Life Network First Pro-Life Event

Ms Aisling Hubert, a member of Abort67, was the guest speaker of an educational pro-life event organised by Life Network. The aim of this event was to show the implications of allowing abortion in Malta as well as educating students about the value of life.[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

The First Pro-Life Event

The event, the first public event organised by the Life Network, was a huge success where it attracted a very good number of University students, Medical students and members from the political community. Over 70 people attended this educational programme which was held on the 24th September at the PKI Institute in Floriana.

The Programme

Ms Hubert’s programme talked of topics relating to generating awareness of the abortion genocide, the situation of abort with respect to Malta and educating students on the arguments in favour of life. Throughout the presentation videos, images and arguments were brought to light with much passion by the guest speaker, that left everyone who attended with a new awareness.

Genocide of Abortion

One of main aspects discussed was that abortion has become the greatest genocide ever in history. With twice the amount of babies aborted annually than people lost in World War II, the situation is very critical. Malta, having kept the illegality of abortion intact, is still resilient in the face of this age discrimination mass murder but the country has to be careful as forces are pushing to throw the last EU country into the abortion pit.

A Choice Of Arguments

Abortion is validated by Pro-Choice and Planned Parenthood advocates with a great number of arguments. Ms Aisling Hubert dismantled them all and she argues that in the face of the miracle of life no arguments stand strong. By finding common ground (in being empathic with the people facing the choice of abortion), giving comparisons and asking questions one can look beyond arguments that favour the murder of the unborn child.

Lack of Awareness

One of the main aspects pointed out was that people do not have the full picture of what abortion is and what is happening. People need clear examples and graphic images to actually show the horrors of abortion. Ms Hubert advocated the use of graphic images which are the real truth behind abortion.

Finally the event was a great opportunity for the pro-life organisation to come together and meet. Bringing different people from different ages, mentalities, occupation and political creed, the huge success of this event is a testament to Malta’s stand in the face of abortion. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” interval=”3″ images=”346,347,348,349,350″ onclick=”link_image” custom_links_target=”_self” title=”Photos From Newsbook.com.mt” img_size=”400×300″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_cta_button2 h2=”Help Us Help Life” style=”rounded” txt_align=”left” title=”Make Your Donations” btn_style=”rounded” color=”juicy_pink” size=”md” position=”right” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging-lifenetwork.stagingcloud.co%2Findex.php%2Fabout-us%2Fhelp-us-help-life%2F|title:Donate|” h4=”Why Support Life Network?”]

We need your support in order to be able to spread the news on the value of life. Your donation will help us to educate people of all ages, organise pro-life seminars and buy books & materials to facilitate educate. Like every life is infinitely priceless, so is every donation. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Life Network

[/vc_cta_button2][/vc_column][/vc_row]

“Ta’ 12-il sena ghandhom ikunu jafu dwar l-abort” – Newsbook.com.mt

Aisling Hubert tfajla Ingliza ta’ 21 sena ilha ghal dawn l-ahhar 7 snin tahdem biex tbiddel il-mod kif in-nies iharsu lejn l-abort.

Aisling bhalissa tinsab Malta ghal-laqgha organizzata mill-ghaqda Life Network bhala parti minn progett ta’ edukazzjoni pubblika dwar l-abort.

Ma’ Newsbook.com.mt, Aisling qalet li hemm bzonn li l-adoloxxenti jkunu jafu x’inhu abort.

Dwar ta’ liema età z-zghazagh ghandhom jibdew isiru jafu dwar l-abort u l-konsegwenzi li jgib mieghu, Aisling qalet li kif il-genituri jhallu t-tfal taghhom jaraw films u loghob vjolenti, bl-istess mod m’ghandhomx izommuhom lura milli jaraw ritratti grafiċi.

Kompliet tghid li fl-Ingilterra tifla ta’ 12-il sena ghandha d-dritt taghmel abort minghajr il-kunsens tal-genituri, allura, fi kliem iz-zaghzugha, ta’ dik l-età ghandhom jibdew jitghallmu dwar il-hajja li tibda fil-guf.

