I don't necessarily like being defined by my profession.
Catholic extremism should be resisted as fiercely at home as we oppose the Taliban abroad.
While the visible victims may draw the headlines and attract indignant protests from so-called "pro-life" organizations, the invisible victims are people like you and me who will suffer from diseases that are never cured because funds are being poured down a healthcare sieve in order to maintain permanently-unconscious bodies on complex and costly forms of life support.
I suspect that the vast majority of people, not knowing in advance whether they will either end up in a permanently vegetative state or be diagnosed with cancer, would prefer that any resources that would be spent on PVS care be reallocated to cancer research--or some similar enterprise that has the potential to help human beings who might actually recover.
A free society, to be truly worthy of that name, owes healthy, competent individuals the right to end their lives on their own terms.
I am grateful that I have rights in the proverbial public square--but, as a practical matter, my most cherished rights are those that I possess in my bedroom and hospital room and death chamber.
Maybe life involves the pairing of unsuitable people, those who wait and those who keep others waiting, and the key to happiness is finding the one person with whom you share the same internal chronometer.
Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his essay, “Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless — discuss.
Upgrading one's imagination about what is possible is always a leap of faith.
I think of it often and imagine the scene clearly. Even if they come to kill me, I will tell them what they are trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right.
If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything. When a child presents himself to you with his smile, if you are not really there - thinking about the future or the past, or preoccupied with other problems - then the child is not really there for you. The technique of being alive is to go back to yourself in order for the child to appear like a marvellous reality. Then you can see him smile and you can embrace him in your arms.