I watched a television documentary a few nights ago about a young woman who committed suicide and was encouraged to do so by a man in online chat.  He apparently has done this many times.  While illegal in some places now, I think that in the very near future it will be quite legal to counsel someone to commit suicide.

We live in a culture of death in which human life is no longer sacred.  Human life is disposable when it becomes inconvenient.  This began with the legalization of abortion and will continue with euthanasia.

And this supposed culture where we supposedly held human life sacred.... when was this? Some "Leave it to Beaver Episode" along with "traditional marriage"?

Do you ever take a minute, DG, to think before you post this nonsense? Have you ever botherered to learn the brutal and bloody history of your own religion?

When Christianity has had more than 50 - 100 years out of 2000 of holding human life as "sacred", maybe then you can preach. Until then, stop whining.

Oh, you refuse, do you?

Let me get this straight.... no really

You sneer. You insult other people's faith. You make false accusations about other people's motives and beliefs. You disparage other people's posts, and hurl inslults and sneers at other people's thoughts......

And in return you think you have the right to demand civil discussion from the people you shit on? You think you have the basis to drip and moan about how people are so mean to you? You think others have to extend the politeness to you that you cannot extend to them?

How very arrogant and self righteous of you. How very hypocritical of you.

How very like you.

Martyr wannabe

C-384 is a private members bill introduced by Bloc MP Francine Lalonde.  First reading has not yet been voted on.  Considering the fate of most private members bills, I don't think it's too much to worry about.

I was just going to post that this is a private members bill and so won't get anywhere.

However, the issue has been raised by the Quebec Medical association as something that needs discussion and policies.

I think that is because some assisted "suicides" go on , or at least some patients are allowed to die.

I think most docs have no issue with the terminally ill , in hospital patient getting extra morphine to ease their suffering and shorten their lives.

The issue becomes more complicated when it is a healthier person who is facing a debilitating illness and wishes to avoid the certain future.

I am concerned about the mentally ill person who sees no hope due to their disease and yet has a future once they get some relief.

It needs to be discussed and it certainly needs more controls than this "bill " appears to have.

I was just thinking about life being sacred - but also thinking that a release from suffering can be a very sacred moment too.

Also wondering how a person define life.  In the literal sense of being physically alive - or in the broader sense of really living and being able to have some joy in that? 

I agree that the bill won't likely go anywhere.  But the topic is a good one.  Gets a little fuzzier for me when I think of avoiding going through an illness at all.  And definitely raises big concerns about a person whose primary issue is depression.  Not that depression isn't a living hell - just that there is that hope for recovery.

TL

How so. Helping someone to die does not qualify as "harm" as in do no harm and perpetuating life for it's own sake no matter what is depraved.

This is exactly my position as well.  I worry, having been there myself, about someone who is so certain they want to end their life that they might possibly be able to access this process, but I'm thinking that with the appropriate checks and balances that would be picked up before any decision is made. 

I've heard though, of a very few rare cases depression that appear to not respond to treatment.  I don't think this is very common, but there are those who have tried everything under a doctor's care and still can't recover, even temporarily, and they endure this for decades.  What then?  Should they be allowed to choose a gentle passing vs a horrible suicide? 

Tough questions which I couldn't answer.

Same with a chronic illness.  What if there isn't a clear, measurable, terminal prognosis, but the person experiences their quality of life as unbearable?  That's tricky too, because what's tolerable for one person, isn't at all for another.  I"m thinking of diseases like ALS.  There are those who want to live it out and others who would rather go before they are helpless. 

What bothers me too, is that for those with supportive families, the decision to live may be more practical.  What about those who are alone?  All to many are.  Do we throw them to the mercy of a healthcare system that isn't even able to manage basic care, let alone the need for connection and TLC at a very vulnerable time of their lives?  Is everyone dealt a fair hand in this?  I would choose to go earlier in this case. 

TL -- I totally agree that the sacred is found in a response to a difficult situation, and not an "across the board" designation on principle.

And my position is that no thinking, rational person should ever needlessly prolong the suffering of an individual, or prolong the indignity of being kept alive with no chance of regaining awareness, if that individual has previously made the decision to end his or her life.

It is about quality of life.  You can keep a heart beating in a jar, if you want.  That's not a life.  Being continuously medicated for pain while simply waiting to die is not a life.  For those individuals who have made the call, I respect their wishes.  It is their life, their reasons are sound, and the concept of someone else's twisted morality trumping the decision of the terminally ill or those in a vegitative state to end their own life, is repugnant to me.

The bill, as it sounds, could use some work - specifically where the individual refuses treatment for the underlying illness.  That part I don't agree with.  But the basics of this bill do appear sound, and it is high time we get out of the legal "grey area" when it comes to allowing people to decide when enough is enough,

lol - and yet another slowly written post from me.   Sorry it doesn't follow from what you said Chansen.

TL

And what's more to the point, I still have that hangnail

So you didn't like that I rightly pointed out that this is merely your opinion on the subject, rather than the point of fact you tried to make it out to be?

I'm sorry that I made your fallacy difficult.

Forcing someone to endure pain and suffering with a certain death far away is twisted.  It's sadistic.  And it is your morality trying to trump the morality of others, and the decisions of those who are actually enduring the suffering.  You're sick.

.

besh, you are relatively  new here.  This is not a civil place.  Far from it.  I used to be very concerned about that, but just in the last little while, it has stopped worrying me.  It is what it is. 

