The new Euthanasia Bill moved in the South Australian state parliament would allow doctors to kill patients, or assist their suicide, on the spot, no questions asked.

No need for a second opinion, a psychiatric evaluation or a cooling-off period – and the patient doesn’t even have to be dying . . . .

Once the patient is dead, the family and friends will have to take the doctor’s word for it that consent had been given.

* * *

It is sometimes said that the general public favours euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The opinion polls on which such claims are based are suspect — the wording of questionnaires confusing the issue.

In Britain — where the media claimed that “up to 82 percent” of the British general public approved of euthanasia — a 2009 survey by the Royal College of Physicians found that 73 per cent of its members OPPOSED euthanasia.

It is a sobering thought that in places like the Netherlands, where euthanasia is widely practised, Palliative Care services are virtually non-existent.

Tonight, Tuesday 13 September, around 6:30pm, in Canberra’s Parliament House Theatre, Prime Minister Julia Gillard is making the “Emily’s List Inaugural Oration”.

Emily’s List being (according to its website) “a financial, political and personal support network for the election of progressive Labor women candidates.”

It stipulates that: “A woman candidate, to be satisfactory, must be a ‘feminist’ in the best sense of the word….”

* * *

The key word in all that is the word “progressive”

“Pro-gressive” is a code word for pro-abortion.

What Emily’s List really stands for can be summed up in two words: “DEAD BABIES”.

So, within the Australian Labor Party is a power-hungry inner circle of females committed to promoting the “right” to abortion.

About three-quarters of ALP women Members of Parliament belong to Emily’s List.

A good reason why a thinking person cannot, unfortunately, even think about supporting the Australian Labor Party in its present form.

* * *

Sometimes I think I detect in Julia G a kind of embarrassment about the anti-life, anti-family postures of her party.

She is an intelligent person. She is capable of abstract thought.

One day she may make a stand on an important issue — and simultaneously both destroy her political future and save her soul.

It’s just a thought.

On Thursday night, three ABC broadcast staff died in a helicopter crash near William Creek south of Lake Eyre.

They were Paul Lockyer (journalist), John Bean (photographer) and Gary Ticehurst (pilot).

They had been filming a documentary about the lake and intended covering yesterday’s official opening of William Creek airstrip.

The airstrip opening went ahead, but was more like a memorial service.

* * *

The priest, Father Paul, read from Saint Luke’s gospel, chapter 10, the story told by Jesus about the Good Samaritan – a story of undiscriminating love, an attribute which Australians admire and aspire to have:

A man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho was attacked by robbers who stripped him, beat him and went away leaving him half dead. A priest who happened to be going down the same road, seeing him, passed him by on the other side. So too, a Levite, coming to the place, passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came near and took pity on him, bandaging his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then, putting him on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and cared for him. Next day he gave two coins to the innkeeper, saying,  ‘Look after him and when I return I will reimburse you for any extra expense.’

“Which of these three”, asked Jesus, “do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The teacher of the Law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “You go, then, and do the same.”

When bad times come, God calls us to show neighbourly compassion, even when there is sacrifice involved — or even danger.

* * *

God does not only want us to be kind.

He wants us to put worshipping him first, above all else.

The story of the Good Samaritan is not the end of chapter 10.

The following section shows how, although practical kindness is important, there is something else at least as important — if not more so.

Look it up.

The new (2013) edition of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), will label people suffering from grief lasting over 6 months, as being mentally ill.

They will be diagnosed as suffering from “Adjustment Disorder related to Bereavement” — to be distinguished from depression etc.

Professor Richard Bryant (University of NSW) says this diagnosis will include 10 to 15 percent of people in the community.

His plan is to submit them to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – a technique currently fashionable, but not quite proved to do any good.

* * *

The DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

This, in itself, raises one’s suspicions.

Is not the APA prone to reflect modish ideas and fancies, rather than what is traditional and well-tried?

Did not the APA, in 1973, as the result of no particular new discoveries or scientific evidence, declare that homosexuality — hitherto, since the year dot, recognised as an abnormality — was suddenly normal?

A 360-degree reversal of the very definition of what it is to be human – imposed by means of a well-organised, bloodless, but menace-filled coup.

A new fundamentalist dogma, dropped from a great height on practitioners — which few have had the fortitude to resist.

Anybody resisting, medico or otherwise, is dubbed a homophobe, and accused of hate-speech.

* * *

Like everything else that matters, these issues are basically religious.

It is God who determines what is, and what is not, normal (a point touched on in yesterday’s post).

What is normal is that which draws us nearer to God.

Grief is something good. It expresses our inadequacy to cope with reality unless God helps us.

It is necessary to accept what God sends into our lives, and to look for the lesson that can be learned from it.

It can be hard, terribly hard.                                           

Anders Behring Breivik killed 76 people last Friday.

The media have been referring to him as a “Christian fundamentalist”.

If they checked his writings they would learn that he is no such thing.

He says himself that he has not attended church for over a decade:

 “I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic.”

But it suits some to label him a Christian anyway, and to make it stick.

From now on, whenever we are confronted by Islamic terrorist atrocities, the answer can be trotted out, “Yes, but what about Christian terrorist Breivik and his atrocities?”

Saturation media brow-beatings about how all religion is evil — especially the Catholic religion.

Some within the Church seem keen to help — obediently issuing apologies.

* * *

This week the CEO of Catholic Health Australia publicly apologised for adoption practices of a generation of two ago.

Implying that the unmarried teenage girls who surrendered their babies could have raised them better than the adoptive parents did.

I can remember those days, and having regular dealings with young women in such situations.

Sometimes the right decision was made. Sometimes probably not.

I suggest that when wrong decisions were made, the motivation was seldom malicious.

But anti-Catholics won’t want to concede that.

Nor that it was government policy being carried out — the Church acting in accordance with the current thinking of the authorities and “experts” of the day.

Once an unmarried teenager becomes pregnant there is no good solution — the best one can hope for is the lesser of multiple evils.

We should be concentrating on ways to make it not happen.

I read recently that in the USA, 70 percent of older people say they want to die at home, surrounded by loved ones etc.

But only 30 percent do so – most die in hospitals or nursing homes.

Why?

Sometimes a medical reason, unmanageable at home, arises — then there is no choice.

Often, however, there simply isn’t anybody with time available to spend on the old person as he/she becomes increasingly dependent.

Unfortunately.

* * *

A fortnight ago, Prime Minister Gillard said a speech, “I believe in the benefits and dignity of work. I believe in creating jobs and increasing workforce participation . . . .”

The punch-line soon arrived.

Yes, thanks to the nice Carbon Tax, she’ll be raising the tax-free threshold from $6,000 to $18,000.

Hooking married women into away-from-home jobs — using a tax-free $18000 bait.

What with the Carbon-Tax-induced sky-rocketing prices of electricity etc., most women are going to feel they have no choice.

We know how bad this is for their little children — dumped into institutional childcare from infancy, spending their waking hours wondering where Mum is.

We know about that . . . .

Less often discussed is the where-will-granny-pass-away connection.

* * *

If husbands received a wage on which a family could live and Mums stayed home, not only could children be parented by their parents . . . .

Granny could also die at peace.

(P.S. Such Mums could also live simpler, enviro-friendly, carbon-footprint-minimal lifestyles – growing their own vegetables, breast-feeding their own babies, walking more, driving less, doing  volunteer activities when time permits . . . .)