Concerning questions about the NZ euthanasia case still not being asked by media/public

A couple of things about the NZ euthanasia case involving Sean Davison have been bothering me over the last day or so.

a) Why did Mr. Davison actually write a book about killing his own mother?

I can’t help but wonder whether or not either Mr. Davison, or Mr. Davison and his mother had actually been planning to turn her death into a macrbe act of pro-euthanasia activism right from the very beginning.

Who in their right mind kills a family member under these sort of circumstances and then writes a book about it?

This sort of behavior is more akin to ideological activism than some sort of genuine cathartic release.

b) Why did he then omit the actual details about his mother’s death from his book?

If Mr. Davison is actually the staunch pro-euthanasia convert that he now claims to be, then why would he omit the very details about his mother’s death which clearly prove this to be a case of euthanasia?

If it was merely the case that he didn’t want to go to jail, then why did he write a book about the whole incident, which clearly exposes his actions to scrutiny, in the first place?

Why not just quietly join some pro-euthansisa pressure group?

Part of me can’t help but wonder whether or not we are are still not actually getting the full story about his mother’s death.

c) Who leaked the original manuscript of the book (which details Davison’s act of killing his mother) and why?

We know that he sent copies of the original manuscript to family members and others, so has one of them leaked the manuscript because they know a bit more about this case than what is currently in the public domain, or included in Mr. Davison’s book, and they want Mr. Davison exposed in some way?

The very fact that Mr. Davison has brought forward his flights out of NZ and back to South Africa suggests that, unlike his public rhetoric, he is actually not quite as committed, or convinced of the integrity of his pro-euthansia ideology.

Like I told the NZ Herald on the weekend when they rang me for comment on this story, Mr. Davison’s case sends a very clear warning about why legalised euthanasia is terribly dangerous idea.

The simple fact is Mr. Davison’s mother was killed by him, and yet he has now become the public spokesperson about how she died – we just don’t what is true and what is not, because he is alive and the victim of his lethal act is dead.

Which is exactly why the law must fail-safe and protect our elderly, sick and disabled from an untimely death at the hands of another.

(perhaps pro-euthansia advocate Michael Laws should take note of this important fact, especially since he has taken to blindly championing the cause of Mr Davison on his radio show – along with suggesting that parents should be legally allowed to euthanize their young children on yesterday morning’s show)

NZ police now investigating NZ euthanasia case

Police are investigating an admission by an Auckland-born scientist that he gave his cancer-riddled mother a lethal dose of morphine.

Sean Davison admitted giving the overdose and said he did not fear being charged with a crime. “I have no regrets about what I did. I did the right thing, the compassionate thing,” he told the Herald on Sunday.

Davison had been scheduled to return later this week to South Africa, where he is a professor of biotechnology at the University of the Western Cape, but he has now brought forward his flights.

Full story here

Drawing a Hemline – Sexual Modesty and the Pursuit of Wisdom

I have a suggestion for those in academia who are concerned that women be treated as intellectual equals: Try sexual modesty. Before the lynching party arrives, I hope I will have time to explain.

Read the rest of the article here

President Obama Meets with Catholic Journalists

The president complained about pro-lifers “who keep on anticipating the worst from us,” according to the write-up in CNS. He doesn’t consider their attitude justified, since “it’s not based on anything I’ve said or done, but is rather just a perception, somehow, that we have some hard-line agenda that we’re seeking to push.”

I wonder if any of the journalists present were allowed to follow up with a question about whether the president expects Americans to forget everything he did and said prior to being elected president. Someone also might have asked whether we should forget his quick decision to end the Mexico City Policy and his selection of pro-abortion Catholics to crucial administration positions.

And no one, apparently, asked Obama about this week’s letter from Justin Cardinal Rigali of Philadelphia to the House Appropriations Committee specifically questioning how the Obama administration can make the promise of “abortion reduction” while pushing for federal funding of abortion in Washington, D.C.

