Prof: Right to assisted suicide 'irresistible'

Defender of infanticide sees Terri Schiavo battle as key to changing ethic

During the next 35 years, the traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological, and demographic developments, says controversial bio-ethics professor Peter Singer.

"By 2040, it may be that only a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists will defend the view that every human life, from conception to death, is sacrosanct," says Princeton University's defender of infanticide. "In retrospect, 2005 may be seen as the year in which that position (of the sanctity of life) became untenable," he writes in the fall issue of Foreign Policy.

Singer sees 2005's battle over the life of Terri Schiavo as a key to this changing ethic. "The year 2005 is also significant, at least in the United States, for ratcheting up the debate about the care of patients in a persistent vegetative state," says Singer. "The long legal battle over the removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube led President George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress to intervene, both seeking to keep her alive. Yet the American public surprised many pundits by refusing to support this intervention, and the case produced a surge in the number of people declaring they did not wish to be kept alive in a situation such as Schiavo’s."

[…] The professor, who advocates killing the disabled up to 28 days after birth, was the subject of protests when he was hired in 1999 by Princeton, a school founded by the Presbyterian denomination. A group calling itself Princeton Students Against Infanticide issued a petition charging the Australian professor "denies the intrinsic moral worth of an entire class of human beings – newborn children."

Singer also is known for launching the modern animal rights movement with his 1975 book "Animal Liberation," which argues against "speciesism." He insists animals should be accorded the same value as humans and should not be discriminated against because they belong to a non-human species.
(Whole article here.)

Hmmm… Is it possible to be both Anglo-Catholic and a “hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalist?” I guess so; I must be one.

I don’t particularly wish to be kept alive extra long if I’m in the process of dying. I don’t, however, wish to be killed as a matter of expedience, nor do I believe I am permitted to off myself in order to minimize discomfort. The appeal of the temptation to eliminate my own suffering shouldn’t be confused with its moral righteousness.

It’s true that I am not currently in desperate straits. There’s reason we make these rules when we’re not in desperate straits. Once we’re there, the temptation to do what feels good grows in power. It’s the same reason a recovering alcoholic stays away from bars, or a gambler moves away from Vegas.

The problem with Satan isn’t his vileness; the problem is that he can make himself look so good.