Battle for the man in the street

As the battle for hearts and minds intensifies in the euthanasia debate, one signal sounds loud and clear above the noise of conflict:  our troops in the pro-life camp are losing. The pro-death battalions have captured the high immoral ground. Public opinion surveys consistently indicate  that around three-quarters of those polled favour assisted suicide, mercy killing, medical aid in dying or other euphemisms for euthanasia dreamed up by the enemy.

The masses are not getting the pro-life message. They have been persuaded through subtle brainwashing by an acquiescent media that a 'right to die' based on individual autonomy transcends the right to life - a self-evidently absurd proposition but one that has taken root in the public mind. Let's consider two practical problems arising from this misconception. The first concerns life insurance. To my knowledge, all insurance companies exclude suicide from their life cover. Assisted suicide is still suicide. Beneficiaries of a deceased's estate hoping to profit from his death would therefore be sadly disappointed.

You could possibly argue that the person who assisted the suicide was technically guilty of murder, thereby relieving the deceased of ultimate responsibility. But the obvious defence to this charge would be that the deceased asked his assistant to kill him. Taken to its logical conclusion, this argument offers a splendid defence in a wide spectrum of murder cases, viz: "The victim asked me to kill him. I merely complied with his legal right to die by doing so." As the victim would no longer be around to deny making any such request, the likely outcome would be acquittal. Next case please.

These are valid arguments against popular notions of a right to die and assisted death but you are unlikely to encounter them in the media. The reason, it seems to me, is that the pro-life movement is not militant enough. What it needs is a PR campaign to rival that of the 'gay rights' fraternity - a tiny minority (1.5 per cent of the population according to latest statistics) that has exerted an influence on society out of all proportion to its size.

Similar determination is urgently needed by our own much larger minority group because the issue here is not just sexual orientation but a matter of life and death. A slogan is called for, a rallying cry to inspire a generation increasingly regarded as expendable. Keep Breathing, the title of my second novel, could strike the necessary chord.

My book is an attempt to promote the pro-life message to a largely hostile public through the medium of popular fiction, something that does not seem to have been tried before. You could call it a form of ideological evangelism...an attempt to engage the man in the street on an emotional rather than intellectual level. I am convinced that for the pro-life message to prevail, public attitudes must change. We may have lost the present PR battle but it is vital for the sake of future generations that we win the war.

Sinister or sick?

People described as 'medical ethics experts' have gone on record as claiming that newborn babies have no right to life. Writing in the Journal of Medical Ethics, they argue: "The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a foetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life."

To be sure we are in no doubt about the chilling nature of their convoluted message, Alberto Ciubilini and Francesca Minerva, add: "What we call 'after-birth abortion' (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is - including cases where the newborn is not disabled." (my italics) To these primitive ethicists, infanticide is therefore fine. It adds a new dimension to the euphemism of 'pro-choice' - now you can choose whether to kill your baby before or after birth.

What is the 'moral status' of these sociopaths, preoccupied with snuffing out human life rather than protecting it? Not all that elevated, it would seem. Their comments have reportedly received a hostile response from several quarters. Curiously, the reaction has upset the journal's editor, Julian Savulescu. He describes the critics as "opposing the values of a liberal society" by indulging in "witch ethics".

How cynical can you get? What we are dealing with here are not the values of a civilised society but those of an abortion-obsessed culture. The death-wish fanatics who constantly seek to widen its boundaries would be regarded as deeply sinister if they were not so desperately sick.

Hallelujah!

GEORGE CAREY, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has just noticed that Christianity is facing 'gradual marginalisation'. (Cue double-forte rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus by massed Albert Hall choirs.) Plugging his book, We Don't Do God, he announces: "There are forces at work in Western society hollowing out the values of Christianity and driving them to the margins."

Now you tell us, George! It's a pity you didn't detect these dark forces several years ago when they were blindingly obvious to the rest of us. For example, when the BBC was poisoning the airwaves with Gerry Springer - the Opera and similar works of 'artistic expression'. Since then, due mainly to your church's misplaced policy of appeasing secularism, it's been downhill all the way.

The National Secular Society, the BBC and the Gaydian newspaper are now calling the shots. Prayers have been banned at council meetings; Christian adoption agencies have been forced to close; medical staff face dismissal for shunning abortions; nurses who wear crosses (that hated symbol for atheists) and pray for patients are victimised... the persecution intensifies with each perverse judgment handed down by a secular judiciary. Marginalisation has given way to a crusade against religious belief.

Much of this might have been prevented if George and his flock had not been obsessed with gender equality and homosexual rights but focused instead on their prime duty of upholding the Christian faith. Now what remains of the Anglican Church, under the leadership of an equally weak cartoon character, is left with a mountain to climb. Still, it's good you've finally seen the light George. Better late than never.

Keep breathing and carry on

A fanatical pressure group wants to change the law on assisted dying - making it easier for doctors to help patients kill themselves. Parliament has rejected any change three times since 2006 out of concern for public safety. The Council of Europe has ruled that euthanasia and assisted suicide should be banned throughout Britain and the Continent. They are supported by the British Medical Association and the European Convention on Human Rights.

But the multi-millionaires backing the pressure group think they know better. They quote opinion polls claiming that three-quarters of the British public favour assisted suicide. These simplistic surveys are basically flawed. They make no mention of sinister developments in countries where assisted death has been legalised. In Holland, for example, the 'service' has been extended from the terminally ill to include healthy people.

At a time when the national deficit exceeds £1 trillion (that's £1,000,000,000,000) and mature citizens are increasingly regarded as a burden on society, euthanasia as an instrument of socio-economic policy presents a frightening scenario. The pro-death pressure group comprises powerful, determined and ideology-driven activists. They are not going to go away.

My novel, KEEP BREATHING, predicts that legalising assisted death would result in full-blown elder abuse and that this irreversible nightmare could happen sooner than we think. We live in an age when the human rights of terrorists, murderers and even war criminals are protected. What about ours?

KEEP BREATHING  Available in paperback from Amazon, £8.99 post free. Ebook on
Kindle £2.90. Keep calm, carry on and order now - while you still can!