I continue to be amazed at how the media sets forth the results of various polls as some sort of moral barometer, or guide to how the rest of us should think. Take, for example, the most recent Associated Press/Ipsos poll dealing with whether or not doctors should be allowed to prescribe lethal drugs for the patients who want to die (physician assisted suicide).
The poll found that 48 percent of those surveyed said that it should be legal for doctors to prescribe such medication while 44 percent said it should be illegal.
55 percent of those same people said they would not take action to end their own lives, and I could go on but will not. The point I want to make has nothing to do with such polls, which I frankly find quite disturbing.
I wonder if you have ever been called and asked to participate in one of these polls. Nobody in my family ever has.
I wonder if you think it is proper for lawmakers, and sadly some pro-lifers, to make determinations about what policies should be based on the results of such polls. I do not.
I wonder what is wrong with those who overlook the basic, common sense difference between what is right and what is wrong to go with the polls when deciding what their position should be. What has happened to the ability to think for one's self? What has happened to common sense?
I bring this to your attention because a good friend of mine, and a pro-life hero, Nancy Valko, R.N., happened to speak with the reporter who wrote this "news' report. And she found, after talking with him, that he had little to no background in the issues surrounding Dr. Jack Kevorkian, but seemed to want the readers to think he was an expert.
Perhaps it is time for those of us with failth and common sense to make the news by telling the truth rather than the current staus quo which seems to suggest that believing polling data is supposed tell us what the nation can tolerate and will not accept.
Let us remember that tolerance of evil is never, regardless of poll results, a good thing.