Herewith, a guest post from long time commenter Peter West, sometimes known in comments as PBW.

Writing a half-century ago, Thomas Nagel, in his essay What Is It Like To Be a Bat?, sent a wake-up call to purveyors of “[t]he recent wave of reductionist euphoria” who claimed to have explained phenomenal consciousness in materialist terms.

… we have at present no conception of what an explanation of the physical nature of a mental phenomenon would be. Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless … no currently available concept of reduction is applicable to it.

He then reveals the purpose of his curious title.

[Fundamentally] an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism — something it is like for the organism.

This poses a severe problem for materialist analysis of consciousness.

It is useless to base the defense of materialism on any analysis of mental phenomena that fails to deal explicitly with their subjective character. For there is no reason to suppose that a reduction which seems plausible when no attempt is made to account for consciousness can be extended to include consciousness. Without some idea, therefore of what the subjective character of experience is, we cannot know what is required of a physicalist theory.

In pursuit of “some idea,” he introduces types of subjective experience; types of point of view (hereinafter PoV types.)

I am not adverting here to the alleged privacy of experience to its possessor. The point of view in question is not one accessible only to a single individual. Rather it is a type.

In Panpsychism, he maintains this distinction, asserting “that a feature of experience is subjective if it can in principle be fully understood only from one type of point of view …”. His argument, if I read him correctly, is that, while an investigation of physicalist causes of human consciousness will be informed by our knowledge, based upon our own phenomenal experience, of the riches of consciousness in all humans, we cannot conduct similar investigations into the consciousness of, for example, bats, because those investigations cannot be informed by any similar experience of bat phenomenology. As a result, no matter how comprehensive is our objective knowledge of the physiology of, in particular, a bat’s organs of perception and nervous system, we cannot derive from these objective facts any comprehension of a bat’s subjective experience, of what it is like to be a bat. So any general project of understanding subjective non-human experience through comprehensive objective analysis is doomed to failure. If so, how can we expect to succeed in a similar project with human experience?

However, the notion of such types needs some elaboration.

Everything ever speculated and communicated concerning religion, philosophy, music, the visual and plastic arts, science and nature, every instance of an infant learning a language, of friends gathering convivially or of enemies clashing, speaks to the degree of commonality of the human phenomenal experiential type. But this commonality has specific features and limitations.

Take the experience of having some mathematical principle explained to you, a student, by a lecturer in a lecture hall. Understanding the mathematical principle is subjective; all understanding is subjective. Because mathematics is abstract, the verifiable circumstance, or state, of understanding this particular or any such principle can be determined for each person in the hall by testing. The type of point of view is that of a human being with some pre-existing familiarity with other mathematical principles and the requisite aptitude for their understanding — not everyone. The same applies to all topics of abstract reasoning, and in these circumstances, if we allow ourselves some leeway, we might also allow that the experience of coming to understand a particular topic is itself fully understood. It depends what we mean by fully.

Even here, though, there is, in the capacity to apply and elaborate some abstract principle, enormous variation amongst those who are believed, and believe themselves, to have the same understanding of that principle.

This capacity for abstract reasoning is, to the best of our knowledge, distinctive to human beings, and was assigned by Aristotle, and subsequently Aquinas, to the uniquely human rational soul. Such things we perceive with the mind’s eye, but these are facts of our phenomenal experience, just as much as is our experience of colour or music or incense.

Once we move from the abstract to the particular, the breadth of application of the human type of point of view from which a subjective experience can be “fully” understood becomes much more uncertain. The projects of human culture in music, the visual and plastic arts, and in cuisine, evidence considerable functional commonality of the evoked sensory experience — functional in the sense of enabling successful cultural interactions — even as the variety of responses to these artefacts evidences limits to that commonality. For instance, super-sensory individuals are deemed to have more intense experiences, via one or more of their senses, than is usual. This is often associated with autism, but there is, I should think, a spectrum of such variations.

All language presupposes abstraction, and no matter how extended and precise the language used to convey some particular of sensory experience (as for example in Proust) that experience can never be fully conveyed, fully understood.

