Respect for the dignity of life must extend to the sick, disabled, elderly, and those near death. Regardless of a person’s so-called “utility”, vulnerable persons are deserving of compassionate care and medical treatment.
 
Legislation to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide are advancing as populations age in record numbers, fertility rates decline to unsustainably low levels, and health care is limited and rationed. Many governments have been too slow to recognize that an unprecedented demographic shift has created enormous challenges to health care infrastructure and provision for a growing population of retirees.
 
Ethical concerns regarding the rationing of health care are increasing as treatment protocols are revised to withhold food and water from those labeled “burdensome” or deemed by someone to have a so-called “poor quality of life”. In such cases, death results not from illness, disease or organ malfunction but from starvation and dehydration. Patients, who are incapacitated, but not dying or near death, need special protection.
 
There are proposals by some doctors to systematically end the lives of babies born with disabilities. The controversial Dutch protocol, “The Groningen Protocol for Euthanasia in Newborns”, establishes guidelines for ending the lives of newborns, and promotes this eugenics policy as a quality of life issue over the sanctity of life.
 
PNCI believes that all lives regardless of age, sex, race, ethnicity, disability, creed, stage of development, or condition of dependency have dignity and opposes euthanasia and assisted suicide. PNCI supports health care policies that maintain respect for life regardless of condition of dependency or state of disability including for the more than 650 million people around the world who live with a disability.
 

Links:

Institute for the Study of Disability and Bioethics
Addresses ethical and moral issues as they relate to people with disabilities http://www.regent.edu/acad/schedu/isdb/resources.cfm

International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide
Contains the latest information on global actions in the global debate on assisted suicide and euthanasia
http://www.internationaltaskforce.org/
 
National Right to Life Committee
Serves to help protect the vulnerable from both direct killing and denial of lifesaving medical treatment, food and fluids
http://www.nrlc.org/euthanasia/index.html
 
 
Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation
Resource on life-threatening situations, established to help others avoid tragedies endured by Terri Schindler Schiavo
http://www.terrisfight.org/