Qalet li “xi darba l-guf kien il-post li joffri kenn u sigurtà ghat-tarbija, izda issa dan sar l-aktar post perikoluz”.

Dwar jekk tahsibx li l-abort xi darba ghad jidhol f’Malta, it-tfajla Ingliza qalet li normalment, irid ikun hemm generazzjoni, madwar 20 sena, biex jibdew jittiehdu passi, u milli rat, dan digà qieghed isehh.

Sostniet li jekk mhemmx l-edukazzjoni xierqa, kaz wiehed ta’ abort jista’ jkun il-bieb ghal-legalizazzjoni tal-abort.

Skont l-Uffiċċju Nazzjonali ghall-Istatistika u d-Dipartiment ghas-Sahha fir-Renju Unit, mill-1990 sal-2012 kien hemm 1,275 kaz ta’ nisa Maltin li ghamlu abort fl-Ingilterra jew Wales. Dan ifisser li fuq medda ta’ 22 sena, kull sena, 58 mara Maltija ghamlu abort.

Aisling tahdem ma’ Abort67, parti minn progett tal-Bioetika fl-Ingilterra, li jqajjem kuxjenza dwar kif persuna thares lejn l-abort.

Dr Miriam Sciberras minn Life Network, qalet li l-edukazzjoni ssir billi persuna tara l-verità, anke jekk ghas-soċjetà dan huwa tabù.

Sostniet li f’Malta hafna min-nies huma favur il-hajja, izda l-lingwagg qed jinbidel biex jahbi x’inhu l-abort, u ghalhekk hemm bzonn ta’ kampanja edukattiva.

Dr Sciberras fakkret li ghal kull ghazla hemm konsegwenza.

 

See source article, taken from Newsbook.com Julia Callus “Ta’ 12-il sena ghandhom ikunu jafu dwar l-abort”.

President of Malta Promises Not To Legalize Abortion – Hilary White

Malta’s recently-elected president, Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, told a delegation of pro-life advocates last week that her government would never legalize abortion.[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]During a “courtesy meeting” with Malta Unborn Child Movement (MUCM) an umbrella group representing 45 local organizations, the president said she is “personally dead set against” abortion and that as president, she would never sign such a legislation, MUCM said.

After the legalization of “limited” abortion in the Republic of Ireland, Malta became the last European nation, and one of the last in the world, to totally outlaw all abortion. The tiny Mediterranean country has been the target of decades of relentless pressure to legalize abortion at the international level.

A member of the group, and the co-founder of Life Network, the country’s newest pro-life activist organization, told LifeSiteNews.com that the president “realised that over the issue of abortion, although Malta does not enjoy a universal consensus, it was imperative that we all worked together in promoting the protection of the unborn child and against abortion.”

President Feels Encouraged Of Malta’s Life Shield

Dr. Miriam Sciberras told LifeSiteNews.com, “The President of Malta said she wanted the widest possible backing to combat the pro-abortion culture.” She added that the president’s words were “an encouraging pro-life shield against the anti-life movement that is being forcefully promoted both locally and abroad.”

“It’s very encouraging to have her say these things publicly. She could have chosen not to say anything, to stay silent or not invite us. If we had more people who are not ashamed to speak about these things I’m sure the situation would be much better.”

Malta Has Always Spoken Against Abortion, And So Has Labour

The president’s promise backs up another made by Leo Brincat, the Labour Party’s representative at the Council of Europe, who said in 2008 that there is “one unifying factor among the parties represented in our country’s parliament,” that “Malta has always spoken with one voice in its stand against abortion.”

“As for my party…there are no ifs or buts on this issue. The Malta Labour Party always was, is and will remain against abortion. The issue does not feature on our agenda.”

But the abortion mentality is growing in large segments of Maltese society, as the population, with little opposition from the clergy, slides slowly away from its historic Catholic roots. Despite an officially 98 percent Catholic population, Mass attendance has fallen dramatically in the last ten years, while during the period between 2002 and 2011, records from the UK’s Department of Health showed that 591 women travelled to Britain for abortions, a significant number in a country with a total population just over 420,000. No records are available on how many travel to nearby Italy for the same reason, though it is widely known that the practice is common.

