I can’t help but think that the New York Times got blowback internally and from ideological fellow travelers for running that recent story on how doctors expedite deaths, or otherwise jump the gun, in order to get organs from patients. It was shocking, albeit not entirely surprising. It was most shocking, though, that the “paper of record” went there.

So, of course, now there is the op-ed arguing for that expedited death. I mentioned last week in The Lifeline, National Review’s new pro-life weekly newsletter, that I give my friend Charlie Camosy a hard time for insisting that brain death is a topic we all need to be paying more attention to. I do that only because who really wants to have to talk about the topic? (Says she who often brings up abortion before you’ve had your coffee, if you are unfortunate enough to be near me that early in the day.) But he’s absolutely right, and this is why. The Times op-ed — “Donor Organs Are Too Rare. We Need a New Definition of Death” — is written by three medical doctors at  Northwell Health in New York. (Beware anyone needing medical assistance in New York.) I’m grateful for their honesty. The more this kind of radically grave thinking is exposed in the mainstream, and is presented as mainstream, the more people are possibly going to believe that those of us – like Charlie – who have been sounding alarms are not actually the crazy ones. They are the ones who remember what life is and what our stewardship duties toward it are.

And if you or a loved one is in need of medical care now or in the near future, I pray that the doctors see a fully human person, not organs or unnecessary expenses and declining usefulness.