In so many of the experiences most compelling for us humans, the most satisfactory way of conveying that experience is by metaphor — by inspired imprecision. Even in the circumstances of the lecture hall, the experiential pathway to understanding, and the actual subjective experience of that understanding, cannot be conveyed. Considered in this sort of detail, the “privacy of experience to its possessor” is not an allegation, but a fact of the human condition. The concept of PoV type, in attempting to universalise human phenomenal experience is, in fact, another reductive objectification of that teeming population of similar but unique worlds of being.

Phenomenal consciousness is impenetrably private, to the extent that no proof of the existence of other human minds, other loci of phenomenal experience, can be conceived, although the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.

What is it like to be a bat?

Less well supported than our confidence in other human minds is the almost universally expressed confidence in the phenomenal consciousness of at least the higher animals. This seems to be based on our extrapolation from the likenesses to us in physiology and likenesses to us in certain behaviours; in particular likenesses to the non-verbal signs by which we read the workings of phenomenal consciousness in our fellow humans. It is our recognition of familiar forms with which we unquestioningly associate consciousness that underlies our confidence in this extrapolation.

Nagel is bullish on the scope and dispersion of consciousnesses.

Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. It occurs at many levels of animal life, though we cannot be sure of its presence in the simpler organisms, and it is very difficult to say in general what provides evidence of it. … No doubt it occurs in countless forms totally unimaginable to us, on other planets in other solar systems throughout the universe. [Emphasis mine.]

Doubt enters in though. Regarding the subjects of his essay, he writes:

I have chosen bats instead of wasps or flounders because if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at all. [Emphasis mine.]

Faith, because of the impossibility of knowing. Our faith might be rationalised by reference to the level of development of the nervous system, for instance. But the thrust of Nagel’s argument is that mental realities can have no explanation in physical or physiological terms, so reasoning from neurology is merely another act of faith.

Nagel has chosen bats precisely because in them the similarity of forms on which we rely for our attribution of animal consciousness is so attenuated that our facile anthropomorphisms in respect of, say, apes, break down, even as bats’ complexity of physiology and behaviour keeps on the hook our confidence in their consciousness.

In all of Nagel’s discussion, he presumes that consciousness is found in organisms. It is a function of the life of organisms. Given that, in Nagel’s view, there is no soul, we can be confident that he attributes no consciousness to an organism that has just died.

This prescription — there is something that it is like to be that organism — for conscious mental states seems to have universal application in enquiries about consciousness. It is always about the self. In his essay Panpsychism, Nagel sets out four premisses from which he deduces panpsychism. The third is Realism, defined so: mental states are properties of the organism, since there is no soul, and they are not properties of nothing at all. He subsequently pens this illuminating paragraph.

For Realism as I have defined it to be true, physical organisms must have subjective properties. What seems unacceptable about this is that the organism does not have a point of view: the person or creature does. It seems absurd to try to discover the basis of the point of view of the person in an atomistic breakdown of the organism, because that object is not a possible subject for the point of view to which the person’s experiences appear. And if it makes no sense to ascribe subjective states to the complex whole, there will be no basis for ascribing proto-mental states to its constituents; so they cannot be appealed to in explanation of what it means for an organism to have experiences. I simply record this feeling of impossibility because I have no more to say about it. When a mouse is frightened, it does not seem to me that a small material object is frightened.

Nagel comments later of the vulnerability of this premiss, but he does not elaborate further (“I have no more to say about it”) on the difficulty that the above paragraph poses for his whole argument.

Phenomenal experience is, by definition, experience by a subject. All consciousness is in this respect self-consciousness; the conscious self is the locus of phenomenal experience. What is the self, except its consciousness? This is not the same as consciousness of self — the focus of conscious attention reflexively on the self, as is purportedly demonstrated by the mirror test.

If we take a leap of faith and accept, with Professor Nagel, that consciousness is widespread in organisms, our association of our own agency, our own expressions of our will, with our consciousness, ought probably also be projected equally widely. For example, in urban environments with plentiful, readily accessible liquids, our experience of thirst can be assuaged by a barely conscious exercise of the will. We see similar behaviours across the animal world, and we suppose an analogue of our consciousness to be in play. If so, then the agency of the thirsty animal is also an analogue of our own exercises of the will, guided by phenomenal awareness.

