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U.K. Mother Who Won Case to Kill Disabled Daughter Raising International Concerns

Posted in abominations, Babylon, Current Events, Days of Noah, Death Cults, Discerning the Times, Humanism, Molech, Post-Modernism, prophetic, Signs of The Times on November 13, 2014| Leave a Comment »

from Christian News:

The case of a mother who petitioned a United Kingdom judge to allow her to kill her 12-year-old daughter by depriving her of hydration and nutrition is raising international concerns from disability advocates and others around the world.

Nancy Fitzmaurice, who was killed in August, was born blind with hydrocephalus, meningitis and septicaemia. Nancy was twelve years old at the time and required 24-hour care. She was fed, hydrated and medicated by tube at London’s Great Ormand Street Hospital, and was given morphine and ketamine to alleviate her pain until her death.

Her mother, Charlotte Fitzmaurice Wise, petitioned a U.K. judge to deprive her daughter from hydration and nutrition, leading to a slow death.

“She has endured enough,” said Wise, “For me to say that breaks my heart.

Although Nancy died in August, news of her case only became known after her parents came forward with the details recently, hoping that similar decisions could be made by parents and doctors without requiring legal intervention.

During the case, Justice Eleanor King, a high court judge in the United Kingdom, reportedly lauded Wise’s decision for her “love and devotion” towards Nancy, ruling that Nancy had no quality of life given her circumstances, and that she should be killed by depriving her of food and water until her death. Following the court order, Wise claimed that her intention was to end her daughter’s suffering and to grant her death with dignity.

However, disability advocates around the world were outraged by this incident. The Autism Self Advocacy Network recently released a statement that this decision sets a “troubling” and “concerning” legal precedent that will allow parents to end the lives of their disabled children.

“The decision constitutes an extremely troubling legal precedent, representing the first time the British legal system has allowed a child breathing on her own, not on life support and not diagnosed with any terminal illness, to be killed by the medical system,” the statement read in part.

“Euthanasia of people with disabilities is an extremely dangerous and wholly inappropriate solution to inadequate pain management. In cases where painkillers are insufficient, a number of alternatives for pain management exist. A policy of euthanasia targets vulnerable people, particularly when it is applied to children. People with disabilities who experience chronic pain should have same access as others to life-sustaining medical treatment,” it continued.

The Autism Self Advocacy Network continued by stating that during its advocacy work, they have witnessed blatant abuse when parents are freed to kill their disabled children:

“When parents and physicians have the ability to authorize the killing of disabled children, we see serious abuses. Recently, ASAN and twelve other disability rights groups filed an amicus brief in a case challenging the University of Wisconsin Hospital’s practice of counseling parents to withhold care from children with disabilities for treatable but life-threatening medical conditions. In one such instance, a child with developmental disabilities died after a hospital doctor advised his parents that they could withdraw his feeding tube – which provided fluids and nutrition – based on his supposedly low ‘quality of life.’ The medical condition supposedly justifying this measure was treatable pneumonia. The child died the next day, after administration of morphine. Such actions demonstrate the results of a policy that allows families and clinicians to discriminate on the basis of disability in the application of life-sustaining treatment.”

Life News also commented that the case has set an alarming precedent in the worldwide trend of euthanizing persons with disabilities, mental illnesses, terminal illnesses, the elderly but otherwise healthy, and children. Countries like Belgium and Netherlands are now followed by the United Kingdom.

The United States is not so far apart from this trend as terminal brain cancer patient Brittany Maynard killed herself just days ago on November 1st in Oregon. Maynard, who was originally from California and was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer earlier this year, moved to Oregon with her husband where physician assisted suicide is permitted under Oregon’s “Death with Dignity Act”. She killed herself despite the pleas of many.

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Abortion Debates Are Moving Towards Killing Born-Alive Babies

Posted in abominations, Babylon, Current Events, Days of Noah, Death Cults, Discerning the Times, Humanism, Molech, Moonbats, Post-Modernism, Signs of The Times on October 31, 2014| 2 Comments »

from The College Fix:

A trend seen by pro-life activists that frequently engage college students on campuses nationwide is the growing acceptance of post-birth abortion, or killing the infant after he or she is born, campus pro-life outreach leaders tell The College Fix.

Anecdotal evidence by leaders of prolife groups such as Created Equal and Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust said in interviews that not only do they see more college students willing to say they support post-birth abortion, but some students even suggest children up to 4 or 5-years-old can also be killed, because they are not yet “self aware.”

