Posted on 06/12/2012 2:30:27 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Right-to-die activists hope more countries will allow assisted suicide or euthanasia in coming years as the world population ages, but opponents are determined to stop them, a dispute that flared ahead of competing conferences in Switzerland.
"We have seen over the last 20 years a general migration of positivity towards this being a just cause," Ted Goodwin, the American president of the World Federation of Right-to-Die Societies, told a news conference in Zürich on Tuesday. …
Assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland since 1942, if performed by a non-physician who has no direct interest in the death. Euthanasia, or "mercy killing", is legal only in the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the U.S. state of Oregon.
Goodwin said the election of Socialist François Hollande as French president could help the euthanasia cause in Europe. Hollande has said he favors euthanasia under strict conditions.
"If France falls into line, I believe Germany will also adopt it. That is a game changer in Europe," he said, noting support for reform was also gaining traction in Australia and Massachusetts. "Things are happening slowly but surely." …
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is organizing an alternative conference on Friday to coincide with the public part of the Right-to-Die gathering in Zurich.
"Together with the increasing cost pressure in the health sector and the increasing loneliness of older people, organized assistance for suicide is a breeding ground which promotes suicide," Roland Graf, a priest who is vice-president for Human Life International Switzerland, told a separate news conference.
"The pressure is growing on people who can no longer give to society what is expected of them. They increasingly feel themselves as a burden for society and their relatives." …
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
I’m re-thinking that retirement home in Oregon.
Fixed!
How far behind can Duty to Die be?
Burn victims, people with cancer, AIDS, victims of dismemberment all have stock in this.
I don’t see the problem.
We healthy children of God have the responsibility of lovingly caring for those who are who are in terrible physical or mental pain. It is our privilege and duty to comfort and support them, whether it takes drugs, therapy, surgery, daily assistance, or companionship to ease their pain. I am tired of hearing busybodies talk of the the “poor quality of life” available to those whom they would euthanize. Quality of life is not something anyone else can measure. God gives life, and only He should decide when it will end.
>>I don’t see the problem.<<
Get ready for the nanny-staters who will basically say that grandma and grandpa will be “pressured” (they never say how) to climb onto an icebergh.
IMHO, my life, and its final disposition, is between me and my God. It is the ultimate personal decision and no business of anyone else’s.
Do not forget the Democrat politician who said what half of them are thinking -- "The old have a duty to die."
That is what this is all about.
And I thank God to awake each and every day for another chance at yeaterday ... only this time I have a shot at doin' it better.
I don't understand nor agree with any right to die philosophy.
When God takes HIS hand off of me .. then ...
Bless you, FRiend.
I am in favor of assisted suicide, if it is in fact the person’s own free decision.
Euthanasia, OTOH, is rife with the possibility/probability of abuse and any rational human being should vehemently oppose it.
Yep.. a GOVERNMENT-IMPOSED duty to die...
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We've got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life.He said this way back in 1984, too.
This might soon be touted as a money saving solution for the European wave of gray, so that they don’t go under paying for people who retired at 60.
True. For many people, still living is of sufficient quality.
I always think of a skit Bill Murray did as a condemned man awaiting his execution. When they came for him, he had candles lit ( for his last hours ) and was reading the encyclopedia. As they put their hands on him he said, "Just let me finish this one article, it's really interesting."
So go out and shoot yourself quietly.
But this is about killing people, and making us docs do the dirty work for the relatives who want grandma to be killed
And it doesn't start with those in pain who are dying: It quickly morphs into killing kids and the elderly who are handicapped...without asking them.
The agenda is out there in the open for folks to see: and it is the flip side of rationing medicine for those whose quality of life is judged too low.
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