Read the full article here

The demise of fatherhood

It is news to no one that, in the Western world in general and the United States in particular, the call to fatherhood is being heeded less and less. Anyone unfortunate enough to pick up a newspaper is painfully aware that one-third of American children live without any father and that, in many inner cities, the out-of-wedlock birth rate exceeds seventy percent. Also well known, though rarely acknowledged, is the devastation that such a lack of paternity has wreaked on children and society more generally. Fatherless children have rates of incarceration, criminal activity, possession of firearms, poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, incompletion of school, and overall parental neglect and maltreatment alarmingly higher than their two-parent counterparts.

Coupled with the staggering divorce rate and the move in the West toward alternative lifestyles—permanent bachelorhood, cohabitation, or “serial monogamy”—it is now possible, without the slightest exaggeration, to begin using phrases such as “the end of the human family.” Reflecting on this paternal and marital landscape, theologian and pastor David P. Gushee soberly confessed, “I think it is quite possible that society as a whole is a lost cause.”

If there is to be any hope of stopping this societal hemorrhaging, then we must first identify the cause or causes of this decline in paternity. What exactly is making so many fathers abandon their posts?

Full article here

Son confesses to killing mother in NZ with act of euthanasia

An Auckland-born scientist has admitted in a leaked manuscript to giving his cancer-ravaged mother a lethal overdose of morphine.

Sean Davison published a book last month about his 85-year-old mother’s final days, without disclosing the role he played after his mother summoned him home to Dunedin to help her die.

However, a copy of his original manuscript, supplied anonymously to the Herald on Sunday this week, contains the incriminating details that were deleted from the book.

Davison, 47, this week verified the manuscript’s authenticity, and said he did not fear police charges.

Asked how he felt about having killed his mother, Patricia Davison, he said: “I have no regrets about what I did. I did the right thing, the compassionate thing.”

Full story here

Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship

Feminist misinformation is pervasive. In their eye-opening book, Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women’s Studies (Lexington Books, 2003), the professors Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge describe the “sea of propaganda” that overwhelms the contemporary feminist classroom. The formidable Christine Rosen (formerly Stolba), in her 2002 report on the five leading women’s-studies textbooks, found them rife with falsehoods, half-truths, and “deliberately misleading sisterly sophistries.”

Full article here

Co-Discoverer of Natural Selection Believed in “Overruling Intelligence” Guiding Evolution: New Book

The life work of Alfred Russel Wallace, a contemporary of Charles Darwin and the unsung scientist who “co-discovered” evolution, suggests that there is no necessary conflict between the theory and religious belief in a divine intelligence, a new book has said. In fact, the book proposes, it was Wallace’s lifetime of objective investigations that led him in the end to a belief in an “overruling intelligence” guiding the development of life, a belief similar to that of contemporary supporters of Intelligent Design theory.

Michael A. Flannery, author of the book “Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwinism,” points to the history of the evolutionary theory to demonstrate that Darwin’s materialistic ideas excluding the possibility of a divine intelligence, were already well entrenched in his mind long before the publication of his book “On the Origin of Species.”

Flannery said that his book is an effort to “recast” the current dispute between materialist Darwinians and Intelligent Design proponents by examining the history of evolutionary theory. He holds that the “science” versus “creationism” conflict are “popular caricatures” that are “unhistorical and inaccurate.”

Full story here

Cardinal Rigali: You Can’t Claim to be “Reducing Abortions” but Publicly Funding them in D.C.

“…no lawmaker or Administration can support such a policy change and still claim to support ‘reducing abortions.’ The evidence is overwhelming, and universally recognized by groups on all sides of the abortion issue, that the availability of public funds for abortion greatly increases abortions.”

Full story here

Obama’s LGBT Pride remarks insulted mainstream America, pro-family leader says

President Barack Obama on Monday addressed an “LGBT Pride” reception at the White House, characterizing opponents of homosexual political issues as holding fast to “worn arguments and old attitudes.” One critical observer said the event aimed to placate the president’s donors but was “insulting” to mainstream Americans.

The president began his comments by saying “Welcome to your White House.” Praising what he considered the “extraordinary progress that we have made,” he said there were “unjust laws to overturn and unfair practices to stop.”

“[T]here are still fellow citizens, perhaps neighbors or even family members and loved ones, who still hold fast to worn arguments and old attitudes; who fail to see your families like their families; and who would deny you the rights that most Americans take for granted.”

Full story here