“We encounter people who think it is morally acceptable to kill babies after birth on a regular basis at almost every campus we visit,” said Mark Harrington, director of Created Equal. “While this viewpoint is still seen as shocking by most people, it is becoming increasingly popular.”

Campuses where the high school, college students, local activists and staff members of Created Equal have encountered this opinion include Purdue, University of Minnesota, and University of Central Florida. And at Ohio State earlier this year, the group captured a debate on video between one of its members and an older woman on campus who defended infanticide.

“This is the whole problem with devaluing human life at any stage—it will naturally grow to include other groups of humans; in this case, born humans as well as pre-born humans,” Harrington said. “[I] talked with one young man at the University of Minnesota who thought it was alright to kill children if they were under the age of 5 years old, as he did not consider them persons until that age.”

Kristina Garza, spokeswoman for Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, a pro-life organization that often sets up anti-abortion displays on campuses along the West Coast, said her group also frequently encounters college students who accept infanticide.

“For those who are firmly for abortion, because they understand it kills a human being, it’s very easy for them to accept killing a human being after birth,” Garza said. “There is this notion that is common on campus, that it’s OK to kill babies because somehow we don’t become human until we are self aware.”

“A common number that is going around is 4 years old,” she adds.

As for the trend, Garza said there’s an explanation for it. For one, the arguments put forth by Peter Singer and other philosophers who support infanticide are given as reading assignments to college students.

Singer wrote in 1979 that “human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons … [therefore] the life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.”

“He has been saying things like this since the 70s, but I think it has been more recently that this type of ideology is being promoted on college campuses,” Garza said. “When he said this stuff, there was a very select few who accepted it. But nowadays, we have become so desensitized, and college students lacking in a moral fiber easily accept this kind of strange ideology.”

But prolife advocacy and engagement on campuses has helped turn students away from pro-choice stances, she adds.

“While the number of students who believe it is OK with killing children after birth is growing, the number of students who accept that life beings at conception is also growing, and that is growing at a larger and faster rate than those who accept infanticide,” Garza said.

“The trends I am seeing is it’s not so much students are better grounded in morals, it’s that we as a prolife movement have done our job in presenting a better argument, and we are pushing people out of the middle,” she said. “We are seeing more students who see the logic and choose to be anti-abortion.”

Yet staunch opposition to the prolife philosphy remains.

Asked about the incident at Ohio State, at which a woman responded to a prolife display by defending infanticide, a pro-abortion activism group at the campus stated its views were similar to those of the woman in the clip.

“As for post-birth abortion, I would imagine that my colleagues would think the ‘post-birth’ part was largely irrelevant, as we believe very strongly in abortion on demand, without apology, and it’s plain and simple that we should look to the woman’s morals and not shove our opinions where they, frankly, don’t belong,” Devin Deitsch, leader of VOX: Voices for Planned Parenthood at Ohio State University, said in an email to The College Fix.

“Speaking as the primary leader of VOX, I assure you we are very pro-choice,” Deitsch also noted. “… We are not here to advocate for women to get abortions, we advocate for her ability to make that choice without fear, heckling, or barriers. Essentially, we ask for a woman (and her body) to be respected. Nothing more, nothing less.”

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California Orders Churches To Fund Abortions—Or Else

Posted in abominations, Babylon, Christian Living, Christian Persecution, Current Events, Days of Noah, Death Cults, Discerning the Times, Humanism, Molech, One World Government, Persecuted Church, Post-Modernism, prophetic, Signs of The Times on October 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

from The Federalist:

For the past four years, the Obama administration and its friends on the Left were careful to claim that they still strongly support religious liberty while arguing that Hobby Lobby’s Green family, Conestoga Wood Specialties’ Hahn family, and others like them must lose. Principally, they contended, religious liberty protections could not be applied to Hobby Lobby because (1) It is a for-profit corporation, (2) It isn’t a church (and thus not a true “religious employer,” and (3) It is wrong on the science—Plan B, a copper intrauterine device, et cetera, they claimed, do not cause abortions. They implied, if not claimed outright, that they would surely support religious freedom in another case, but Hobby Lobby was unworthy to claim its protections.

The State of California is now calling their bluff. California’s Department of Managed Health Care has ordered all insurance plans in the state to immediately begin covering elective abortion. Not Plan B. Not contraceptives. Elective surgical dismemberment abortion.