In this view, then, grazing animals — to take one example — are not automata, but conscious beings whose actions, for the most part, are inextricably tied into their own forms of phenomenal consciousness. What happens to our faith, though, when we descend to the cellular limit of the phylogenetic tree?

What is it like to be a Stentor roeselii?

Stentor roeselii (sometimes raesilli) is a single-cell organism. The replication in 2019 of an almost-forgotten experiment conducted by Herbert Spencer Jennings in 1906 had troubling implications. Articles such as Can a Cell Make Decisions? from Scientific American and Can a single-celled organism ‘change its mind’? New study says yes in phys.org, focussed on the main questions. This description is from the latter.

These single cells are notable for their relatively large size and unique trumpet-shaped bodies. Their surfaces and trumpet “bells” are lined with hairlike projections called cilia, used to swim and to generate a vortex in the surrounding fluid, which sweeps food into their “mouths.” At the other end of their bodies, they secrete a holdfast, which attaches them to detritus to stay stationary while feeding.

In the experiment, microscopic plastic beads were repeatedly propelled towards the mouth of the organism, invoking a hierarchy of responses, as depicted in the sketch. There are, however, marked differences between individuals in the rate at which the responses progress. In sum, S. roeselii “remembers” how much irritation it has “experienced,” and it “decides” on a course of action that depends on its “memory” of preceding events. And individual S. roeselii have individual rates of response and make individual decisions. Nothing known about the structure of this single-cell organism explains these behaviours.

As already noted, a fundamental aspect of consciousness is an awareness of the distinction between organism and not-organism. Survival in organisms as diverse as human beings and S. roeselii depends on this distinction. It is raw material for action, that is, the will, to motivate activities of the organism as a whole within the context of the not-organism. For example, S. roeselii detaching from its anchorage.

If there is consciousness in S. roeselii, will it not, too, convey this distinction to the “will” to act upon? But how can a single cell be conscious? If, on the other hand, it is not conscious, how can its behaviour be explained? Is it a machine, with a memory and processing unit which can take input from the environment and run a program, including apparently random pathways, which determines subsequent behaviour? How can a single cell perform such feats? But it does, one way or another.

Does the question, What is it like to be a Stentor roeselii, for a Stentor roeselii?, have meaning? If some form of phenomenal awareness is required for the agency of living things, then the underlying principle of phenomenal awareness is independent of the complexity of organisms.

What is it like to be a Large Language Model?

For that matter, what is it like to be any other AI system that is currently being touted as approaching, or having achieved, consciousness, once that milestone has been achieved?

The hallmark of consciousness we have been working with here, following Nagel, requires at least a potential answer to this question. Nagel doubts neither that such an answer exists for a bat, nor that the question cannot be answered by human enquiry. But in the case of AI systems, we are in completely different territory.

When we attribute consciousness to animals, we do so on the basis of formal similarities between our living selves and living members of other species. On what basis do we attribute consciousness to an AI system?

Is it not because we seem to detect a facsimile of our own verbal interactions with other human beings in our interactions with AI, especially when supplemented by generated images of non-existent people displaying facial gestures mimicked from painstakingly charted observations of actual human interactions? All of this apparatus lends verisimilitude to the machine in the ghost.

But what “I” can we conceivably postulate for such a system, one comprising vast banks of GPUs and memory, occupying gigawatt data centres, perhaps powered by their own modular nuclear reactors to feed the appetite for electricity, while it simultaneously expresses its “personality” or “personalities” to a small army of interlocutors with whom it is at that moment interacting? What is the locus of this “I”? Can this myriad of instantiations of the same algorithm or set of algorithms possibly have such a locus?

