Netherlands legalized euthanasia in 2001 in cases where patients are suffering unbearable pain due to illness with no hope of recovery.

Spokeswoman Walburg de Jong of The Right To Die said Wednesday the idea is a logical extension of its plan - not approved by the government - to create a clinic for patients who meet the criteria for euthanasia but whose doctors are unwilling to carry it out.

The number of reported euthanasia cases in the Netherlands rose 19 percent in 2010 to 3,136. A parliamentary-appointed commission is reviewing current policy.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Voluntary euthanasia group plans to set up 'help to die' teams" posted at Dutch News 11/16/11

'Most people want to die at home,' an NVVE spokesman told the paper. The clinic is still on the cards, but will only have a couple of beds for people who cannot die at home, the spokesman said.

The NVVE says only a third of the 10,000 euthanasia requests made every year are actually honoured. This is because the request procedure is complicated and many doctors are not aware of the finer points of the law, the organisation argues.

Euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands under strict conditions. For example, the patient must be suffering unbearable pain and the doctor must be convinced the patient is making an informed choice. The opinion of a second doctor is also required.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

God is Not a Being, but an Experience

To predict the apostate trek of America's liberal "christian churches," one only needs to observe Europe. The BBC reports that 1 in 6 clergy in the mainstream Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) are either agnostic or atheist.

The Rev Klaas Hendrikse can offer his congregation little hope of life after death, and he's not the sort of man to sugar the pill. (video below)

UPDATE 8/26/11: Analysis/opinion by Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

-- From "Dutch rethink Christianity for a doubtful world" by Robert Pigott, BBC religious affairs correspondent 8/5/11

. . . the service is conventional enough, with hymns, readings from the Bible, and the Lord's Prayer. But the message from Mr Hendrikse's sermon seems bleak - "Make the most of life on earth, because it will probably be the only one you get".

"God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience."

His book Believing in a Non-Existent God led to calls from more traditionalist Christians for him to be removed. However, a special church meeting decided his views were too widely shared among church thinkers for him to be singled out.

Professor Hijme Stoffels of the VU University Amsterdam says . . . "In our society it's called 'somethingism'," he says. "There must be 'something' between heaven and earth, but to call it 'God', and even 'a personal God', for the majority of Dutch is a bridge too far.

"Christian churches are in a market situation. They can offer their ideas to a majority of the population which is interested in spirituality or some kind of religion."

They want the Netherlands to be a laboratory for Christianity, experimenting with radical new ways of understanding the faith.

To read the entire article, CLICK HERE.

Also read New America: Secularized Like Europe, Spiritualized Like Oprah

Christians Becoming Extinct in 9 Western Nations

Researchers of the American Physical Society have released a census study of over 100 years of data showing that Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland will be void of Christians.

UPDATE 12/30/12: Christians, Extinct in Middle East, as Islam Wins

-- From "Faith no more! From New Zealand to Canada, religion 'to become extinct' in nine countries" by U.K. Daily Mail Reporter 3/22/11

The study was carried out by Northwestern University and the University of Arizona.

Richard Wiener, of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, led the scientific survey.

He said: 'In a large number of modern secular democracies, there's been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion.

'In the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%.'

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says" by Jason Palmer, Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas 3/22/11

The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.

Nonlinear dynamics is invoked to explain a wide range of physical phenomena in which a number of factors play a part.

[Richard Wiener said,] "It posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility.

"For example in languages, there can be greater utility or status in speaking Spanish instead of [the dying language] Quechuan in Peru, and similarly there's some kind of status or utility in being a member of a religion or not."

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "God keep our land? The numbers raise doubts" by Frank Appleyard, Postmedia News, posted at the Montreal Gazette 3/22/11

The study attempted to link these countries' religious identities with the social motives behind belonging to particular groups. Researchers said that as the masses who claim religious non-affiliation swell, it becomes more appealing to join the ranks of that group.

Weiner speculated that social pressures are contributing to the decline in religious identification in these countries. "People no longer see the slate of benefits as being as great as they probably did 100 years ago. It's become less socially useful."

In the Netherlands, where close to 50 per cent of the population identifies as not belonging to a religion, Weiner said they found that by mid-century close to 70 per cent of the country will be made up of non-believers.

"That's very substantial growth over four decades," Weiner said. "It's not saying that religion will not exist, but it will very strongly change the makeup of society. Maybe in 100 years in some of these countries if this trend continues, there will be a very small percentage of people that still identify themselves as belonging to a religion."

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

Multiculturalism Destroys Free Society, Cultures Terrorists

British Prime Minister David Cameron has lashed out at multiculturalism . . . implores the West to confront extremism now.

