The Forum > Article Comments > Gillard's conflict on euthanasia more than justified > Comments
Gillard's conflict on euthanasia more than justified : Comments
By Jim Wallace, published 1/10/2010No matter how you intellectualise euthanasia it will never be right.
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The whole bottom line of the issue of personal decision is being missed (or dodged) into some kind of institutional decision, when it is easy (not to mention the entire structure of the pro movement) to base the laws around the DEMAND of the patient, not anyone else (and thus would NOT be covered under Euthanasia law and would have roughly the same freedom to act out their will as they do now.
I'm actually convinced that the communication failure is because many people sincerely don't HAVE personal will and cannot seriously believe such a thing exists in others; but themselves live more to somebody else's instructions, and assume everyone else must be too. As such, they are frightened that this will set a precedent for 'bad people' to start appearing and convincing people to kill themselves.
Beyond that, a personal moral inflicted on others that "death" is the worst option and people who feel that being stuck on a life-support is worse are simply wrong and must be prevented from acting on their own beliefs.
There is no way after so much (and unfortunately, repeated) analysis to ensure personal will is the sole instigator is the patient's un-coerced demand to be euthanized as the only legal basis to do it could fail to get through unless for the above explanations;
I always wonder why Australia is so unlucky to have such paternalistic people attracted to politics- now I think it's quite a standard attitude we have here.