Whatever might be said about such a distributed electronic machine, it cannot be characterised as “conscious” in any sense that makes sense to us — to whom even the consciousness of bats seems feasible — when we consider the extended physical reality of the AI machine. However, when that extended structural reality evaporates to the immediate environment of screen, keyboard and microphone, we can more readily anthropomorphise the entity with which we are interacting. Nagel notes, I think it is fair to say, that our necessary anthropomorphism is simultaneously the best we can do in comprehending animal conscious experience and an insurmountable barrier to the same. Our attribution of consciousness to these machines is also anthropomorphic, just as much as is our attributing consciousness to our dog or cat, but without the support of any underlying formal correspondences, relying only the mimicry that we have designed into it. By virtue of that mimicry, it is more seductive. Our interactions so closely mimic the interactions on which we build our unquestioned confidence in the phenomenal experience of other people that many — notably those who design them — are seduced into more readily allowing that these machines are conscious than that our pets are.

Lifelessness

Even though we have analysed the processes of life by reductive means; even though we have dissected the living cell, peered into its nucleus, pulled apart its DNA, drawn conclusions about its processes of division and replication, and have shaped aspects of its nature to suit our purposes; even though we have imagined and drawn beautiful animations of its ceaseless interior processes, we do not know how it came to be, and do not understand, or have forgotten what we once understood of, the driving force of this mysterious phenomenon of life, this new thing which seized the building blocks of the inanimate world to construct the teeming self-motivated world-upon-a-world that we call the biosphere, and within that world, the teeming world of worlds comprised of the minds of humans.

All of our confidence in the reality of our fellow minds, and all of our speculation about the phenomenal experience of other species had, until this fraught and chaotic moment, been constrained to our affinities with other living creatures, for excellent reasons.

We have since persuaded ourselves that the difference between the essential realities of animate and inanimate has been obliterated. In that conceptual wreckage it becomes possible to attribute to inanimate objects some important things proper to our human nature.

This is a new idolatry, congenial to modern sensibilities, yet one that seems so familiar.

The Psalmist complains that

…their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. (115:5)
They have mouths but do not speak, and eyes but do not see.
They have ears but do not hear; noses but do not smell.
They have hands but do not feel; feet but do not walk… (115:5-7 ESV)

And the result is

Those who make them become like them;
so do all who trust in them. (115:8)

Man, made in the image and likeness of God, is in the process of constructing a god made in the image of man, and having made this god, surrendering to it, and worshipping it.

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Born alive and stillbirth late term abortions for 2023/2024. Totals for late-term born alive/stillbirth abortions combined, are more than the total for the previous year by 125. Comparison of the last five years below.

That is 642 late-term born alive abortions in just five years.

That is 5,738 late-term stillbirth abortions in just five years.

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These numbers are most probably grossly underreported because CIHI only publishes numbers from nine provinces and the three territories. Noticeably absent is Quebec’s numbers. I’ve asked CIHI why this is the case, and am waiting for a response.

The study was based on all second trimester abortions (13,777) performed in the hospitals of Quebec between 1989 and 2021. In Quebec, the law does not stipulate a maximum time limit for performing an abortion. The researchers found that abortions performed during the second trimester of pregnancy due to fetal anomalies doubled between the period 1989 – 2000 and 2011-2021. At the same time, they observed a significant increase in live births following a second-trimester abortion: the rate of 4.1 live births per 100 abortions in 1989-2001 climbs to 20.8% for the 2011-2021 period.

This is particularly true for abortions between 20 and 24 weeks of amenorrhea (18-22 weeks of pregnancy): in this case, more than one fetus in five is alive at the time of expulsion (21.7%).’

The pro-abortions always like to say that these late-term abortions are always done because of fetal anomalies or the health of the mother. But in 48% of these cases, the Quebec abortions took place for “personal or unspecified reasons” on a healthy fetus:

‘The study showed that in 48% of second trimester abortions in Quebec, i.e. almost half the cases, there was no medical indication on the fetal side, nor any medical emergency on the maternal side. In these cases, the abortion took place for “personal or unspecified” reasons, on a healthy fetus.’

So many lies.

UPDATE: In the past when I reported on Canada’s late term live-birth abortions, Quebec’s numbers were always excluded from CIHI’s data. For the first time, I have now received Quebec’s numbers for 2023-2024.