Dr. Sciberras said the Life Network was founded this summer in response to the growth of this “anti-life mentality” that includes the contraceptive mentality and wider acceptance of the homosexualist “gender” ideology.

RU-486 (Morning After Pill) Discussed

Artificial contraceptives are nearly universally accepted, including hormonal contraceptives, despite the fact that their abortifacient nature is well known. Although the country still outlaws both the abortion drug RU-486 and the so-called morning-after pill, a 2012 article in the Malta Medical Journal showed that contraceptive use, including “barrier method, hormonal manipulation, and sterilisation” is common.

The effects of this new cultural paradigm can be seen in Malta’s falling total fertility rate, which stands at 1.45 children born per woman, far below the 2.1 required for maintaining a stable population.

Dr. Sciberras said, “We look at the growth of the anti-life mentality, which is pervasive. It’s everywhere. We know that we’re up against a change in lifestyle that is promoting the Culture of Death instead of the culture of life.”

First Priority Is Educational

“Our first priority is educational, showing people the meaning of being pro-life, that it is not just a statement, it’s a way of life,” she added.

Their first educational campaign will be to reach out to schools and parishes, and the group has already identified a core of students at the University of Malta to launch a project there. UofM already has active organizations on campus making posters and pamphlets available to students promoting homosexuality and the feminist ideologies.

She said her group wanted to take up the defense of all life, at all its stages and conditions, “be it with disability, with dementia… embracing the full spectrum of life.”

The Life Network

Life Network is also not restricting itself to issues related to abortion and euthanasia, but Dr. Sciberras says their dedication to the “full spectrum” includes the moral defense of the natural family based on marriage between one man and one woman. She acknowledges also that the government has embraced a contradiction with its pro-life position in its enthusiasm for the homosexualist agenda’s push towards “gay marriage.”

“‘Life issues’ take place within the context of the family,” she said. “You cannot protect a child without protecting his family. He comes from the union of a father and a mother.”

“It is the right of every child to have a father and a mother. This is a basic principle.” She says that there is a growing element in Maltese society that has moved away from these principles, and warned that it would lead to conflicts. “When you start compromising, you always get in trouble. You go against the natural law,” she added.

Responding to the recent passage by President Preca’s Labour government of the same-sex civil unions legislation, she said, “I know that a lot of things have been passed not with the consensus of all the people. Just because a government passes a law doesn’t mean it has the backing of the whole country.”

Maltese Legislation

Since the surprise legalization of divorce through a referendum in 2011, Malta’s laws on the nature of the family have changed with astonishing rapidity. This year saw the civil unions bill pass, and the country’s first same-sex civil unions registered. Last year, Helena Dalli, the Labour government’s Minister for Social Dialogue headed the Maltese delegation to a UN meeting in which she assured delegates that Malta’s “new Government was fully committed to the protection of the rights of LGBTI persons.”

This month saw the passage of the “transgender anti-discrimination” bill, as promised by Dalli at a “transgender” congress in Hungary in May. Dalli told that meeting that while her government’s focus had up until then been mainly on homosexuals, they would shortly be turning their attention to “trans” people.
She boasted that her government “amended the Constitution in such a way as to provide protection on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. I am told that we are the first country in Europe to have included an express reference to gender identity in the Constitution.”

This rapid succession of changes resulted in Malta being named by the EU’s leading homosexualist organization, ILGA Europe, one of the two “fastest climbers” among EU nations with regards to the goals of the organization.

Paulo Côrte-Real, co-chair of ILGA-Europe’s executive board, said in a statement attached to the organization’s Annual Review, “It is very encouraging to see countries like Malta and Montenegro make such huge progress in the space of one year. It shows that so much is possible when there is political leadership, especially when it is coupled with meaningful engagement of civil society.”

See source article, taken from LifeSiteNews.com Blogger Hilary White’s ‘ Malta’s president promises not to legalize abortion’.

You can learn more about Life Site News here and join their Facebook group here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Right To Kill – Dr Vella Bardon

In the article ‘Who decides when a person should die?’ [The Sunday Times of Malta, 27th July], Ariadne Massa questions whether Malta is prepared to put compassion before doctrine.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This query implies that our doctrine is not compassionate – another sad example that anti-Catholic spin seems to have become the hallmark of the local media.