At the insistence of the American Civil Liberties Union, the DMHC concluded that a 40-year-old state law requiring health plans to cover “basic health services” had been misinterpreted all these decades. Every plan in the state was immediately ordered, effective August 22, to cover elective abortion. California had not even applied this test to its own state employee health plans (which covered only “medically necessary” abortions). But this novel reading was nevertheless quietly imposed on every plan in the state by fiat.

The news has slowly leaked out as insurers grappling with this change have begun quietly informing employers of this sudden change in the terms of their policy. This is how Kaiser Permanente broke the news to one California church that its insurance policy for its pastors and staff would now include elective abortion coverage:

I want to formally share with you that on August 22, 2014, the Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) notified Kaiser Permanente and other affected health plans in writing regarding group contracts that exclude ‘voluntary termination of pregnancy.’

This letter made clear that the DMHC considered health care services related to the termination of pregnancies – whether or not a voluntary termination – a medically necessary basic health care service for which all health care services plans must provide coverage under the Knox-Keene Health Care Service Plan Act.  You may recall that at the request of some employer groups with religious affiliations, Kaiser Permanente submitted a regulatory filing in May 2012 properly notifying the DMHC of a benefit plan option that excluded coverage of voluntary terminations of pregnancies. The DMHC did not object to this filing, permitting Kaiser Permanente to offer such a coverage contract to large group purchasers that requested it. The DMHC acknowledged that it previously permitted these contract exclusions, but now is requiring health care service plans to provide coverage of all terminations of pregnancies, effective immediately.  To that end, the DMHC requires Kaiser Permanente and similar health care service plans to initiate steps to modify their plan contracts accordingly.

Effective August 22, Kaiser Permanente will comply with this regulatory mandate.

Churches Can Exclude Chemical Baby Killing, But Not Surgical

Several other California churches have received similar notices from their insurers, and others will follow. While California (like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS) exempts churches from itscontraceptive mandate, there is no exception to this bureaucratic abortion mandate. This leaves California churches in the illogical and impossible position of being free to exclude contraceptives from their health plan for reasons of religious conscience but required to provide their employees with abortion coverage.

This California mandate is in blatant violation of federal law that specifically prohibits California from discriminating against health care plans on the basis that they do not cover abortion. Alliance Defending Freedom and Life Legal Defense Foundation have filed administrative complaints with the HHS Office of Civil Rights (which oversees this federal law) on behalf of individual employees and seven California churches forced into abortion coverage in violation of their conscience.

What will be the administration and the Left’s response to this unprecedented attack on religious liberty? If they couldn’t stand with Hobby Lobby because it was a for-profit business, not a church, and because they thought its conscience concern was misplaced on the abortifacient nature of Plan B, will they now demand religious liberty for churches forced to cover elective abortion? If not now for religious liberty, when?

Do the administration and the left-wing commentariat continue to see any life in the First Amendment’s religious liberty protections at all? The Left’s response to California’s abortion mandate will reveal whether their claims of respect for religious liberty in the Hobby Lobby case were serious or mere fig leafs for an even more dismal view of religious liberty than they have let on.

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Bill Maher: ‘The Planet Is Too Crowded and We Need to Promote Death’

Posted in abominations, Atheism, Babylon, Current Events, Days of Noah, Death Cults, Humanism, Molech, Moonbats, New World Order, One World Government, Post-Modernism, prophetic, Signs of The Times on October 16, 2012| 1 Comment »

from CNS News:

HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher says he’s “consistently pro-death” – and “not one of those people who thinks all life is precious.”

Even dogs can create life, he said in an Oct. 7 interview on satellite radio.

Maher explained his views on life and death when Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and host of StarTalk Radio, raised the death penalty.

“You support the death penalty, according to my notes,” Tyson said.  “Isn’t it largely Republican?  They may not have birthed the idea, but?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Maher said.  “I mean I have a lot of ideas that you might consider conservative.  But I feel like on that, I’m just consistent, like the pope is consistent.  The pope is consistently pro-life; I’m consistently pro-death.”

“I am for the death penalty, although I do believe in more DNA testing,” Maher continued.  “My motto is, ‘Let’s kill the right people.’  I’m pro-choice.  I’m for assisted suicide.  I’m for regular suicide.  I’m for whatever gets the freeway moving.  That’s what I’m for.”

“It’s too crowded,” Maher continued.  “So, the planet is too crowded and we need to promote death.”

“When I look at the Venn diagram of people who are pro-death penalty and pro-choice, I don’t think they intersect,” Tyson replied. “You may be the lone person in the world at that intersection.”

“Absolutely not, I’ve met plenty of people who have the same feelings,” Maher said.