I originally reported 123 abortions for 2023-2024 for Canada, and now we know that Quebec performed an additional 27 of these late term born-alive abortions for a new total of 150.

The post Canada Killed 150 Babies in Live Birth Abortions Last Year appeared first on LifeNews.com.

How much does an ultrasound impact the decision whether to abort? How much does it affect the societal attitude toward the destruction of unborn children?

The New York Post’s Rikki Schlott once wrote, “Today, ultrasounds are more advanced than ever. Gone is the era of the traditional, black and white, grainy 2D images. Now, through 3D, 4D, and HD ultrasounds — which were developed and entered commercial use in the 1990s — women are able to access clear, photo-quality images of fetuses and even video footage of the fetus’ movement. ”

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In particular I glommed on to the work GOP pollster Wes Anderson.  We learn from “How next-gen ultrasounds are changing the abortion debate” that he has “spent the last 16 months conducting more than a dozen intense focus groups with American voters about abortion.

“Indeed, this generation of young women grew up seeing ultrasounds taped to the refrigerators or posted on the Instagram pages of proud expecting mothers,” according to Schlott. “Now that they’re seeing 3D and 4D imaging, it’s no wonder the argument that a fetus is ‘just a clump of cells’ seems to be losing its credibility.”

Anderson says, “he’s noticed a discernible shift in the conversations about the issue, thanks to improvements in ultrasound technology.”

Anderson, whose worked as a pollster for decades, said, “The conversation has changed because of the advancement of medical imagery more than anything else.” He told Schlott, “It sounds overly simplified, but it’s not. Ultrasounds are actually the driver.”

What did the focus groups bring up again and again? “The ultrasounds — and the refinement of ultrasounds and 3D ultrasounds—and they just said, ‘Well, that’s a baby,’” Anderson explained.

“The science of imaging has moved to a point where your average voter now says, ‘I’m not going to argue over whether that’s a baby. I know it’s a baby. Now, let’s talk about how we balance all this out, and balance that with the rights of the mother.’”

And it’s the younger women in the focus groups–18-29– who were most intrigued by advancements in ultrasound technology.

The people who cite ultrasounds as a reason they question the ethics of abortion tend to be young women.

Danielle Pitzer is content producer for Focus on the Family. She told the Post “When a woman has an unexpected pregnancy, there can be a lot of fear… [but] an ultrasound cuts through the noise, the fear, the ‘what ifs’ and helps a woman see the life inside her.”  She added, “Ultrasounds make the pregnancy real.”

Needless to say, pro-abortion individuals and organizations fiercely oppose informed consent legislation, which often requires that abortion-minded women be given the opportunity to see their unborn child.

For example, the pro-abortion American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists calls them (at best) “ill-advised” while the fiercely opposed Guttmacher Institute describes ultrasounds as “a veiled attempt to personify the fetus and dissuade an individual from obtaining abortion.”

“Personifying the fetus?”

Does that mean treating unborn children with minimal respect?

Or giving women a chance to breathe before she goes through with a life-and-decision?

Or actually accepting the principle of informed consent?

I guess not.

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.

The post Ultrasound Photos Confirm Unborn Babies are Human Beings appeared first on LifeNews.com.

At its annual meeting, the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates (HOD) overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to change AMA policy and in doing so re-affirmed its longstanding policy in opposition to assisted suicide. It also approved a Board of Trustees report which rejected attempts to change the longstanding and clear terminology “physician assisted suicide” in AMA policy.

Dating to 1994, the AMA Code of Medical Ethics states that “Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.” At its 2019 annual meeting, the House of Delegates overwhelmingly voted to uphold the Code of Medical Ethics as written. The 2025 Board of Trustees report states that “the profession of medicine should not support the legalization or practice of physician assisted suicide or see it as part of a physician’s role.”