Nationalist politician Geert Wilders has claimed that he is being persecuted for his political views. The Dutch populist, who likens Islam to fascism, is charged with inciting hatred towards Muslims and others.

UPDATE 2/11/11: French president Nicolas Sarkozy declares that multiculturalism has failed

-- From "'Multiculturalism' Under Fire in Europe, Blamed for Extremism by British BP" by Jim Angle, FoxNews.com 2/7/11

Cameron said last weekend [click here to read entire speech] that letting different cultural groups -- especially Muslims -- exist in separate communities divides the nation and is not only wrong but dangerous.

Cameron's concern is that separatism allows young people to be lured into extremism, saying "the biggest threat that we face comes from terrorist attacks, some of which are, sadly, carried out by our own citizens."

"Islamic extremists have exploited this doctrine [of multiculturalism] to advance their own anti-British agenda," explains Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation

To maintain separate communities where a minority of young Muslims could be seduced by those preaching radicalism and drawn to violence such as the bombings in the London Underground that killed more than 50 in 2005 is dangerous Gardiner and Cameron agree.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Multiculturalism has failed: PM" posted at Luton Today (UK) 2/5/11

In a major speech on tackling the threat of terrorism, the Prime Minister warned that the "hands-off tolerance" of unacceptable practices by non-white communities had only served to encourage extremism.

"Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism," the Prime Minister said.

While a "passively tolerant" society allowed its citizens to do what they like, so long as they do not break the law, a genuinely liberal country "believes in certain values and actively promotes them," Mr Cameron said.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Dutch populist Wilders returns to court for allegedly inciting race hate" posted at Deutsche Welle (Germany) 2/7/11

The anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders appeared in court in Amsterdam on Monday on charges of inciting hatred towards Muslims, Moroccans and other non-Western groups in the Netherlands.

Wilders, one of the most powerful men in the Dutch parliament, told a panel of judges that he thinks he's the victim of political persecution, saying they must drop the charges against him in order to protect free speech.

"Citizens who criticize Islam pay a bitter price. They are threatened, persecuted and criminalized," Wilders told judges at a hearing that was meant to decide how the case would continue.

"The lights are going out all over Europe, and it's because of Islam," Wilders told the packed courtroom. "There are no Islamic Mozarts or Bill Gates because they can't exist where there is no creative freedom. An ideology that comes from the desert can only create a desert."

The judges are due to decide on how the case should proceed next week.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

Europeans React to Islamization

France is home to five million Muslims, the largest population in Europe, which may explain why it has an identity crisis. Like many Europeans nations, it is suffering the consequences of a decades-long open-borders policy that has allowed Muslims to establish enclaves across the country, particularly in Paris, where rioting Muslims sent the city up in flames in November, 2008.

UPDATE 1/5/11: British conversions to Islam nearly doubled in decade, study says

UPDATE 12/16/10: Wikileaks shines light on Muslim radicals in the U.K.

UPDATE 10/9/10: Sharia law being used in Germany in Muslims' domestic disputes

UPDATE 10/7/10: Muslims are taking over parts of the world into which they move simply by outnumbering the previous residents

UPDATE 10/7/10: Italy to become next European country to ban burka



-- From "France In Trouble Over Immigrants" posted at The New American 9/15/10

Trying to control the increasing Islamization of its society, the French Senate passed a bill that forbids women from wearing the burqa and other face-hiding veils in public. The vote was nearly unamious, 246-1. The Senate's action follows that of the country's National Assembly, which acted in June and also passed the bill by a large margin. The bill awaits the singnature of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

But whatever the reason women may no longer cover their faces in public, the country's radical Left, as expected, chalks the action up to Islamophobia.

. . . In 2009, the Swiss banned the Muslim minaret, described by Turkish President Recep Erdogan as the "Muslim Bayonet." That law sent European leftists into a tizzy.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Analysis: Burqa bans: France, then Netherlands - who's next?" by Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor, Reuters 10/1/10

First the French banned Muslim face veils, now the Dutch have decided to follow suit. With debates about outlawing burqas and niqabs spreading across Europe, a third ban -- perhaps even more -- may not be far behind.

Calls for a "burqa ban" are now heard across Europe, with local politics influencing how close it gets to becoming law.

Three days after Paris passed its ban last month, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's populist Northern League allies introduced a similar bill in Rome. Another Berlusconi ally submitted a draft ban law in the Senate last week.

[In Spain,] Barcelona outlawed burqas and niqabs in public buildings in June, after two smaller Catalan towns, Lerida and El Vendrell, banned them early this year.

A recent poll showed 61 percent of Germans favored a burqa ban but the debate there has focused more on a dispute caused by Thilo Sarrazin, who had to resign from the board of the central bank after publishing a book denigrating Muslim immigrants.