“I’m not randomly going around the street saying, ‘Hey we’re going to kill you,’” he said.  “I mean we’re talking about people who’ve earned it.  But as I say, you know, kill the right people.  Kill the right people.”

Maher then detailed how his views on abortion tie into his “pro-death” stance.  “I’m just not one of those people who thinks all life is precious, you know?  I bet you a lot of people wouldn’t say that, but if you’re pro-choice, maybe that’s really what you’re thinking anyway.”

“I mean this is the big controversy that Rick Santorum brought up,” Maher said.  “He does not like prenatal testing because he says that leads to abortion, because people find out that they’re going to have a child who is not normal in some way and they have an abortion because they don’t want to raise a child with severe challenges.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that — to not bring someone in the world whose life is going to be so miserable in so many ways, so severely compromised,” Maher said.

“I mean it’s not that hard to create life, it’s teeming everywhere.  It’s something a dog can do.”

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Tunisian Islamists behead convert to Christianity for apostasy

Posted in abominations, Anti-Christ, Christian Persecution, Current Events, Death Cults, Discerning the Times, Humanism, Islam, One World Government, Persecuted Church, prophetic, Religious Babylon, Signs of The Times on August 19, 2012| 1 Comment »

from The RightScoop:

Liberal talk show host Tawfiq Okasha recently appeared on “Egypt Today” airing a video of Muslims in Tunisia slicing a young man’s head off for the crime of apostasy, in this case, the crime of converting to Christianity and refusing to renounce it. …

A young man appears held down by masked men. His head is pulled back, with a knife to his throat. He does not struggle and appears resigned to his fate. Speaking in Arabic, the background speaker, or “narrator,” chants a number of Muslim prayers and supplications, mostly condemning Christianity, which, because of the Trinity, is referred to as a polytheistic faith: “Let Allah be avenged on the polytheist apostate”; “Allah empower your religion, make it victorious against the polytheists”; “Allah, defeat the infidels at the hands of the Muslims”; “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.”

Then, to cries of “Allahu Akbar!”—or, “God is great!”—the man holding the knife to the apostate’s throat begins to slice away, even as the victim appears calmly mouthing a prayer. It takes nearly two minutes of graphic knife-carving to sever the Christian’s head, which is then held aloft to more Islamic cries and slogans of victory.

Visibly distraught, Tawfiq Okasha, the host, asked: “Is this Islam? Does Islam call for this? How is Islam related to this matter?…These are the images that are disseminated throughout the electronic media in Europe and America…. Can you imagine?” Then, in reference to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis, whose political influence has grown tremendously, he asked, “How are such people supposed to govern?”

The video went viral in the Muslim world and Ibrahim encountered pushback on it, saying that it wasn’t in Tunisia but rather in Iraq or Syria, and that it had nothing to do with apostasy. Thus Ibrahim defended his account of the video and I think that’s important to post as well:

• Fact 1: The Egyptian TV host, who recently aired this video—which went viral on the Arabic blogosphere on Sunday, when I wrote my report—said this occurred in Tunisia. Yes, others have subsequently said that this was in Iraq, others in Syria; but, from what people have sent me, the only “evidence” is the same video—but with a title that indicates Iraq or Syria. Personally, I am inclined to believe a formal Arabic current events program devoted to the topic than an anonymous Internet posting with no further details. Either way, the issue is less which country, and more why the man was slaughtered. Read on.

• Fact 2: The Muslim narrator who speaks while the man is being slaughtered specifically names and continually condemns “apostasy”—the crime of leaving Islam—and even calls the executed man an apostate, i.e., the man is being slaughtered for apostasy, a capital offence in Islam. If the world is not surprised that the actual “government” of a Muslim nation, Iran, is preparing to execute a man simply for converting to Christianity, are we supposed to be surprised when roaming bands of jihadis take it upon themselves to execute apostates to Christianity in their midst?

• Fact 3: The Muslim narrator specifically names and condemns al-mushrikin, and calls the executed man amushrik—i.e., a “polytheist”; in fact, he calls him a mushrik murtadd, an “apostate to polytheism”: this is the standard appellation for Christians, who are regularly called polytheists for “associating” Jesus with God. Yes, there are other religions deemed polytheistic in Islam, such as Hinduism, but one rarely if ever hears of Muslims in the Middle East converting to, and dying for, Hinduism, whereas conversion to Christianity—with all the attendant consequences—is a regular occurrence. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of apostasy cases, from one end of the Muslim world to the other, cases of attacks, imprisonments, etc., deal with Muslim converts to Christianity (see my monthly Muslim Persecution of Christians reports for an idea).