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A proposed change in terminology to “medical aid in dying” was rejected. The Board of Trustees noted that, “Descriptors such as Medical Aid in Dying (MAID), physician aid-in-dying, and death with dignity could apply to palliative care practices and compassionate care near the end of life that do not include intending the death of patients… this degree of ambiguity is unacceptable for providing ethical guidance.” The House of Delegates, comprised of representatives from state medical associations, national medical specialty societies, AMA sections, and other professional interest medical associations, is the principal legislative and policy-making body of the AMA.

“In 2016, the AMA initiated a three-year study of physician-assisted suicide which culminated in the AMA House of Delegates re-affirming the AMA Code of Medical Ethics in 2019,” stated Dr. Jeff White, Patients’ Rights Action Fund board member and a former AMA House of Delegates member. “Nothing has changed in the ensuing years to warrant a change in AMA policy and terminology. We are extremely pleased with the results of the AMA House of Delegates vote and its recognition that physicians are trained to heal and must not perform euthanasia or participate in assisted suicide.”

The post American Medical Association Reaffirms Opposition to Assisted Suicide appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The following text is from the HOD Handbook as approved at the AMA meeting. The text can be found, starting on page 7 and is referred to as Report 18-A-25.

Physician assisted suicide occurs when “a physician facilitates a patient’s death by providing the necessary means and/or information to enable the patient to perform a life-ending act”. This act is sometimes referred to using other terminology such as medical aid in dying. Currently, there is no federal law governing physician assisted suicide; therefore, individual states are permitted to determine their own legal stance. At this time, 10 states and the District of Columbia permit this practice; however, most states have legislation banning this practice. Furthermore, two states have removed their residency requirement, effectively opening the practice of physician assisted suicide more broadly to patients throughout the US. 

Our AMA has a long-standing policy (H-270.965) opposing the legalization of physician assisted suicide. That said, our AMA is also opposed to the criminalization of physician medical judgement and the regulation of medical practice through criminal penalties (H-160.954, D-160.911, D27 275.944, H-5.980, D-5.999). Additionally, our AMA has policy preserving a physician’s right to exercise their autonomy (H-405.958, Code of Medical Ethics Opinion 1.1.7).

DISCUSSION 

The referred resolution addresses several issues encompassed within the broad context of physician-assisted suicide: terminology, opposition to the legalization and practice of physician assisted suicide, and opposition to the criminalization of physician participation in assisted suicide. This report addresses these topics in the context of our AMA’s current HOD policies and Code of Medical Ethics guidance. In addition, the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs has produced two informational reports to further discuss the ethical complexity of these topics as they relate to physician assisted suicide and the practice of medicine. 

Terminology 

The terminology used in the AMA Code of Medical Ethics and HOD policy to describe this practice offers a clear delineation of intent and action. The use of other terminology to describe this practice has the potential to confuse patients and unduly influence decision making [5]. Descriptors such as Medical Aid in Dying (MAID), physician aid-in-dying, and death with dignity could apply to palliative care practices and compassionate care near the end of life that do not include intending the death of patients. In CEJA Report 2-A-19, “Physician Assisted Suicide,” the Council determined that PAS was the terminology which described the practice best. The report supported this supposition with the following analysis which remains valid:

Opposition to the legalization and practice of physician assisted suicide 

AMA policy opposes the legalization and practice of physician assisted suicide stating that it is “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as a healer”. In developing CEJA Report 2 (A-19) which informed our AMA’s current ethics standards on physician assisted suicide, the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs analysis and deliberations were informed by available data and research. However, its decision was not an empirically dictated one, but rather, it was driven by the core values of medicine preserved within the Code of Medical Ethics. 

Although legislative developments since 2019 have occurred, recent empirical data reviewing physician assisted suicide practices in US and international jurisdictions where PAS and/or euthanasia are legal are subject to varied interpretations. As a matter of ethical reasoning, the data does not settle the ethical issue. Additionally, the relevant core ethical values at stake have not changed since the adoption of CEJA Report 2 (A-19). As such, the AMA’s position on physician assisted suicide should remain unchanged. 

Of note, the AMA’s position on physician assisted suicide is not a position of neutrality and establishes that the profession of medicine should not support the legalization or practice of physician assisted suicide or see it as part of a physician’s role.

