ProWomanProLife

  • The Story
  • The Women
  • Notable Columns
  • Contact Us
You are here: Home / All Posts / How did she manage that?

How did she manage that?

September 23, 2009 by Andrea Mrozek 6 Comments

Barbara Kay writes a funny column about attempts to legalize euthanasia in the form of a letter to her children:

I do not want to be bumped off. I can’t state the case more unequivocally than that. I don’t care if I am a “burden” to you (you were once to me, that’s how life works); I don’t care how long it takes me to die, and how inconvenient that is to the medical system; and I don’t care how selfless an example other parents are setting in graciously exiting the world for their dependents’ sake before nature intended.

The whole thing is worth reading, if only because it’s not often that one can laugh while reading about euthanasia.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmailby feather

Filed Under: All Posts

Comments

  1. Suricou Raven says

    September 23, 2009 at 10:47 am

    I find the “right to a natural life span” line rather amusing. Not the right part, but the natural part. What is a natural human life span? It varies a bit throughout history, if you include infant mortality in the figures, until the 20th century you’d be lucky to live to fourty. There is nothing natural about the life span today – it’s the result of unnaturally plentyful food, a scientific understanding of disease transmission, and the work of centuries of medical advances.

    A “right to a natural life span” suggests we keep people alive until fourty, then send them out to die in the wilderness.

    Don’t take this as an argument for or against euthanasia. But lets just leave nature out of it.

    Reply
  2. Jon says

    September 23, 2009 at 11:30 am

    Moses said, “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years, yet their pride is but labour and sorrow; for soon it is gone and we fly away” (Ps. 90:10). For any given period and people in history, there does seem to be a natural lifespan.

    Suriocou also said, “It varies a bit throughout history, if you include infant mortality in the figures, until the 20th century you’d be lucky to live to fourty [sic].” If you want to include infant mortality, then perhaps you should also include abortions, etc. (though we can’t know them all).

    Reply
  3. Suricou Raven says

    September 24, 2009 at 10:19 am

    The misspelling of forty is rather annoying, because I knew that was spelt wrong, and actually checked it… but, rather than go to the trouble of getting word loaded, I just stuck it in google – and it’s a common enough misspelling that it worked there anyway :>

    I included infant mortality because I had no reason to exclude it. And it was the first set of good statistics I found.

    Reply
  4. Jon says

    September 24, 2009 at 12:27 pm

    Checking with Google, I find that the American death rate is 8.27 deaths/1,000 population (2008 est.). With a total population of 300 million, America has 2.5 million people die every year. However, I highly doubt that abortions are factored into the death rate. The 1 million forced abortions every year lower life expectancy from 70 or 80 years to only 50 or 60 years. If you’re going to include infant mortality, then I think you might as well include forced abortions.

    Reply
  5. Suricou Raven says

    September 28, 2009 at 6:21 am

    I don’t think the precise figure matters – and besides, that’s the modern statistic. The important part of my argument is that, prior to the invention of unnatural medical technology and resource abundance, the average lifespan was far shorter than today. So it makes no sense to talk of a ‘right to a natural lifespan’ – the lifespan expected of the average person in a developed country today is highly unnatural already.

    Reply
    • Brigitte Pellerin says

      September 28, 2009 at 6:27 am

      I enjoy hair-splitting as much as the next Cartesian, but I think most people would assume “natural lifespan” today to mean “when my body gives up and not before”. The big worry out there is that old people who are starting to become more dependent on others are going to be dispatched “unnaturally” fast by “caregivers” who can’t be bothered to care no more.
      Maybe I’m the weirdo, but nobody I know goes around saying things like: “I expect to live until age 81 because that’s what the latest figures say my life expectancy as a non-smoking female living in urban Ontario ought to be.” But I hear a lot of “I don’t want to be snuffed out before my time” without precise references to time and date of said time.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Follow Us

Facebooktwitterrssby feather

Notable Columns

  • A pro-woman budget wouldn't tell me how to live my life
  • Bad medicine
  • Birth control pills have side effects
  • Canada Summer Jobs debacle–Can Trudeau call abortion a right?
  • Celebrate these Jubilee jailbirds
  • China has laws against sex selection. But not Canada. Why?
  • Family love is not a contract
  • Freedom to discuss the “choice”
  • Gender quotas don't help business or women
  • Ghomeshi case a wake-up call
  • Hidden cost of choice
  • Life at the heart of the matter
  • Life issues and the media
  • Need for rational abortion debate
  • New face of the abortion debate
  • People vs. kidneys
  • PET-P press release
  • Pro-life work is making me sick
  • Prolife doesn't mean anti-woman
  • Settle down or "lean in"
  • Sex education is all about values
  • Thank you, Camille Paglia
  • The new face of feminism
  • Today’s law worth discussing
  • When debate is shut down in Canada’s highest places
  • Whither feminism?

Categories

  • All Posts
  • Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia
  • Charitable
  • Ethics
  • Featured Media
  • Featured Posts
  • Feminism
  • Free Expression
  • International
  • Motherhood
  • Other
  • Political
  • Pregnancy Care Centres
  • Reproductive Technologies

All Posts

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2025 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in