• Fact 4: My contacts in the Middle East, many well-connected with the doings of the region, regularly see and hear of such things, and are confident that he was beheaded for converting to Christianity. The reader is free to hold the opinions of these sources as biased or subjective; but if so, why hold the protests of Muslim apologists, equally biased and subjective, as more authoritative, especially in light of history, doctrine, and ongoing current events, which support the former opinion?

• Fact 5: Muslim apologists always deny anything and everything that makes Islam look bad and will, naturally, try to put the best spin on this video—turning the victim into the aggressor, portraying him as a “traitor,” a “spy,” etc.—just like the Iranian regime, after unequivocally stating that Pastor Nadarkhani is to be executed for converting to Christianity, began backtracking by saying he is to be executed for being a “Zionist spy,” an “extortionist,” etc.

At day’s end—and here is the most indisputable fact all apologists and detractors need contend with—we are left with a man having his head sliced off while his murderers scream Islamic slogans and accuse him of apostasy.

Update, July 3: The Arabic news website Linga.org just published a report on this video under the title, “Tunisia: Radical Islamists Cut Head of Convert to Christianity,” further validating the assertion that the man’s crime was to convert to Christianity.

UPDATE: I meant to add this before I posted it honor of this martyr for Christ:

“Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” – Matthew 5:11-12

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Children ‘sacrificed’ to Mexico’s cult of Saint Death

Posted in abominations, Babylon, cults, Days of Noah, Death Cults, Discerning the Times, Humanism, idolatry, Paganism, prophetic, Signs of The Times on April 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »

from The Daily Telegraph:

Eight people have been arrested for allegedly killing two 10-year-old boys and a 55-year-old woman in ritual sacrifices by the cult of La Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, Mexican prosecutors said.

Jose Larrinaga, spokesman for Sonora state prosecutors, said the victims’ blood was poured around an altar to the saint, which is depicted as a skeleton holding a scythe and clothed in flowing robes.

The grisly slayings recalled the notorious “narco-satanicos” killings of the 1980s, when 15 bodies, many of them with signs of ritual sacrifice, were unearthed at a ranch outside the border city of Matamoros.

Mr Larrinaga said the first of the three victims was apparently killed in 2009, the second in 2010 and the latest earlier this month. Investigations indicate their veins were sliced open and their blood was poured around an altar to the saint, he said.

“The ritual was held at nighttime, the lit candles,” Larrinaga said. “They sliced open the victims’ veins and, while they were still alive, they waited for them to bleed to death and collected the blood in a container.”

Authorities began investigating after the last victim, 10-year-old Jesus Octavio Martinez Yanez, was reported missing March 6.

Mr Larrinaga said the arrests were made after tests by forensic experts on Thursday found blood traces spread over 30 square metres around the altar.

Those arrested included Martin Barron Lopez, 48, the “priest” of the cult, who allegedly was responsible for killing the victims, and his wife, Silvia Meraz Moreno, who allegedly spread the blood around the altar.

The other suspects, many of them relatives, included people ranging from a 15-year-old girl to a 44-year-old woman.

While Saint Death has become the focus of a cult among drug traffickers and criminals in Mexico in recent years, there have been no confirmed cases of human sacrifices in Mexico to the saint, who is not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. Worshippers usually offer candy, cigarettes and incense to the skeleton statue.

The “narco-satanicos” killings of the 1980s were committed by a cult of drug traffickers who believed that ritual sacrifices would shield them from police. Victims of the cult, many of whose members are still in prison, included Mark Kilroy, a 21-year-old student from the University of Texas.

The narco-satanicos have no connection to the Saint Death cult, which gained widespread popularity around the 2000, although the two share some similarities.

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Philosophers’ claim over moral right to kill newborns sparks outrage

Posted in abominations, Babylon, Current Events, Days of Noah, Death Cults, Humanism, Molech, Moonbats, Post-Modernism, prophetic, Signs of The Times on March 2, 2012| 1 Comment »

from The Sunday Morning Herald:

KILLING newborns is morally the same as abortion and should be permissible if  the mother wishes it, Australian philosophers have argued in an article that has  unleashed a firestorm of  criticism and forced the British Medical  Journal to defend its publication.

Alberto Giubilini, from Monash University, and Francesca Minerva, from the  University of Melbourne, say a foetus and a newborn are equivalent in their lack  of a sense of their own life and aspiration. They contend this justifies what  they call ”after-birth abortion” as long as  it is painless, because the baby  is not harmed by missing out on a life it cannot conceptualise.