Previous articles on the AMA assisted suicide position:

• American Medical Association (2023) maintains its opposition to assisted suicide (Link).
• Psychiatrists must prevent euthanasia, not provide it (Link).
• American Medical Association (2019) opposes assisted suicide (Link).
• American Medical Association (2019) overwhelmingly upholds its opposition to assisted suicide (Link).
• American Medical Association (AMA) (2018) Ethics Committee maintains opposition to assisted suicide (Link).

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, is calling on pro-life supporters to contact U.S. senators and demand the defunding of Planned Parenthood as part of a budget reconciliation bill moving through Congress.

The push follows a recent victory in the U.S. House, where a bill aimed at cutting funding to the nation’s largest abortion provider passed, signaling strong pro-life momentum.

“This is a critical moment for the pro-life movement,” Hawkins said in a statement. “The House sent a clear message to the abortion lobby, but now we need to ensure the Senate follows through.”

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Students for Life Action, the advocacy arm of the organization, has identified 12 Republican senators whose votes are seen as pivotal to ensuring the defunding provision remains in the Senate’s version of the bill, dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” by President Donald Trump. The targeted senators include Shelley Capito (R-W.Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), John Thune (R-S.D.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and Todd Young (R-Ind.).

Hawkins emphasized that while some of these senators are staunch pro-life allies, others, including Collins and Murkowski, have previously opposed similar measures. She also noted that fiscal concerns, such as debates over state and local tax deductions, could sway some senators, making grassroots pressure essential.

The campaign, launched on June 3 as part of Students for Life Action’s “One Big Beautiful Month of Pro-Life Activism,” has already gained attention, with Politico reporting on its efforts. The group is urging supporters to sign a petition calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood, stressing that with a slim 53-seat Republican majority in the Senate, just four dissenting votes could derail the effort.

“Pro-life voters will not forgive or forget if our resources continue to fund Planned Parenthood,” Hawkins said. “Senators need to hear that we mean business.”

The budget reconciliation bill, which requires only a simple majority to pass, is seen as a key opportunity to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood, a long-standing goal of the pro-life movement. Supporters are encouraged to contact their senators, particularly the 12 targeted Republicans, to ensure the provision remains intact.

The post Pro-Life Group Urges Americans to Tell Senators to Defund Planned Parenthood appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Testimony of Sharon Quick, MD, MA (Bioethics)
President, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF)
In opposition to New York A 136 June 8, 2024

Summary: A 136, like other medically-assisted suicide laws, inevitably violates (rather than upholds) patient autonomy; creates (based on subjective, often inaccurate, criteria) a class of marginalized patients with the disability of terminal illness from whom the standard of medical care can be withheld; allows lethal drugs to unnecessarily substitute for good palliative care and pain control; disproportionately preys on those with mental health problems and disabilities; and destroys the foundation of medical ethics, creating distrust among patients and the health care profession. In addition, A 136 is the most radical policy in the country because it has no waiting period for obtaining lethal drugs.

1. Pain should never be a reason to seek lethal drugs. Complaints of excessive symptoms indicate doctors lack palliative care knowledge, such as when to refer to pain management specialists. Lethal drugs should never be a solution for lack of education. In addition, those in significant pain lack capacity to consent for lethal drugs. Instead, improve palliative care access and expertise, which has been assessed as likely insufficient to meet the needs of New York.(1) There is evidence that minorities, the uninsured, those on Medicaid, and those living in disadvantaged communities may encounter barriers to receiving palliative care.(2) It would be a tragedy for these under served populations if this legislation made lethal prescriptions more accessible than palliative care.

2. This bill has no waiting period to obtain lethal drugs; no other law is so rash. Immediate death does not give adequate time for appropriate discussion and interventions for vulnerable patients who make rash decisions out of fear, depression, embarrassment, subtle pressure by a tired caregiver who makes them feel like a burden, or other reversible or transient concerns. Such patients often change their minds and no longer want to hasten death. Terminal illness is highly associated with depression, and suicidal thinking is highest when cancer is first diagnosed and becomes less frequent as time goes on and patients get support.