It would be relevant to point out what the Catholic Catechism actually says about Euthanasia. It states that putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick or dying persons is morally unacceptable adding in no uncertain terms that it constitutes a ‘murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person’.

On the other hand, it also states that ‘discontinuing burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate…‘over-zealous treatment’ can be legitimate. The administration of drugs to alleviate suffering, even at the risk of shortening the days of the sick and dying is good medicine as long as it is not deliberately intended to accelerate the death of the patient.

The Church does not consider suffering a good in and of itself. Avoidable suffering is not a virtue and the Church has been a pioneer of palliative care which it considers ‘a special form of disinterested charity’. Mother Theresa is the perfect example of a person who valued the dignity of life and lavished love and care on the rejects of Indian society who were left to rot in the streets.

Advances in the treatment and management of the terminally ill and seriously handicapped have improved enormously and medical breakthroughs in treating what were once untreatable conditions are another very positive development. Experts in the field claim that only a small proportion of patients suffer of intractable pain and even then there are means to keep them comfortable.

Most religious leaders oppose euthanasia because it discredits the value and sacredness of life and undermines the common good. Discovering and studying the reasoning of the Catholic Church against euthanasia is in itself an exercise of deep thought and altruistic concern for the vulnerable of society.

Legalising euthanasia or assisted suicide allows one person to kill another. It’s more the question of the ‘right to kill’ as death is not a right but an inevitable reality. Euthanasia erodes the basic trust that life should be protected. It corrupts and discredits the medical profession whose very raison d’être is to save and promote life. Indeed, in coming years, medical professionals who believe in the Hippocratic Oath’s prohibition against killing could well be driven out of medicine.

Here in Malta, we suffer from the ‘goat syndrome’ and follow blindly, and without proper deliberation, negative trends that take place elsewhere. We fail to see the negative consequences of well-meaning but misguided legislation elsewhere. It is a case of the fool learning from his own mistakes when very often it is too late to correct them.

In 1937, G. K. Chesterton shot down the concept of euthanasia with his inimitable wit by saying: -“… in my own country, some are proposing what is called Euthanasia; at present only a proposal for killing those who are a nuisance to themselves; but soon to be applied progressively to those who are a nuisance to other people. As it applies by hypothesis to an almost moribund or partially paralyzed person, the decision will presumably rest with the other people.”

In an interview of 2012, Lord Alton points out that in Holland, where euthanasia has been legalised since 2002, 4,000 deaths were recorded every year. 2,700 of which were in the early stages of dementia of which 1,000 were done without the consent of the patient. In 2008, Baroness Warnock had the gall to state that: – “If you are demented, you are wasting people’s lives, your family’s lives and you’re wasting the resources of the NHS.”

It is therefore not surprising, that all the major national disability groups in UK are rigorously opposed to proposals to change the law. They most of all demonstrate that this is not about values that only appeal to people of faith but about universal ones, most essentially the equal dignity and value of all people.

The Church defends human rights, human life in all its stages and human dignity. It believes in the sacredness of human life as it recognizes that every person is made in the image of God. For this reason it is against abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.

As Pope Francis recently said (Evangelii Gaudium, number 214): “It is not progressive to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life.”[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

‘Do you want us to let you die?’ – by Hilary White

“Do you want us to let you die?” It’s not exactly the sort of question one expects to hear when talking to a health professional when you’re living in a care home.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]But that’s exactly what happens all the time, according to an article published by the Daily Mail this week, which says that it is becoming routine for nurses to ask elderly patients whether they “would agree” to a Do Not Resuscitate order.

The first thing I thought when I read it was, “Oh yes, they’ve been doing this sort of thing for ages. Why is it only becoming news now?” I still remember the day my dear friend John Muggeridg brought home a form they’d given him in the care facility where his wife, Anne Roche Muggeridge lived.

