The Maine legislature has passed a so-called “death with dignity” bill allowing doctors to prescribe death-dealing drugs to patients with a terminal condition and six months or less to live.
As I record this, the bill returns to the legislature for final disposition, and the governor has not yet indicated whether or not she will sign.
Supporters cite safeguards in order to promote the bill: that it’s for adults only, and doctors must assess the patient’s mental capacity, etc.
But that misses the point that doctors are often wrong. That the right to die always becomes the duty to die. We know of instances where families pressure loved ones to end their lives. As soon as Canada allowed “assistance in dying,” physicians called for euthanizing ill minors. There are insurance company pressures where medication to die is cheaper than medication to live, and it tells others, including our youth, that suicide is an option.
If you live in Maine, tell your representatives and the governor to stop this deadly bill.
John Stonehouse, The Point.
Blogger: Regular readers will know just how much I struggle with this issue.
I accept every point made by Mr Stonehouse but I add here one or two points from the other side of this issue:
1) Science has moved the goalposts people who 'should have' died, haven't, because of modern medicine. I am one such.
2) God gave man the right to take life in Genesis 9:6 - is this a transferable concept?
3) Is our God a promoter of abject misery? - That is hardly the Jesus I meet in the Gospels.
4) If we let a dog suffer at the end of its life like we do with so many humans - we would rightly be prosecuted. It is hardly a response to blithely state that 'you are not comparing like with like.'
Give me a vote on legalisation of euthanasia and I honestly have no idea at all what I would do.
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