A friend of mine and I had an argument over Terri Schiavo as to whether food and water should be stopped to allow her to die. I said that to do so would really be like killing her. She said that she is going to die anyway. Is there any Church teaching on this matter?

President Reagan would not want to become a poster child for fetal stem cell research. This is not the memorial that he would want, not the crusade that he would have wished his wife to embark upon.

Recently I read an article about the effects of abortion, which included "post abortion syndrome." Could you please explain what that is?

Self-delusion is rampant in the euthanasia movement. Most proponents recognize that it is inherently dangerous to legalize killing. But they desperately want to believe that they can control the grim reaper. Thus, they continue to peddle the nonsense that "guidelines will protect against abuse" despite overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary.

Previously, because euthanasia was prohibited in the Penal Code, the physician had to prove that he/she had fulfilled the requirements. Under the new arrangements, the Public Prosecutor has to prove that the physician has not fulfilled the requirements, in order to start prosecution. This is a significant shift.

In the thirty years since "Roe v. Wade", science and technology have continued their forward march. Ultrasound has advanced from the grainy black and white shadows of yesteryear to movies in living color. Little wonder that obstetricians are increasingly reluctant to perform abortions. Who, after all, could consider a fetus as life unworthy of living, once they've held its hand?

Euthanasia in the Netherlands has gone from requiring terminal illness to no physical illness at all, from physical suffering to depression only, from conscious patients to unconscious, from those who can consent to those who cannot, and from being a measure of last resort to one of early intervention.

Advocates of legalised euthanasia almost always insist that they only want voluntary euthanasia (VE) a they say they are as opposed to the taking of life without the subjects knowledge or consent, that is, non-voluntary euthanasia (NVE), as anyone else.

Here is an explanation of common terms used during end-of-life discussions.

The most effective weapons in the pro-assisted-suicide arsenal are fear-mongering, distortion, euphemism, half-truths, and lies, all deployed to the drumbeat of choice. False arguments are gladly spread by the contemporary media, which avoid depth and context, preferring 30-second sound bites, tabloidism, and soap-opera shallowness.