In Austria, the opposition Freedom Party has been gaining ground in state polls with its anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant line. Socialist Chancellor Werner Faymann says he "could imagine" a ban and his conservative coalition partners want to debate it.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "French Senate passes ban on full Muslim veils" by Elaine Ganley, Associated Press Writer 9/14/10

Many Muslims believe the [veil-ban] legislation is one more blow to France's No. 2 religion, and risks raising the level of Islamophobia in a country where mosques, like synagogues, are sporadic targets of hate. However, the law's many proponents say it will preserve the nation's values, including its secular foundations and a notion of fraternity that is contrary to those who hide their faces.

The bill is aimed at ensuring gender equality, women's dignity and security, as well as upholding France's secular values — and its way of life.

Muslim leaders concur that Islam does not require a woman to hide her face. However, they have voiced concerns that a law forbidding them to do so would stigmatize the French Muslim population, which at an estimated 5 million is the largest in western Europe. Numerous Muslim women who wear the face-covering veil have said they are being increasingly harassed in the streets.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

UPDATE 10/4/10: From "Muslims should conform to German values: Merkel" by Indo-Asian News Service

German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded on Monday that Muslims living in Germany conform to "fundamental German values", saying there was no leeway on the issue.

"There is no leeway on this," she said, adding that Germans' perceptions of Islam were dominated by Sharia (Islamic law), the lack of equality between men and women and honour killings.

Germany had freedom of religion, and Islam was welcome, "but it must be a form of Islam that feels devoted to our fundamental values", Merkel said. If it were not, fears would develop among Germans, "and that is hardly something we want to happen".

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

Read also, Cardinal Says Secularization of Europe has Doomed it to Islamization

Hauled into Court for Expressing Opinion on Religion

A Dutch court has ordered prosecutors to put a right-wing politician on trial for making anti-Islamic statements.

-- From "Islam film Dutch MP to be charged" BBC News 1/21/09

Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders made a controversial film last year equating Islam with violence and has likened the Koran to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

The opening scenes of Fitna - a Koranic term sometimes translated as "strife" - show a copy of the holy book followed by footage of the bomb attacks on the US on 11 September 2001, London in July 2005 and Madrid in March 2004.

"In a democratic system, hate speech is considered so serious that it is in the general interest to... draw a clear line," the court in Amsterdam said.

Mr Wilders said the judgement was an "attack on the freedom of expression".

"Participation in the public debate has become a dangerous activity. If you give your opinion, you risk being prosecuted," he said.

The three judges said that they had weighed Mr Wilders's "one-sided generalisations" against his right to free speech, and ruled that he had gone beyond the normal leeway granted to politicians.

"The court also considers appropriate criminal prosecution for insulting Muslim worshippers because of comparisons between Islam and Nazism made by Wilders," [the court said in a statement.]

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said at the time that the film wrongly equated Islam with violence and served "no purpose other than to offend".

To read the entire article, CLICK HERE.

The Netherlands: Decriminalizing the Unthinkable

Infanticide is murder, even if you call it C.O.M.P.A.S.S.I.O.N.

From "Decriminalizing the Unthinkable" by Wesley J. Smith, posted on 3/5/08 at cornerstonechristiancenter.org

In ancient Rome, babies born with disabilities or serious illnesses were often exposed on hills, a barbaric practice that was eventually stopped when (and because) Christianity became the Empire’s official religion. Alas, killing babies born with birth defects is making a comeback in our Post Christian times. Indeed, support for infanticide is not only gaining respectability among the bioethics and medical intelligentsia—it is becoming positively trendy. Princeton University’s Peter Singer deserves much of the blame for this change. Back when infanticide support was still an anathema, Singer began advocating for the right of parents to kill unwanted newborns. He didn’t put it that starkly, of course. He always used the example of babies born with serious disabilities such as Down syndrome.

...And now in “Ending the Life of a Newborn,” the Hastings Center Report—the most important bioethics journal in the world—has just published another pro Groningen Protocol article, granting even greater support for Dutch infanticide among the bioethics intelligentsia. Not only do the authors, a Dutch and an American bioethicist, support lethally injecting dying babies, but also those who are disabled, writing, “Critics charge that the protocol does not successfully identify which babies will die. But it is precisely those babies who could continue to live, but whose lives would be wretched in the extreme, who stand in most need of the interventions for which the protocol offers guidance.”

Read the entire commentary.

The protocol is absolutely radical - calling for the murder of infants who are not currently suffering but whom will suffer in adulthood. For specific details an excellent article has been posted at Lifesite.

The Netherlands: Dutch People Asking for More and More Rules in Society

From "Changing Patterns in Social Fabric Test Netherlands' Liberal Identity" by Molly Moore, posted 6/23/07 at Washingtonpost.com

For years, W.B. Kranendonk was a lone ranger in Dutch politics -- the editor of an orthodox Christian newspaper in a nation that has legalized prostitution, euthanasia, abortion and same-sex marriage and allows the personal use of marijuana.

