Tim Bradley

Just two years ago, Canada’s Supreme Court decriminalized physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and euthanasia in its decision in Carter v. Canada. In that February 6, 2015, ruling, the Court allotted a one-year window to Parliament within which to pass legislation regulating the practices. The result was Bill C-14, passed on June 17, 2016, which permits adults with a “serious and incurable illness, disease or disability” who are enduring “physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable to them” to request PAS or euthanasia if their natural death is “reasonably foreseeable.”

A network of psychiatric hospitals operated by the Brothers of Charity in Belgium will now permit its patients to be euthanized, according to a statement from the board controlling the order’s medical institutions.

March 21 was World Down Syndrome Day. Fitting, then, that on the same day Oklahoma’s House of Representatives passed its Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2017.

A bill prohibiting doctors from issuing prescriptions for drugs to cause abortion via remote video or telephone conference passed Utah’s House Public Utilities, Energy, and Technology Standing Committee on January 30.

The doctor asked the elderly Dutch woman’s family members to hold her down while the fatal dose was administered. The woman was suffering from dementia and had previously affirmed that she wanted to be euthanized “at the right time,” but the determination of the “right time” for her to die was apparently made without her consultation.

Women in the United States have possessed a broad legal right to abortion since Roe v. Wade and its companion case were handed down by the Supreme Court in 1973. Outside of the abortion context, though, the unborn child possesses broad legal rights in American property, torts, and criminal law.

Kimberly Stinnett learned from her obstetrician on May 9, 2012, that she was pregnant. Stinnett called her doctor’s answering service just two days later when she experienced fever and abdominal cramps. Karla Kennedy, M.D., called back and told Stinnett to report to the emergency room at a nearby hospital.

A group of pro-life doctors and pregnancy help centers in Illinois was granted temporary relief on December 20 from the conscience-compromising aspects of an amended state law that took effect on January 1.

Jessica Duran underwent an abortion at Southwestern Women’s Options (SWO), an abortion center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in October 2012. Last week she filed a lawsuit against the abortion center and its licensed physicians in Second Judicial District Court for the County of Bernalillo.

A legislator in Indiana has announced plans to introduce a bill that would ban abortion in that state when its legislature convenes in January. In Texas, lawmakers introduced several pro-life measures on November 14, including a proposed amendment to the state constitution prohibiting abortion to the extent permitted by federal law.