John and I had sat down to have our tea one day, and visibly upset, he showed me this form. It gave a long list of possible health care crises that Anne might suffer and asked John to mark down in each case what he wanted the facility’s response to be, on a scale of one to five. One of these asked whether he wanted her to receive antibiotic treatment in case of pneumonia, that killer of the elderly and fragile.

The kicker was when John told me that they had done this repeatedly, asking him to come into meeting after meeting to tell them whether he was “ready” to downgrade her care instructions. John, though sick with cancer himself, visited Anne every day, gently feeding her meals and praying the Rosary with her. He shook the form a bit as he said in his cultured Cambridge accent, “I want them to save her life! Every time it’s in danger!”

“It has become a common experience for people requiring medical care to be harassed if they decide they actually want medical care, and to be supported and encouraged if they decide they do not want further medical care.” John and Anne were important and influential figures in the Catholic pro-life scene in Canada through the 1980s, and it might strike a person as ironic that towards the end of her life, Anne, the author of two important books, was briefly threatened by that same Culture of Death she and John had fought so long. It was quite clear that the administration at this care home was trying to wear him down with these repeated requests for confirmation. I was so angry, and couldn’t help thinking, “Don’t these people know who this is?”

We called Alex Schadenberg, the head of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and he arranged to attend the next meeting, and together they “explained” that there would be no downgrading, and that Anne’s life was valuable, precious, even if she could no longer recognize anyone or speak, because it was Anne.

John said it was a kindly looking hospital administrator, a social worker and a nurse at the meetings. They would talk in the warmest possible tones, but the message was cold and hard. Let them die because they’re a burden.
The Mail reports now that in the UK mobile district nurses are being sent out from GP offices under instructions from the National Health Service, asking older people to fill out forms indicating whether a DNR is what they want. The NHS is claiming, with wide-eyed innocence, that these questionnaires are merely a means to “improve care of the elderly and keep them out of hospital,” but the Mail noted, “It is not clear why DNR is on the forms.”

They quoted Roy Lilley, a health policy analyst and former NHS trust chairman, whose mother was visited by a nurse with the form,” who “described the policy as callous.”

Lilly said, “Elderly, frail but otherwise healthy people are being asked, by complete strangers, to sign a form agreeing they shouldn’t be resuscitated. It is outrageous. People will be frightened to death thinking the district nurses know something they don’t and will feel obliged to sign the form so as not to be thought a nuisance.”

The Mail says Mr. Lilley is warning patients and their families not to sign the forms, saying that by doing so they are “signing their lives away.” He related the story of a meeting with a nurse at his mother’s care home who asked her “within a few minutes” “Where would you like to die,” and, “If you ever need cardiopulmonary resuscitation do you agree to do not resuscitate.”

The cultural power in Britain of “mustn’t grumble,” particularly among that generation of English people who were raised in the old manner and depended upon it to survive the War, cannot be underestimated. My mother, a war baby, was raised in that way, and raised me with the same attitude. Older people in Britain have it written into their base programming from infancy that “making a fuss” or calling attention to oneself is simply unthinkable. There is certainly a kind of English person who would, literally, rather die that make a fuss.

But this story from the UK is only the tiniest scratch of the great iceberg that passive euthanasia has become in elder care and long-term care facilities. Alex Schadenberg told me that this kind of unsubtle pressure is becoming common around the western world.

It is particularly common in places that have come to depend exclusively upon government-funded public medical care where the goal is to spend as little money as possible. There has been a lot written about the threat of “triaging” of older people whom the strict utilitarian principles of bioethics regard as economically worthless burdens.

“Sadly, the societal attitude towards the elderly and people needing care is worsening while the government is attempting to control medical costs by examining new ways to encourage people to refuse basic care,” Schadenberg told me.

“It has become a common experience for people requiring medical care to be harassed if they decide they actually want medical care, and to be supported and encouraged if they decide they do not want further medical care.”

I have often wondered how many men and women had been sat down in those offices where John Muggridge and Alex Schadenberg sat, and ever so gently pressured to change the instructions and “let them go”. How many were confused and persuaded by this friendly talk of “end of life care” and did not have the years of experience in the pro-life movement, or the rock solid moral principles the Muggeridges had held and defended like a bastion for so long. How many would not know who to call for advice and help?

