Posted on 07/25/2009 10:37:29 AM PDT by Steelfish
July 25, 2009
Huge public support for change in law to allow the right to die
Rosemary Bennett, Social Affairs Correspondent
Overwhelming public support for a change in the law to allow medically assisted suicide is revealed in a poll for The Times.
Almost three quarters (74 per cent) of people want doctors to be allowed to help terminally ill patients to end their lives. Support is particularly strong among those aged 55 to 64.
Six out of ten people also want friends and relatives to be able to help their dying loved ones to commit suicide without fear of prosecution.
Changing the law has always been opposed strongly by doctors, with two out of three against legalisation. But yesterday saw the first sign of change in the medical establishment.
Public supports right to die for terminally ill 'We considered ending our lives together' Give us the choice in death we've had in life
The Royal College of Nursing dropped its opposition to assisted suicide and adopted a “neutral” position after a three-month consultation with members. Nurses will receive new guidance on how patients can deal with terminal illness. Many nurses are being asked by desperate patients about travelling abroad to clinics such as Dignitas, in Zurich, to end their lives and are unsure what they can say.
The Times poll, by Populus, was carried out a week after the leading conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife died at the Dignitas clinic on July 10. Sir Edward, 85, had become virtually blind and suffered loss of hearing while Lady Downes, 74, a former ballet dancer, had terminal cancer.
Their son and daughter accompanied them to the clinic and have been questioned by police, although they are unlikely to face further action.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
I thought conservatives were about freedom? Like, personal freedom? Is your life really your own if you can’t choose to end it?
Any one can cop out and “choose to end it”. Anytime. We really don’t need or want government help in that decision do we?
That's not what this is about. This is about government giving its official sanction to people offing themselves and involving others in the act. The next step is euthanasia where government approves of its agents offing you if government deems your life too troublesome or expensive to maintain.
From my perspective and beliefs, freedom does not equal license. I don’t believe your life is your own. I would say while someone can choose to end his life, that someone doesn’t have a right to end his life.
Bookmark
Joe Biden in 2015, “It’s patriotic to kill yourself”.
If you WANT to kill yourself, do it.
There are very few who can not do the deed, THEMSELVES, without assistance.
However, when you institutionalize it, when you ask the public and the medical profession and the law to authorize it, it becomes dangerous.
I think of the elderly woman who came to see me, middle aged son in tow. She asked to change the beneficiary designation on some life insurance and annuity contracts. It was an “orphaned account” or one without a current, assigned agent or broker. I pulled up the file, pulled up the forms, and did what she asked. The daughter that was with her, at the time, became the sole beneficiary of everything.
Then, the next day, the same woman came in, with her SON in tow. The elderly woman wanted to change her beneficiaries again, to the son this time, as sole beneficiary.
I excused myself, and called the family attorney, whose phone number was in the file. I told him my concerns. The attorney advised me to tell my clients my concerns, and send the entire family to his office the next morning.
I agreed, in that conversation with the attorney, to be a witness in court that the mother was not of sound mind and body and that these changes seemed to be made under duress.
People with terminal illnesses are very, very vulnerable, and they often have some level of dementia as well.
Assisted suicide is GREAT for a family member that wants to change all the paperwork around, and then KILL OFF GRANDMA!
I'm not sure what or who gave you that idea.
Freedom provided it agrees with traditional conservative values and coincides with the party line.
Is your life really your own if you can’t choose to end it?
Your life yours? Surely you jest. Make your own decisions? Surely you're off your meds.
And here's the kicker- I have to put (sarcasm) in here somewhere or somebody will think I'm being serious and argue with me about these points...
Honestly, this is something I figured out when I was a kid. When people talk about freedom, they mean freedom for them. Everybody else is just supposed to agree with them.
Most abortions are done for convienence. It is not a big leap at all for people of the same mold to off other "burdens" and write it up as a doctor assisted suicide. In 6 years, the oldest baby boomers will reach 70 years old. In 15 years, a large number of them will be in their 70's. Hospitals will be heavily booked. If someone with cronic health problems is taking up a room and causing the hospital to lose money, I can see a "suicide" happening, much like Bill Clinton's old mysterious Arkancides. I can also see greedy children of some of the more wealthy boomers using maniupulation for will money. Greed brings out the dark side in people, especially when those can convince themselves that they are helping these people end suffering. Maybe that is the case, but it is not for these people to make that decision. These are humans with free will, not dogs.
See, what you should say is 'I don't believe my life is my own.'
Out of curiosity, who do you believe your life belongs to?
Isn’t it ironic that the healthcare 0 wants encourages the elderly, the sick, the depressed to end it all.
“Choice” now becomes a business in more ways then one.
Follow the money, as usual.
0’ is setting up our Soylent Green factories.
Thanks for the clarification, I should have proofread more carefully. I believe my life belongs to God and I am to live that life in service to Him.
I mean this without offense, only in a factual sense: the only thing people who oppose "right to die" legislation are endorsing is for people to die in great pain, rather than relative comfort.
Your only against this if you have never had a loved one in your arms dying with PAIN as their organs melt with cancer from within, one by one, day by day by day by day. The “end” does not happen quickly in many cases it takes days and days of living hell.
The flip side to the euthanasia movement is the shadowy “death underground railroad”. These are people who want to take away any role that government has in their death at all.
It begins when someone learns they are terminally ill or dying. So they transfer as much of their property to their relatives as they can, and “disappear”. They travel to a rural home stay, where they will live with a relative or two in the home stay, until they die of whatever disease, or natural causes.
Then just that relative, or a few others, turn up for their burial in a secret but consecrated cemetery. There is no death certificate, no announcement of their death, no autopsy, nothing. They vanish.
And it drives the government nuts. Importantly, no fraud is involved. Government checks and inquiries are returned, with a “moved, left no forwarding address” on the envelope. The family makes no effort to collect insurance, or have the person declared dead. Nor do they file a missing persons report.
As the Australians say, “They are on walkabout”.
And the more people who escape on the “death underground railroad”, the more trouble it makes for bureaucrats. And that has to be good.
You hit the nail on the head. Greedy and selfish adult children are a plague on some residents of hursing homes. If it were possible, many such children would convince their parents to end their ives or have their parents put to death to save "their" inheritance from being "wasted" on the long term care of those who earned the money to begin with. I've seen it too often and it is repugnant what some people will do for money.
Agreed. We'll see a huge uptick in murders of the elderly for money should this become law here. As is the case in other countries, it is always cheaper to bury people who are too problematic to treat.
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