The slippery slope is getting much harder to deny. Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s prime-time publicity stunt demonstrates the speed with which the culture of death is overtaking our times.

Well, Dr. Jack Kevorkian got what he wanted, and now he doesn’t want it anymore. Last November, when charged with first degree murder, Kevorkian said “We need a felony conviction now. That’s the only way we’re going to get anywhere with this.” On March 26 a Detroit jury convicted Dr. Kevorkian of second-degree murder, and he may now spend the rest of his life in prison.

Stephen Wallace had been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer, and he wanted his doctor and the local hospital to help him commit suicide, but they would not.  Now, his children are speaking out, and this opens a new angle on the issue of assisted suicide.

Britain, like many other countries, is debating assisted suicide and euthanasia.  In Britain, the more common term is “assisted dying,” which appears to reflect a strategy to avoid using “suicide” to describe ending one’s own life.  Then again, the distinction between assisted suicide and murder is itself hard to define.

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.

Baroness Mary Warnock is one of the most influential figures in British life today, and one of the most influential specialists in medical ethics on the international scene.  When she speaks, the medical community listens. Given what she has just said, every single one of us had better pay attention.

Should physicians and other healthcare professionals be required to perform procedures that violate their conscience?  Most states have adopted so-called “conscience clauses” that shield doctors and others from being required to perform abortions, euthanasia, and other procedures when these would violate the doctor’s own moral commitments.

As Wesley J. Smith explains, “the reigning cultural paradigm” holds that “a life with profound cognitive dysfunction is not worth living.” The dominant assessment is that a person with a diagnosis of permanent unconsciousness should be allowed to die by withdrawal of food and hydration.