At least as of yesterday, Wesley was in Europe. Having given speeches on embryonic stem cell research and cloning (with David Prentice) in Ireland, he was to be in London on Monday to speak about assisted suicide. He wrote on his blog (www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog), "Ahead of the event, I was asked by my sponsors to write a piece for placement in the UK Media."

Luckily for all his op-ed was picked up by the Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/4736927/Right-to-die-can-become-a-duty-to-die.html). It is important to read the piece for yourself, so let me just address a related issue.

The older I get, the more I realize how effectively cause has been severed from effect in our public discourse. In Part One I talked about some biotech types who are in seventh heaven over a new technology to more "effectively" and certainly more quickly locate unborn babies with genetic disorders such as Down syndrome.

Not for a moment is this intended to cause more abortions, we're assured. It's just the opposite: to reassure women they are NOT carrying a baby with Down's and therefore prevent them from having an "unnecessary" abortion.

This, no doubt, can, and will, happen. But for every baby saved there will probably be thousands lost. Not only is the diagnosis (we are told) going to be more reliable than blood tests and ultrasounds, followed by either amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling, it will take place in the first trimester.

Likewise, with "assisted suicide." We are supposed to disbelieve what our senses, our experience, and our moral intuition tell us.

Assisted suicide is supposed to be, as it were, patient-driven and patient initiated. I'm not sure I ever gave that a moment's credence. Wesley has showed us repeatedly how easily a death supposedly chosen "voluntarily" becomes a "duty to die."

But there are other impacts that we don't commonly recognize. I have seen how, like a racing car caught in the draft of the car in front of it, the ethos of "assisted suicide" pulls "end-of-life" scenarios into its orbit.

I have seen what might be described as a kind of mutual assured destruction. Older people, understandably unhappy with seriously declining health, grumble and grouse.

As an outsider, I can see that a large part of this is to calculate how the family will respond to the plaintive but unspoken question: "Do I matter to you? Am I really worth bothering with?"

But all too easily what the family hears (or chooses to hear) is that gramps has "made his peace." If he dies, of course, it is "easier" on everyone.

Often there is this dance of death, a minuet, where the older person agrees to lead with the right words and the family agrees to follow by listening only to the surface meaning, not the cry for reassurance that lies underneath.

At times like these it is immensely important to have solid pro-life friends to help give balance and perspective. Easy to do? No. Just critical!

Part One -- Moving Toward a World With Fewer Children With Down Syndrome