"The Right to Life and Human Dignity" by Leon Kass

..over at the New Atlantis (click above to read the entire article).

He writes:

"Nevertheless, Hobbes seems to me perfectly right to insist on the foundational importance of an individuated human life, and in worrying about the dangers to decency and dignity in making light of the right to life. Those who would, even today, be inclined to disagree, should ponder the human meaning of those seemingly loftier moral outlooks that deny the right to life—outlooks that push millions into gas chambers in order to improve the race, that brutalize and liquidate dissidents in preparation of the coming classless society, that dispatch the elderly and the handicapped newborn, or abort the genetically infirm, in the name of “quality of life,” that call upon doctors to deliver, with the state’s blessing, “death with dignity,” and that mutilate and blow up innocent civilians, all for the glory of God. Hobbes would call this unnatural and crazy, and a denial of natural right. So should we. We must also call it an assault on human dignity."

Well worth reading as it applies to issues of "right to die" , "death with dignity" and assisted suicide laws and futile care laws .