See source article, taken from LifeSiteNews.com Blogger Hilary White’s: ‘‘Do you want us to let you die?’: The bleak new reality in care homes for the elderly’.

[/vc_column_text][tmq_hr][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Malta – Soon to allow abortion? – DI-VE Editorial

Malta as a Catholic country is known that the people are believed to embrace its genuine beliefs and culture. While abortion has not yet been adopted in Malta, the idea of allowing abortion to come into place under certain circumstances seems to be growing rapidly.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Now, understandably, Malta is still the last country standing in the European Union which has not yet allowed abortion as it clearly states in its constitution the following:

“(1) Whosoever, by any food, drink, medicine, or by violence, or by any other means whatsoever, shall cause the miscarriage of any woman with child, whether the woman be consenting or not, shall, on conviction, be liable to imprisonment for a term from 18 months to three years;” and
“(2) The same punishment shall be awarded against any woman who shall procure her own miscarriage, or who shall have consented to the use of the means by which the miscarriage is procured.”

Following di-ve.com’s two week poll, which managed to gather an amount of votes, it shows that while 55% stated that their position on the issue of abortion is to be prohibited in all circumstances, around 32% have stated that they believe that abortion should be legal under certain circumstances; like rape incest and to save the life of the mother.

The rest of the votes, 9% agree on having abortion legal under any circumstance and 3% were unsure as to where they stand on such issue.

Bringing back the fact that Malta, as a Catholic country, still remains the last to not allow abortion on any circumstance the question which currently burdens many minds is “How longer till we, as a country, follow the herd?”

It is understandable that the majority of those who voted, 55%, do not agree that Malta should adopt the idea of having abortion legal, however the 32% cannot go unnoticed.

That 32% clearly shows that while many still carry the idea that Life begins at conception, many are adopting the idea that if a child is conceived not willingly or that the mother is in danger of dying, it has no right to be born and the decision making of if the child should be ‘allowed’ to still have a beating heart is left in the hands of another person and not God.

Questions still remain which challenge every thinking mind. Who gave the right to any human being, who is of the same level of living as an unborn child, to end a life so abruptly? And why isn’t abortion considered murder when the life which has still not yet been born is willingly ended?

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The Peacemakers – Pope Benedict XVI

The path to the attainment of the common good and to peace is above all that of respect for human life in all its many aspects, beginning with its conception, through its development and up to its natural end.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Peacemakers are those who love, defend and promote life in its fullness. True peacemakers, then, are those who love, defend and promote human life in all its dimensions, personal, communitarian and transcendent. Life in its fullness is the height of peace. Anyone who loves peace cannot tolerate attacks and crimes against life.

Those who insufficiently value human life and, in consequence, support among other things the liberalization of abortion, perhaps do not realize that in this way they are proposing the pursuit of a false peace. The flight from responsibility, which degrades human persons, and even more so the killing of a defenceless and innocent being, will never be able to produce happiness or peace. Indeed how could one claim to bring about peace, the integral development of peoples or even the protection of the environment without defending the life of those who are weakest, beginning with the unborn?

Every offence against life, especially at its beginning, inevitably causes irreparable damage to development, peace and the environment. Neither is it just to introduce surreptitiously into legislation false rights or freedoms which, on the basis of a reductive and relativistic view of human beings and the clever use of ambiguous expressions aimed at promoting a supposed right to abortion and euthanasia, pose a threat to the fundamental right to life.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”287″ border_color=”grey” img_link_target=”_self” img_size=”850×350″][vc_column_text]There is also a need to acknowledge and promote the natural structure of marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the face of attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different types of union; such attempts actually harm and help to destabilize marriage, obscuring its specific nature and its indispensable role in society.

These principles are not truths of faith, nor are they simply a corollary of the right to religious freedom. They are inscribed in human nature itself, accessible to reason and thus common to all humanity. The Church’s efforts to promote them are not therefore confessional in character, but addressed to all people, whatever their religious affiliation. Efforts of this kind are all the more necessary the more these principles are denied or misunderstood, since this constitutes an offence against the truth of the human person, with serious harm to justice and peace.