3. Physicians may be wrong about a patient’s prognosis, and they often miss depression and compromised decision-making capacity. Patients in WA and OR have died up to 5 years beyond their original “terminal” diagnosis and receipt of lethal drugs. Neither mental health status nor capacity are required to be assessed immediately before a patient ingests lethal drugs, which could be years after initial assessment; there is no guarantee that patients are not compromised at that time. 

4. Lethal drugs are not a proportionate means of achieving palliative care goals but devalue vulnerable patients in a way that violates the very goals palliative care aims to achieve. Assisted suicide is abandonment, not health care, and is not part of palliative medicine. Lethal cocktails are bitter-tasting, sometimes mouth-burning liquids, and patients must ice their mouths with popsicles and take anti-emetics just to get them down. Risks include nausea, vomiting, aspiration, seizures, and not dying. Palliative care can do far better.

5. Lethal drug prescriptions undermine autonomy and discriminate against the disability community. Requests for lethal drugs are not primarily for pain but because of concerns of losing autonomy or abilities or feeling like a burden. These may be symptoms of depression and are usually psychological responses to disabilities developed during terminal illness--which is itself a disability by both social security and ADA criteria. This bill grants new choices and power to health practitioners, not patients, allowing them to treat patients unequally, subjectively placing them into either (1) a protected group (getting standard mental health care) or (2) a marginalized group with the disability of terminal illness (who can be abandoned to lethal drugs). This discriminates against the disability community and undermines autonomy by violating equality of persons. New York does not need a two-tiered health system that devalues those with the disability of terminal illness. 

6. The slippery slope is real. Patients with depression and those with non-terminal diagnoses of anorexia, hernia, arthritis, and “medical complications” have received lethal drugs. Hundreds of doctors’ and patients’ consent forms are missing in Washington and Colorado.

7. There is no mechanism to enforce the law or detect abuse, which is perhaps why no sanctions have been reported. The design of this bill, like other assisted suicide laws, is a set-up for undetected elder abuse, coercion, or murder, given neither capacity re-evaluation nor the presence a neutral party are required when patients ingest lethal drugs (sometimes weeks, months, or years after initial evaluation).

8. Doctors often devalue those with disabilities. Protect the medical profession from acting on that bias by not granting them power to assist the suicides of patients disabled by terminal illness—especially a law with so little oversight that physicians are not disciplined for ending the lives of those with non-terminal illness (like Cody).

9. Protect the medical profession from distrust, both between patients and their doctors and among doctors. Patients in the northwest who are opposed to assisted suicide now have legitimate fears that doctors might overlook depression or compromised capacity, devalue them, and prescribe lethal drugs if they request hastened death while depressed or in a moment of vulnerable weakness. A death request is often a plea for help, and people often change their minds about hastening death with time, treatment, and support. Dr. Bentz lost trust in colleagues after referring a patient to an oncologist who, over Dr. Bentz’ objections, gave lethal drugs to his patient instead of treating his depression.

10. This bill contains potential conscience violations for physicians and health care employers:

11. Finally, participants do not need to be New York residents, which may allow out-of-state residents to obtain lethal drugs. These participants may not receive adequate evaluation, especially of capacity and lack of coercion, by New York physicians who may not know them well. Because non-residents would be forced to take the lethal drugs in New York, it may pressure patients to take the lethal drugs immediately, when many patients hold on to the drugs for weeks, months, and even years, and some decide never to take them. Given the number of people who travel to New York from around the world, this may make it an international assisted suicide tourism destination.

Please vote no on A 136. I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

Sincerely,
Sharon Quick, MD, MA (Bioethics)
President, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF)

1. CAPC. Palliative Care in New York. 2025. (Link).
2. Chambers B. How to Increase Awareness and Reduce Gaps in Palliative Care for Minorities July 9, 2020. (Link) (accessed 9-22-2024).
3. Pope TM, Brodoff L. Medical aid in dying to avoid late-stage dementia. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 2024: 1-7. (Link).