Blogs for April 2017

Posted on Wednesday 19th April 2017 at 1:39am

Xavier Symons defends fellow Catholic, Margaret Somerville, against a 'bullshit' call on national TV, and spreads a bit of his own in the process.

Last week, Mr Xavier Symons published a defence of Professor Margaret Somerville, whose arguments against assisted dying were called ‘bullshit’ by Patricia Flowers on the ABC’s Q&A program. Symons and Somerville are colleagues at the Institute for Ethics and Society at the Catholic Notre Dame University of Australia.

Mr Symons made an important point: that a law about restricted self-choice for assisted dying is in no way comparable to the Nazi Germany euthanasia (or more correctly, eugenics) programme. While Prof. Somerville agrees that such comparisons are invalid, she nevertheless often mentions Nazi Germany as a ‘question’ when debating assisted dying. That’s a bit of a fudge.


Keywords: Fudge | Fiction | Australia | Margaret Somerville | Catholic | Claim response | Rhetoric: Slippery slope

 

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