Consequently, another important way of helping to build peace is for legal systems and the administration of justice to recognize the right to invoke the principle of conscientious objection in the face of laws or government measures that offend against human dignity, such as abortion and euthanasia.

WORLD PEACE DAY 2013 message, entitled “Blessed are the Peacemakers,” Pope Benedict XVI[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Pro Vita Onlus Partnering

Life Network has established rapport with the Italian Pro-Life Organisation ‘Pro-Life Onlus’. They have been established in 1991 and are continuously working to promote the value of life in Italy.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] The partnering allows both of our organisations to share information that allows for the promotion of the value of life. Life Network is now able to share their website (www.notizieprovita.it) information and also link their monthly magazine. The link to this month’s magazine can be found here.

[/vc_column_text][tmq_promobox title=”View This Month’s Magazine” button_text=”View” button_color=”normal” link=”http://staging-lifenetwork.stagingcloud.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/21-Luglio_Agosto-Notizia-Provita.pdf” popup=”1″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

A Euphemism For Killing A Person

The term ‘assisted dying’ pretends to be a ‘compassionate and caring’ way to end life but is in fact a euphemism for killing a person at what may be the most vulnerable point of their adult lives.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Assisted suicide can in no way be construed as medical ‘care’ but is, in fact, a failure not only of medical care but also of societal obligations to care for the vulnerable. Most countries legalising assisted suicide require the person to be diagnosed as ‘dying within six months’. There is, however, no scientific way of predicting death within six months and even in terminal cancer patients one in five persons lives much longer than this.

In truth, therefore, the person asking for assisted suicide is not ‘dying’ but has a fear that their death will be painful and ‘undignified’.

Dame Cicely Saunders has shown how good palliative care completely allays these fears without taking away a patient’s autonomy right up to the end. Although assisted suicide is put forward as a way to increase a person’s control and autonomy, in Belgium it has only increased doctors’ powers over patients’ lives while giving rise to a deep distrust in the medical profession.

One of the worst things about assisted suicide is that it increases pressure on the vulnerable elderly to use it to end their lives so as not to be a financial or social burden on their relatives or others.

Baroness Sheila Hollins has said that the depressed are particularly at risk, and it is self-deceptive to think that robust controls could work to limit abuses. This is clear from Belgium where 20 per cent of cases of assisted death were not even reported as required by law, and cases of assisted suicide ‘without explicit consent’ have been multiplying.

Written by Prof. Patrick Pullicino, St Julian’s[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_cta_button2 h2=”Help Us Help Life” style=”rounded” txt_align=”left” title=”Make Your Donations” btn_style=”rounded” color=”juicy_pink” size=”md” position=”right” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging-lifenetwork.stagingcloud.co%2Findex.php%2Fabout-us%2Fhelp-us-help-life%2F|title:Donate|” h4=”Why Support Life Network?”]

We need your support in order to be able to spread the news on the value of life. Your donation will help us to educate people of all ages, organise pro-life seminars and buy books & materials to facilitate educate. Like every life is infinitely priceless, so is every donation. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Life Network

[/vc_cta_button2][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Where Treatment Is Death

The Liverpool Care Pathway has finally made the headlines in Malta. However, the instances of helpless patients being denied the basic necessities needed to sustain life have been increasingly in the news in the UK since 2000.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) for the dying patient is one of the key programmes within the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute Portfolio and was recognized as a model of best practice in the NHS Beacon Programme (2001). It was subsequently recommended in the End of Life Care Strategy DH2008, the aim being to improve care of the dying in the last hours or days of life for the terminally ill.

“There are strict guidelines for the proper use of LCP but these are hardly followed” – Miriam Sciberras

However, a lot of questions need to be asked regarding its increasingly widespread application for those with incurable diseases (including dementia) or those defined as “probably dying”. There are strict guidelines for the proper use of LCP but these are hardly followed. In 2009, it was reported that LCP was being gradually adopted nationwide and that more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England were using this system.