About  a third of infants with Down syndrome are not diagnosed prenatally,  Drs Giubilini and Minerva say, and mothers of children with serious  abnormalities should have the chance to end the child’s life after, as well as  before, birth.

But this should also extend to healthy infants, the pair argue in the BMJ  group’s Journal of Medical Ethics, because the interests of a mother  who is unwilling to care for it outweigh a baby’s claims.

The academics call an infant, like a foetus, only a ”potential person”, but  they do not define the point at which it gains human status, saying this depends  on the baby’s degree of self-awareness and is a matter for neurologists and  psychologists.

Julian Savulescu, the journal’s editor, said the authors had received death  threats  since posting the article last week, via the publication’s own website  and online discussion forums.

His goal was ”not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is  to present well reasoned argument,” wrote Professor Savulescu, from the  University of Oxford. If others made a similarly refined case for  recriminalising abortion he would also publish that.

”What is disturbing is not the arguments in this paper nor its publication  in an ethics journal. It is the hostile, abusive, threatening responses that it  has elicited …   Proper academic discussion and freedom are under threat.”

Steve Clarke, the chief executive  of the advocacy group Down Syndrome NSW,  said the paper was ”very theoretical”.

”I don’t think it does have any relevance or insight for the real world. It  is so beyond our social mores and values that it is beyond the pale and I  wouldn’t want to dignify it with any further comment,” he said.

Bernadette Tobin, the director of the Plunkett Centre for Ethics at St  Vincent’s & Mater Health and the Australian Catholic University, said the  Melbourne academics should ”speak forthrightly” and use the word infanticide   if they wanted to persuade people that killing newborns and terminating  pregnancies were equivalent.

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Euthanasia squads offer death by delivery

Posted in abominations, cults, Days of Noah, Death Cults, Humanism, Post-Modernism, prophetic, Signs of The Times on March 2, 2012| 1 Comment »

from The Independent:

A highly controversial mobile euthanasia programme launched in the Netherlands yesterday, sending six specialised roving medical teams door-to-door to help patients end their lives free of charge in their own homes.

The project, which has provoked sharp criticism from doctors, is the brainchild of the Dutch largely donor-funded Right to Die NL. It follows the government’s 2002 decision to legalise euthanasia, making the Netherlands the first country in the world to do so. Walburg de Jong, a spokeswoman for the organisation said that since the ruling some 3,100 assisted suicides had been carried out annually. The mobile euthanasia teams, she said, operated free of charge and were designed to make it easier for patients enduring interminable suffering to end their lives.

“Many doctors continue to be afraid of performing euthanasia. They claim that it is against their religion or they simply don’t know the law regarding the issue,” she said. “Our teams will carry out euthanasia at patients’ homes should their normal doctor be unable or refuse to help them.” Right to Die said it had received 70 phone calls from potential assisted suicide patients since the scheme was announced in early February. It said that the teams expected to receive around 1,000 requests each year.

The organisation stressed that its mobile units were comprised of doctors and nurses specially trained in performing assisted suicide at its clinic. It said the procedure involved injecting the patient first with a sleep-inducing drug and then with barbiturates to stop heart and lung function.

However, the concept met with criticism from the Royal Dutch Society of Doctors, which represents 53,000 physicians and medical students. It said it seriously doubted whether the euthanasia teams’ mobile doctors could form a close enough relationship with the patients to decide whether assisted suicide should be carried out. “Euthanasia is a complicated process. It comes from the long-term treatment of a patient based on a relationship of trust,” a society spokesman said. “We have serious doubts whether this can be done by a doctor who is only focused on performing euthanasia.”

But Edith Schippers, the Dutch Health Minister, insisted that mobile euthanasia was in line with the government’s 2002 decision to legalise assisted suicide and that she was confident that the new programme would comply fully with the strict guidelines.

Under Dutch law patients must be fully mentally alert when requesting assisted suicide. Two doctors must agree that there is no cure available and that the patient faces “unbearable and interminable suffering”.

Belgium legalised euthanasia a month after the Netherlands in 2002. Switzerland, meanwhile, had allowed assisted suicide at home since the 1940s, but in 2005 a hospital allowed ill patients to be assisted to die on its premises. In the US, assisted suicide has been allowed in Oregan since 1997. Australia’s outback Northern Territory became the first place in the world to legalise voluntary euthanasia in 1996, however the federal government vetoed the law in 1997.

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