What is it that haunts the nightmares of parents of children with disabilities—with cerebral palsy, let’s say, or, given our psychologized times, perhaps even a propensity towards depression? I discovered the answer in a recent conversation with a friend who has a son with Down syndrome. It is the fear that when the parents pass away, the child will become vulnerable to state-enforced euthanasia. The recent case of the “influencer” who had his unborn child killed for the crime of having Down syndrome focused attention on the womb. But those fortunate enough to have parents who unconditionally love them from conception may still face the harsh reality of a society that considers them unworthy of life when their mother and father die.
Of course, those pushing the legislation and working hard to alter the intuitions of the culture in favor of euthanasia all have one thing in common: agency. They are typically educated, professional people. They are not vulnerable, in the way that babies in the womb, people with Down syndrome, or the elderly with Alzheimer’s disease are. They can make decisions in their own best interests. They are not subject to the whims of those who will decide whether their lives are—or are not—worth living. To put it bluntly, they have power. The vulnerable do not. Read more»
Carl Trueman, “Murder in Disguise:
Don’t Be Fooled by the Language of Compassion From Advocates of Euthanasia” | World Magazine | June 22, 2026.
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To paraphrase Dr. Harold O. J. Brown, once abortion is accepted and assumes legally protected status, anything is permissible. In the late 1970s, he said if you can abort a human being in the womb, why can’t you “slap them around a little” after they are born?” Why can’t you withhold personhood until some measure of reason and intelligence (subjective, arbitrary, imposed by an “expert”) is reached, perhaps at three years, or 10 years, or 21 years, or . . .? Why can’t you end the life of a comatose human, as an emotional and financial aid to the caregivers? Why can’t you end the lives of “unproductive eaters,” at any point “experts” choose but especially in terms of the elderly? Why can’t you end the lives, on a grand scale, of those who don’t fit in with the culture?”
Repugnant ideas, but all are now on the table, and actively so in Canada. As Carl Truman observes, the distortion of language to mean the opposite of what it has always meant is an inevitable companion to repugnant ideas. Death sentences make us squeamish, so we must learn to think of the benefits to the one who dies, as well as to the community. As Dr. Brown understood, there are no longer barriers to eliminating any and all who disturb our comfort.
I agree with many that Dr. Trueman’s book, The Desecration of Man, is one of the essential books of our times. When the holy and the reality of objective truth disappear, the unthinkable can so easily become the necessary – at some remove from our own lives, so the reality of murder remains abstract.