The main problem with LCP is that the consent of the patient is not even required. In fact, in the UK, since the 2005 Mental Capacity Act, doctors are allowed to withhold all “treatment”, including food and water, from patients who are judged to be incapable of making decisions for themselves. Under this law, doctors, and not the family and not the patient, have the last say in whether a patient is judged mentally capable. Once this judgment has been made, withdrawal of fluids can be ordered on grounds that it is in the patient’s “best interests” to die.

It is pertinent to point out that, in England and Wales, food and water administered by a doctor count as “medical treatment”. This is leading to patients, mostly the elderly, being left in the dire predicament of losing their lives prematurely.

Anti-euthanasia groups and various competent physicians have been speaking out against the increasing misuse of this protocol. In 2008, Adrian Treloar, a psycho-geriatrician and senior lecturer at the Greenwich Hospital and Guys’, King’s and St Thomas’s hospitals in London, had warned that the national health service has an unofficial system in place to authorize the killing of vulnerable disabled patients with an unwritten policy of “involuntary euthanasia” by deep sedation and dehydration.

Another physician, Philip Harrison, whose elderly father was put under continuous deep sedation without being consulted in August 2009, wrote this: “I’ve seen euthanasia once but I’ve never seen anybody being put to death without consent. It was as near to a form of murder that I had come across”.

Medical sociology professor Clive Seale also confirmed that, from his research, the use of continuous deep sedation across the UK is far from “uncommon”.

Peter Millard, emeritus professor of geriatrics at St Georges, University of London, maintains that the LCP encourages some doctors to give up on patients too quickly and place them on the death pathway when they might otherwise have survived. According to Prof. Millard, “Diagnosing imminent death is one of the most difficult decisions a serious physician has to make”.
Prof. Millard was one of a group of six, including Anthony Cole, Peter Hargreaves, David Hill, Elizabeth Negus and Dowager Lady Salisbury (chairman, Choose Life), who claimed that some patients were being wrongly judged as close to death. To this end, they signed a letter together in September 2009 against the prevalent misuse of LCP. The following is an extract from their letter: “Forecasting death is an inexact science. If you tick all the right boxes in the Liverpool Care Pathway, the inevitable outcome of the consequent treatment is death.

“As a result, a nationwide wave of discontent is building up as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients. Syringe drivers are being used to give continuous terminal sedation without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong. It is disturbing that, in the year 2007-2008, 16.5 per cent of deaths came about after terminal sedation.”

This was recently confirmed by Patrick Pullicino, the Maltese consultant neurologist at East Kent Hospitals. Prof. Pullicino made the headlines claiming that the UK’s NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year. He maintains that, in this way, hospitals are using end-of-life care to help elderly patients die because they are difficult to look after and take up valuable beds.

Despite such a number of highly esteemed medical specialists among numerous others that have been raising the alarm regarding the LCP, there have been no definite declarations from the health authorities to put people’s mind at rest. This is making the elderly patients and their families in Britain fear going to hospital in their old age.

The elderly, especially 80-year-olds, with chronic conditions like Parkinson’s, dementia or respiratory disorders are among the unfortunate candidates put on LCP, dismissed as dying when they could still live for some more time. Patients with diminished mental and physical capacities are also very vulnerable candidates.

The elderly are at a very vulnerable stage of life and need our compassion, respect, care and support. At this time, the state cannot shrink from its duty to care for these people nor should it see them as burdens. With the declining birth rate in most countries, there will be increasing pressures on an already overburdened socialised health care system to make hospital beds available at the expense of premature termination of lives.

Written by Dr Miriam Sciberras.

See Original Article On TimesofMalta.com here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_cta_button2 h2=”Help Us Help Life” style=”rounded” txt_align=”left” title=”Make Your Donations” btn_style=”rounded” color=”juicy_pink” size=”md” position=”right” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging-lifenetwork.stagingcloud.co%2Findex.php%2Fabout-us%2Fhelp-us-help-life%2F|title:Donate|” h4=”Why Support Life Network?”]

We need your support in order to be able to spread the news on the value of life. Your donation will help us to educate people of all ages, organise pro-life seminars and buy books & materials to facilitate educate. Like every life is infinitely priceless, so is every donation. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Life Network

[/vc_cta_button2][/vc_column][/vc_row]