Rights Talk Right to Death -- Euthanasia and "Religious Primitivism"

http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_print.php?id=2654

[Albert Mohler] 24 Oct 2008--Several years ago, Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon offered the persuasive argument that America has embraced what she calls "rights talk." The assertion of rights is now the standard way to effect social change or, in the case of individuals, to have your own way. "Rights talk" is what remains when a cultural consensus about right and wrong evaporates.

Fast-forward to 2008 and rights talk is, if anything, even more ingrained in the American character. Battles over competing and conflicting assertions of rights now emerge over some of the hottest and most contentious issues of the day. When we have run out of other arguments, all we have left is to assert that what we demand is, after all, only our right.

Is there an end-game to all this? Well, in one sense we can see evidence of the end game in a recent article published in Great Britain. Writing in The Guardian [London], Simon Jenkins argues that the right to end one's life on one's own terms is basic to humanity, and that only "religious primitivism" stands in the way of cultural acceptance and legal approval for assisted suicide.