If I get to 3 or 4 or 5 score years I am not really going to quibble about how I leave.

It's how I got here that's important.

Rhys Jones' paragraph 13 clearly contrasts the size of the respective stakes of the players when an abortion is up for consideration.

Any who cannot appraise that contrast in favour of the unborn may have already left the human race.

Squeers: Economics? I need not point out the paradox of IVF and abortion in the one society…

Quality of life? Let the owner of each life judge that.

Rhys a culture that keeps "suicide a private" matter is a culture that isolates and abandons those who may be struggling to find reasons NOT to end their lives.

Isn't it possible that legalised euthanasia, requiring "counselling", may save lives, as those who otherwise feel they have nowhere to turn, no one to talk to, now have institutions that respect their choice but seek to provide alternatives before they make it? No, no, no Rhys says. Sweep it under the rug! It's much better under there, where we can't see it.

Secondly you seem fine with the prospect that people may need to resort to starving themselves to death if they want to end their lives. How utterly inhumane.

We don't have culture of death. We have a culture of meddling by government and do-gooders in other peoples' lives/deaths. If people feel the need to end their lives, they should be allowed to or helped to if they cannot manage it themselves. As for abortions, let's leave that to the women and or families involved, too.

People are helped to die every day. Abortions are performed without reference to Right to Life busybodies.

The author it appears holds the view that the ego is the centre, object, and norm of all human life. Seemingly the footprint of 7 billion humans on planet earth is insufficient and we must preserve ‘superior’ man at all costs – including the genetically maimed yet-to-be-born, the aged and infirmed who have lived the good life and who now wish only to seek a peaceful and pain-free non-existence.

Recently a Frankenstein laboratory in New Zealand implanted human uterine genes in a cow to assist infertile humans. The uterus grew to massive proportions inside the cow and the cow exploded but there are always other non-humans on which we can inflict pain and terror so that we can breed like rabbits because it’s all for the sake of ‘humanity.’

To preserve human over-population we torture non-human species – hacking off testicles and uteruses without the benefits of anaesthetics to make the beasts fat for human consumption.

Humans incarcerate, sterilise, beat, starve, skin alive and force-feed non-humans with deadly chemicals and hormone growth substances and abuse non-humans to preserve ‘humanity.’

Humanity destroys animal habitats and the forests which support them. Humans poison rivers, oceans, air, soil – in fact the entire biosphere to allow humanity to reach its goal of some 10 billion by the year 2050. Humanity has turned feral!

Legalised euthanasia – yes - but have I missed the esoteric message in the author’s article?

Great to see how this article is reacted to!
Choice for individuals should always trump the right for others to dictate.
Anyone who thinks they have the right to hover over people and decide what they can or cannot do is naturally somewhat extreme in their views and probably cannot be reasoned with. Allowing old or sick folks to choose their exit point is pretty obvious to me, and preventing it is often such a blatant act of spite and evil that I won't even go there. Of *course* self suicide should be "legal". The alternative is to empower the worst kinds of people in society!
Abortion is a natural process for 60% or more fertilised foetuses. The first few months of life are always a throwaway experiment for nature. Part of the quality control system is to abort less-then-perfect attempts. (Intelligent design anyone?) If "human cells" are so valuable then we should all be collecting our excrement and tissues...however if "humanity" is valued then the need of a mother to live unencumbered *does* clearly trump the need of a bunch of unconscious human cells. The "potential human" argument does not apply to an advanced foetus any more than fertilised eggs...of which countless millions are destroyed each year by nature.
What anti-abortionists have as an argument is a sort of moral superiority based on extreme ignorance and/or idealism. As with the anti euthanasia brigade, empower them at your peril!
I mean seriously: We let politicians off the hook for enabling millions of deaths overseas (the recent illegal wars), then want to spend good money (Laws are expensive!) saving folks who want to die, or don't exist yet!

Thanks, Protagoras, I've suspected for some time that the pro-euthanasia argument could easily slide into eugenics and other fascist ideologies. But it's interesting to see how Green ideologies can evolve in those directions too.

As a Greens supporter (well, up until now), thank you for clarifying some of the current rationales for killing off the unwanted and unfit: 'to save the planet' - Hitler would have been a bit pissed off that he didn't use that one.

Joe Lane