While We’re at It

♦ Michael Novak died in February. He was a pillar of First Things for more than two decades. Like our founder, Richard John Neuhaus, Michael had been an ardent proponent of a number of progressive causes. Some of his early books about post–Vatican II Catholicism can make you blush. But in the . . . . Continue Reading »

A Grim Harvest

Upon learning of his son’s fatal heart disease, a father arranges to donate his own heart in order to save his son’s life. The surgery will result in his death; his son will learn of it only after the fact. Should the hospital administrators allow the surgery to proceed?Ethicist Paul Ramsey . . . . Continue Reading »

A “Merciless Assault on Human Dignity”

In Ontario today, doctors who decline to euthanize their patients are required to provide an “effective referral”: They are obliged, on pain of losing their license to practice, to send a troubled patient to a doctor of lighter conscience who will kill that patient. Cardinal Collins is fighting this abomination. Continue Reading »

Euthanizing Children

I guess we should be pleased that the euthanasia death of a seventeen-year-old remains at least mildly controversial. But it is clear that the culture of death, if allowed to progress further, will eventually consider such deaths routine. Continue Reading »

Death Rights

Last year, Canada’s Supreme Court unanimously decided that laws criminalizing assisted suicide are unconstitutional and in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Following the court’s verdict, Canadian Parliament in June 2016 passed a new law according Canadians a right to . . . . Continue Reading »