Today, with an orthodox Christian political party in the government for the first time, and with immigration anxieties fueling a national search for identity, the country that has been the world's most socially liberal political laboratory is rethinking its anything-goes policies.

And suddenly, Kranendonk no longer seems so all alone.

"People in high political circles are saying it can't be good to have a society so liberal that everything is allowed," said Kranendonk, editor of Reformist Daily and an increasingly influential voice that resonates in the shifting mainstream of Dutch public opinion. "People are saying we should have values; people are asking for more and more rules in society."

In cities across the Netherlands, mayors and town councils are closing down shops where marijuana is sold, rolled and smoked. Municipalities are shuttering the brothels where prostitutes have been allowed to ply their trade legally. Parliament is considering a ban on the sale of hallucinogenic "magic mushrooms." Orthodox Christian members of parliament have introduced a bill that would allow civil officials with moral objections to refuse to perform gay marriages. And Dutch authorities are trying to curtail the activities of an abortion rights group that assists women in neighboring countries where abortions are illegal.

The effort to rein in the Netherlands' famed social liberties is not limited to the small, newly empowered Christian Union party, which holds two of the 16 ministries in the coalition government formed this year. Increasingly, politicians from the more center-left Labor Party are among the most outspoken proponents of closing some brothels and marijuana shops -- known here as "coffee shops.

...But here those anxieties are exacerbated by alarm over the international crime organizations that have infiltrated the country's prostitution and drug trades, the increasing prevalence of trafficking in women and children across its borders, and dismay over the Netherlands' image as an international tourist destination for drugs and sexual debauchery.

..."In the past, we looked at legal prostitution as a women's liberation issue; now it's looked at as exploitation of women and should be stopped," said de Wolf, sitting in the offices of the medical complex where he works as an HIV-AIDS researcher.

...But historian Kennedy describes the attitude as a national "weariness with moral squalor -- the Dutch have grown tired of it and unwilling to put up with it."

Read the whole article.

Moral truth eventually becomes obvious...

Dutch Patients Killed Without Requesting Euthanasia

From "Dutch Euthanasia" by Wes Smith, posted 4/2/07, at First Things

n his book Seduced by Death, Herbert Hendin reported that one reason the Dutch people have not turned against their euthanasia law is that doctors and the media in Holland do not candidly report about the many abuses and violations of the law that occur with regard to their country’s euthanasia policy.

A recent news report on Radio Netherlands, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of formal legalization, gives a good example. It contained no discussion of the approximately 1,000 patients who, without requesting euthanasia, are nonetheless killed by Dutch doctors. It contained no discussion of the Dutch Supreme Court permitting the depressed to be assisted in suicide. It contained no substantive dissent at all.

It did, however, contain quotations from Dr. Bert Keizer, author of the book Dancing with Mr. D, in which he describes his euthanasia work as a nursing home doctor. He said, for instance, “People who ask for euthanasia are not put under pressure, they are under the burden of suffering.”

...Here’s another form of pressure: Not telling a patient about the ability to control pain, or even waiting for a final diagnosis before agreeing to kill a patient. Keizer is asked to euthanize Teus, a man whom he thinks—but does not know—has lung cancer. He discusses the case with his colleague on page 37, who asks if the patient is really suffering badly. “Is it for us to answer that question? All I know is that he wants to die more or less upright and that he doesn’t want to crawl to his grave the way a dog crawls howling to the sidewalk after he’s been hit by a car.

Patients with cancer do not have to die in this manner. Proper medical care would prevent it. But this is never mentioned to the patient. Nor, from what we read, does Keizer even know about the powers of morphine to control cancer pain. He doesn’t even discuss hospice with Teus or his family—which is outrageous negligence. Instead, as he describes on page 39, when Keizer gets ready to euthanize Teus, he will countenance no doubts: “I tell Jaarsma and De Goover [Keizer’s colleagues] that Teus is going to die that evening. Jaarsma seems sore but raises no objection. De Goover looks sharply at me, trying to work out how scared I am. If anyone so much as whispers ‘cortisone’ or ‘uncertain diagnosis,’ I’ll hit him.”

...Those we would kill, we must first dehumanize—or at least, we must divorce ourselves from their humanity. This abandoning ethic is repeatedly illustrated by Dr. Keizer’s book. Everyone who wants to read first hand about the cold, sterile, anti-human values intrinsic to the euthanasia movement should read his Dancing with Mr. D.

Without belief in moral absolutes (in this case the sanctity of human life), there is no bottom to this slippery slope...

Read the whole commentary.