The Mental Capacity Act (2005): A Blueprint for Nazism

UK Court of Protection HQ, London

It was worth noting the indignation and fury of various bodies, such as the National Secular Society (NSS), when Pope Benedict XVI, while visiting the UK, alluded to Nazism and linked it to what can so easily happen when societies 'exclude God' at our 'peril'.

It was almost as if those who mocked his warning were saying, "Hah! What is the Pope on?! Nazism!? That had nothing to do with atheism!" The inference of the rebuttals by various secular and atheist groups suggested that Nazism belonged to an age in the past, to history books, an age that could never rear its ugly head here in the United Kingdom, of all places.

Men and women who work on the front line of the pro-life network, however, such as John Smeaton of the SPUC and the Good Counsel Network, as well as many others in the UK, will not have missed the irony of their rebuttal and will have understood that Pope Benedict XVI was not giving just a prophetic warning to the United Kingdom of some kind of horrific, eugenic, Orwellian future, but was pointing out a trend, a descent into the ideology of Nazism which is, in fact, already underway.

How can a country with 200,000 abortions a year, albeit chosen by born citizens, not be a described as a country whose policies mimick or mirror, at least partially, the policies of the Third Reich? How can a country which allows experimentation upon human embryoes for the purposes of 'scientific discovery' not be accused of imitating Josef Megele's experimentation upon children during the relatively brief period of Nazism?

As Catholics, aware of the wholly pernicious and scandalous presence of abortion on our own soil, we have, perhaps, grown accustomed to living under a series of Governments which believe, much like Nazi Germany did, that human life, albeit nascent human life, is expendible. Perhaps, because abortion was marketed to the British people as a woman's 'choice', or as 'reproductive healthcare' or 'family planning', we have just become anaethetised to it.

Pope Benedict XVI chooses his words very carefully but he does not mince them, no matter who is in his audience. Though gently delivered, it was no accident that he alluded to Nazism when he was here. Objectors to his comments, even those who probably openly support abortive, contraceptive or even eugenic ideas, would cite 'choice', as enshrined in UK legislation, as the great difference between modern Britain and Nazi Germany, but it is quite clear that for a great many, 'choice' either already has, or will very soon, go out of the window.

Since 1 October 2007, the UK Court of Protection, under the remit of the Orwellian sounding 'Office of the Public Guardian' has been in the news only a little since 'operations' began, but not nearly as much as it should be. According to The Daily Mail...

'The court hears about 23,000 cases a year - always in private - involving people deemed unable to take their own decisions. Using far-reaching powers, the court has so far taken control of more than £3.2billion of assets.'

However, it isn't just the finances of the 'mentally incapacitated' that the Court of Protection is interested in seizing. The case highlighted in the same publication yesterday made plain that under the order of the very same court, health authorities and that great bastion of British totalitarian baby-thieving, Social Services, can obtain the authority to enforce those deemed 'mentally incapacitated' to undertake either 'life-saving' surgery, as I posted on yesterday and, as The Telegraph highlighted earlier this year, 'life-destroying surgery'. The Court of Protection admitted in May of this year, that it can order that mentally ill patients are sterilised, undergo abortions or have life-support switched off.

As The Telegraph article reported...

'Separate documents published by HM Courts Service spell out that the Court of Protection is able to take life-or-death decisions on behalf of those lacking mental capacity, including withdrawing treatment if they are in a coma or preventing them from having babies through abortion or sterilisation.

A list of “matters which should be brought to the court” includes: “decisions about the proposed withholding or withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration from a person in a permanent vegetative state or a minimally conscious state” and “cases involving non-therapeutic sterilisation of a person who lacks capacity to consent”.

A further list of “serious medical treatment” the Court can decide open includes: “certain terminations of pregnancy in relation to a person who lacks capacity to consent to such a procedure”, “an experimental or innovative treatment for the benefit of a person who lacks capacity to consent to such treatment” and “a case involving an ethical dilemma in an untested area”.'

What we therefore have in this country, under the Mental Capacity Act (2005), is a blueprint, with its very own supreme Court, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice, to act on its behalf, for the systematic, eugenic abortion of those deemed by the State not to be worthy of living, for the enforced sterilisation of those deemed unworthy of being parents, for enforced euthansia through the removal of feeding and hydration and, what is more, should the campaign for assisted suicide ever become successful in the United Kingdom, enforced killing of those deemed 'unfit' and for all of this we have to thank Jack Straw, Gordon Brown, New Labour and one Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. If that is not Nazism, then I, for one, do not know what is.

Of course, those working in the pro-life movement are already aware that the building blocks of Nazism are well-established in the United Kingdom and Pope Benedict XVI himself is surely aware of it as well. The question is, why do such tyrannical developments not seem to bother the National Secular Society, The Guardian, the British Humanist Association, Richard Dawkins, Peter Tatchell, Professor Steve Jones, Stephen Fry, Claire Rayner, and all those other organisations and individuals who believe that it is religion, and Catholicism in particular, rather than atheism, that spreads oppression, fear, murder and terror? I believe that given the secular climate of the United Kingdom, as well as the potential human catastrophe awaiting us, it is time for those organisations and individuals to undertake a profound re-examination of Pope Benedict XVI's words...

'As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a "reductive vision of the person and his destiny" (Caritas in Veritate, 29).'

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Palace of Holyrood House, Edinburgh, Thursday, 16 September 2010 in his speech to the Queen.