Posted on 05/09/2011 4:12:50 PM PDT by wagglebee
A new national survey in England finds disabled Britons are opposed to the national government legalizing the practice of assisted suicide, and one pro-life group is welcoming the results.
The survey, commissioned by disability group Scope, found 70% of disabled people are “concerned about pressure being placed on other disabled people to end their lives prematurely” “if there were a change in the law on assisted suicide.” The survey also found that most young adults share the concerns of older generations about the dangers of legalizing assisted suicide.
The survey found 77% of disabled people aged 18-24 and 71% of disabled people aged 25-34 expressed those concerns.
Anthony Ozimic, the communications manager for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), responded to the poll, saying, “We welcome this survey and take encouragement from its findings. Scope, which commissioned the survey, is not part of the pro-life movement and there is no suggestion of it being partisan.”
“The survey’s questions were worded fairly, unlike recent general public opinion polls which use the pro-euthanasia lobby’s euphemisms, such as ‘assisted dying’. Disabled people, including young adults, are increasingly alarmed by the celebrity-driven push for legalizing assisted suicide. Disabled people want help to live well and die naturally, not lethal injections or poison-pills,” he added.
This year, assisted suicide backers in England have been pressing again for legalization of the practice and, in January, they went further by trashing disabled people in the process.
In the British Medical Journal, Tony Delamothe wrote a column titled “One and a Half Truths About Assisted Dying,” in which he disparaged the disabled.
“Sixteen months ago I argued that the debate on assisted dying had been hijacked by disabled people who wanted to live and that it should be reclaimed for terminally ill people who wanted to die,” he said.
But American bioethicist Wesley J. Smith, in a blog post, called him on the carpet.
“Thanks to the spread of suicide tourism, the UK is going through another in a series of pushes to legalize assisted suicide. As with the last time, when a bill was introduced in the House of Lords, a commission is studying the issue. And advocates are pretending that their goal is what it clearly is not,’ he writes.
Smith says the pro-assisted suicide activism in the United Kingdom “has explicitly not been limited to the terminally ill” and writes the example of the bill in the Scottish Parliament to legalize the practice, saying MSP Margo MacDonald is referenced by Delamothe.
“Yet, it specifically would have permitted assisted suicide for people with non terminal disabilities,” he notes.
I'm sure the culture of death is baffled that their intended victims aren't lining up to be slaughtered.
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Perhaps the disabled recognize just how easily a homicide could be masked as assisted suicide?
This is always a difficult issue for me.
I think the right to end one’s own tread upon this mortal coil is an absolute right — it 100% up the the individual and the State has no right to interfere with that decision. Anyone who says other is merely a statist demanding their personal moral code be forced upon others, limiting freedom in an almost infinite manner.
The slippery slope begins when it goes from being a personal option to an obligation (a’la eskimos mythos, Logan’s Run or Soylent Green).
So long as a human draws breath and is clear on his/her intentions, the State should stay the hell out of end-life decisions: one way or the other.
Indeed. Some people do note that things that were once illegal become permissible and then, after time, become mandatory. Voluntary assisted suicide for the disabled will rapidly become involuntary assisted suicide once some f*cking accountant with a spreadsheet finds that killing the disabled will save the National Health Service (NHS) a few quid.
Welcome to the brave new world...
Once you accept that a person has the right to decide to end their own life, you open the door to others’ deciding that the person in question is too deluded or politically incorrect to make the right decision.
Disabled are like smokers, a small minority. Their vote doesn’t count. The rest see them as easy prey for their own gain.
>>Once you accept that a person has the right to decide to end their own life, you open the door to others’ deciding that the person in question is too deluded or politically incorrect to make the right decision.<<
I don’t necessarily buy that premise, but if you follow that logic, it should end with the decision from someone who is NOT in their “right mind” to always be in favor of life.
But it is wrong for the State to unilaterally take away an individual’s decision to end his/her life (so long as it does not take others’ in the process).
But the devil is always in the details.
Once you accept that the state has the right to restrict peoples' decisions about their own lives, you open the door to others deciding whatever the heck they want about your life!
NOT A SINGLE QUESTION asked about supporting or opposing the legalization of assisted suicide, unless you know of some hidden questions that weren't released with the others.
But honesty means nothing to Life News, I know.
The poll was about concerns...and many who have concerns still support the legalization. (I'm one example.)
I bet a question that asked,
"Do you believe that disabled persons should be allowed to get assistance legally in doing anything they are unable to do themselves?" would yield a strong YES result.
Why not make people crawl up courthouse steps?
Yes..that's why there are concerns even when there's support. Anyone would be stupid or crazy not to have concerns. I have concerns about RKBA, but support it. I have concerns about people drinking and driving, but I'm not against either.
It's called sanity. Just because someone is disabled doesn't mean he's insane. But in a rational society, we address concerns. There are many concerns as the law exists, such as people making botched suicide attempts, or having to kill themselves before they become too infirm, rather than waiting and having their remaining time.
In other news unborn babies oppose abortion by overwhelming majorities.
You're exactly right, but you're gonna upset the big-government nanny-state libs here. You can tell them by the way they don't care about individuals or their rights, preferences, or decisions ...they just lump together "lives" in an abstract way and proclaim that they know better than the people themselves. Oh, and if you can't do something for yourself, then you're out of luck, as far as they're concerned.
While I recognize the "obligation because of societal pressure" idea, I'm starting to question even that. We recognize a person's free will even if he's under pressure. Societal pressure doesn't mean a person must buy an iPhone. Societal pressure doesn't mean a person can't make personal decisions.
The pro-life organizations should sponsor an annual “Dr. Harold Shipman Award”, to the biggest medical advocates of euthanasia.
Dr. Harold Shipman was a convicted English serial killer. A doctor by profession, he is among the most prolific serial killers in recorded history with 218 murders being positively ascribed to him, although the actual number is likely much higher.
Shipman died on 13 January 2004, after hanging himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire.
I’ve read that many of those “assisted” had no input into their so-called “sucide”
That’s what I just said.
I don’t think the State OR the person should have the right to end a life. Of course someone who is committed to suicide is going to do it anyway, especially if they don’t believe in God, so there is no sense legislating it unless you are trying to give the State the power to end OTHER people’s lives. We are close to agreeing except whether the person has the right to end their own life and that is, in the long run, a moot point.
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