The most uncivil folks here are here all the time and I think they like to act that way because they cannot in real life.  They can speak in ways here that would get them a knuckle sandwich in a pub. The net gives them a kind of power to be arrogant, smug and condescending.  It gives them a soapbox and they make conversation into a competition.  If you disagree with them, they will not take it lightly.  If you criticise them for it, be ready for a flood of verbal abuse.   It is a little bit like being in grade eight all over again. If you ignore them, they will birddog you, following you around like an angry chihuahua, biting at your ankles.

I wish there was an ignore button like there is in chat.  I think it would allow conversation to be more civil and create an atmosphere of exchange, but it ain't gonna happen.

And then there are peope like DG, whoi insult and abuse people, and then pretend to be put out and righteous when they recieve the same in kind. People who demand civility from others, but do not require it of themselves. In short.... hypocrites.

Good thing I got that big order of Irony meters.

In the cases that fall under the purvue of euthansia the end is the same - death.  Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that if one's pain can not be endured death is a logical choice. 

Neither you nor I can judge another's capacity for pain nor can we judge what our level will be until faced with it.  The individuals who ask for release from pain do know their level.  They are feeling it and they know what the outcome will be, all they ask is that the duration of their suffering be shortened.

Your comprehension is irrelevant.  It is the comprehension of the individual who makes the request that should be the factor.

LB

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know.

Socrates

Kappa, no bill a government could write will prevent the above scenario, for that individual is capable of taking matters into their own hands.

It currently is not illegal in Canada for anyone, rational or irrational, from taking their own lives.  What is illegal is for someone, and in the case of C-384 it is addressing physicians, to aid someone in their choice.  The current situation means that those who are in custody of care have to regulate pain relief to make sure that the person doesn't die from overdose, a balancing act that becomes increasingly more difficult with increasing levels of pain.

Here is a link to the actual Bill and not snippets pulled to promote a specific agenda.   

house of commons of Canada BILL C-384 

Note it has not even gone to first reading and rarely, if ever, does a bill not undergo dramatic revisions before being submitted into law, where it then has to jump through a whole other bunch of hoops.

The reality is that many people facing painful suffering end their lives every day.  The tragic part is not their deaths, for that is inevitable, but that some will choose to do so before they either need or want to because they know that if they don't there will be no one there to help them at the end.

What this bill can do is change how the inevitable is experienced for nothing can deter the final outcome.

LB

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it unless it has all been suffering, nothing but suffering.     Jane Austen

In your opinion. An opinion, I might add, based on pure speculation, without the benefit of experience.

Once again, you are making an opinion based on pure speculation, and resorting to dismissing the opinions of others as "no clue", which would include the opinions of people who actually ARE in that situation.

What makes your inexperienced and uninformed and uneducated opinion so much better than that of those actually in the situation, that you would stoop to issueing it as a fact?

Yes I suspect your are certain of it. It's too bad that being certain of something does not prevent you from being wrong. That you admit the alternative is beyond your comprehension is ar least a step in the right direction.

And exactly what "no foreseeable consequences" are you referring to? It would seem to me that the consequences of death are pretty well known..... you're dead. Or are you referring to the religious consequences? Well if want to consider some religious edict from a control hungry priesthood made thousands of years before modern medicine to be a possible consequence, well please do not euthanize yourself. To make others suffer needlessly because you need to believe some big dude in the sky commands us to suffer no matter what, for some unknown reason...... well consider this. If I was preventing you from doing something you felt you needed and had every right to do, because I declared THOR forbade it... would you just give up and aquiesce?

No, you wouldn't. But if you're denying people the right to die with dignity because of your beliefs in what you think God wants, then that's exactly what you're doing.

And murder is a straw man, given the context.

Even so, among some fundies it seems that murder is perfectly fine, and God's will, if you think the Muslim across the street (or the Muslim state across the ocean) might someday attack you for some unknown reason. The Bible says it's perfectly fine to murder whole civilizations if some old guy with a snake stick declares that God wants you to have their land.

Compared to that, allowing people to die with a little bit of dignity, seems pretty trivial.

All you've given is your opinion on why you don't like or agree with it. The idea that enduring any amount of pain is always preferable to death is completely subjective. That is a judgment call based solely on personal opinion. You (as someone who has never had that kind of endless suffering) believe that living will still be better than death. Fine. If/when it happens to you, you can choose to live. When someone else chooses to die a free and decent socitey respects that decision. It does not indicate an inability to reason when someone makes a decision that you wouldn't make. If that is beyond your comprehension then so be it, it is not beyond the comprehension of others.

Also the comparative use murder in this debate is a fallicy. Murder is done to others not one's self. I love the quote "the right to swing my fist ends where the other mans nose begins". I don't have the right to walk up to somebody and punch him in the nose. I could however punch myself in the nose if I want. I don't have the right to take someone else's life, but I certainly do my own. Think of smoking. When did it start to become so restricted? When the danger of second hand smoke was discovered. It was no longer only something smokers did to their own lungs, it was a harm they were inflicting on everyone else as well. I as a non-smoker was having my lungs poisoned by their actions. If a terminally ill guy in Oregon chooses to end his life I am not harmed in any way. If a healthy guy next door chooses to do so I am not harmed. This is not an area where criminilization does any good at all and neither does passing off fallacies as if they were fact.

What we need to understand is that preaching how to act "morally" to people is not necessary. 

Morality is also an opinion. Not every single person is liable to react in the same way.

You may say that you will act in a certain way in a certain situation, but when it does happen you can react in a totally different way, can't you?

You know Beshpin, you may have the "desire to continue life in all of its forms", but I do not see how or why you would think that everyone should have the same expectations of life.

Life just happens. Death is a part of life, and that is how it is.

Exactly and the same can be said about euthansia.