All very confusing. Euthanasia is now defined as such only if a doctor does it for you. Therefore, if you put yourself out of misery, it must be plain old fashioned suicide, which is still on the books as being illegal, I believe. You can't win! Forget all the blather from people who think they know what's best for us. DIY still seems the way to go.

People can already choose to end unbearable lives! What euthanasia demands is that someone else does it for them!

As for choosing not to suffer, all that is required to achieve that is a living will, while you're still in charge of all your faculties!

Besides, it is the nearest and dearest who are required to decide on your behalf, when you are no longer able to.

Or are just too depressed to make rational decisions.

Euthanasia is not a cure for aged depression, self pity or loneliness!

Which is 80-90% of the reasons for wanting life and its sheer boredom to end!?

A surprising number who share this view frequently change their minds after a stay in hospitable, where they receive the longed for care and attention!

And or, exposed to folk far worse off/suffering far more and bearing stoically rather than as spineless whining whimps!

Hardly a week goes by than we hear of a new breakthrough that treats painful conditions, say like crippling rheumatoid arthritis.

Misery loves company, and voluntary euthanasia is about hopelessness and hopeless people just giving up: when for all we know, that impossible cure/big win/changed circumstances/unexpected help is just around the corner?

And VOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA has already ended the lives of folk with entirely imagined or already cured problems!?

If you're serious about not wanting to suffer, then make a living will!

Ensure your family and G.P. receive a copy, so they can know your real mind, rather than try and read it, when you are unconscious or rendered speechless by a stroke.

Being asked to give up booze or nicotine in the interests of your health, may seem like the end of the world and an excuse to want to shuffle off the mortal coil, that no longer encourages folk to slowly kill themselves, and ask others to foot the bill?

Voluntary Euthanasia is already available to folk in Canada and Belgium, and the evidence from there suggests very strongly that starting down that path is indeed a very slippery slope! Besides, we can already choose not to suffer!
Rhrosty.

' People generally dislike others interfering in their life, not respecting their views, telling them with whom they should have sex,'

Of course paedophiles hate others telling them who they can have sex with David. And of course those rigtheous souls who cant wait to receive their inheritance despite not even bothering to visit their parents/grandparents would cheer your suggestion.

Oh that's right you are an ethicist and exempt from the adamic nature (at least in your own eyes).

Whatever, Runner.

Doesn't the "bible" instruct those who believe in it literally (you, I gather) to mind their own sins first and foremost? Specifically ahead of those of others? Do get on with it. chop chop, times a-wasting.

Remember, It is an *order* to *you* from *your* holy "god", so don't feel you need make a retort, just get humble and get worried about your own failings.

Bye.

Rusty.

I know you don't like the stupidity of your dogmas exposed Rusty. Same old moral relativist garbage with the 'enlightened' being used to justify the perverse and wicked. A little like the dishonest secularist who claimed abortion was about that poor 15 year old raped. Now we have the industry reaping millions per year in the murder of the unborn. Oh wonderful thing human nature without restraint isn't it Rusty.

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Why not simply legalise suicide ? That's an act of genuine self-determination, after all ? End of.

Whether one leaves it all too late and has to somehow involve someone else in one's last hours, is another matter.

So let's move step by step, and see how it goes: legalise suicide, make it sort of respectable, and see how that goes.

I have a fair idea that if I'm sure that I have Alzheimer's, I'll kiss everybody goodbye at a certain point and mean it. Like everyone in Adelaide, I live near a beach, so it will probably be late summer.

There's a thought for economic innovation in SA: make Adelaide the suicide capital of the world - you can stay in the best hotels, see the sights, taste all the wines from Clare and the Barossa down to the Vales and Middleton, even get down to the Limestone Coast and Coonawarra or up into the Riverland. Then, perhaps in groups of new-found and tipsy friends, walk into the sea at West Beach. Economists estimate it could bring $ 453.9 million into the SA economy each year.

Sounds good :)

Joe

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What abuse? I read Rusty's posts and saw no abuse. God bless the Stasi, protecting us from non-abuse.

I thought this thread was about euthanasia, not abortion? Runner strikes again....

Loudmouth, I fail to see the point in legalising suicide, or in leaving it illegal.
Who are we going to punish once the person kills themselves?

The main point about legalising voluntary euthanasia is to assist those unable to finish their own life by themselves, so banging on about suicide is really a moot point.

No one is calling for involuntary euthanasia in any case, so anyone who opposes legalising voluntary euthanasia is free to fight on bravely to the bitter end, as they please...

//Why not simply legalise suicide ? That's an act of genuine self-determination, after all ? End of.//

It is legal. Has been for some time. They used to imprison people who attempted suicide, and then some clever dick figured out that when a man has just tried to kill himself and failed, sticking him in gaol for the night is probably not the best way to improve his general outlook on life.

//The main point about legalising voluntary euthanasia is to assist those unable to finish their own life by themselves//

And to give the still capable a better option than severing the femoral artery, which I regard as the best option in the absence of appropriate pharmaceuticals. It's quick but it's very messy. Wouldn't it just be easier to allow those who wish to end their lives the chance to do so in a dignified manner?

Those who claim that medicine can cure or alleviate all suffering have been taking too much prozac. Medicine still can't give quality of life to people with MS, auto-immune disease, alzheimers, and a long list of other things that render a person's life miserable or pointless.

I want the option to take a pill if and when I feel its time. The vatican fan-boys and their politician front-men want to stop me having a choice; oh right, a bunch of prissy old men in drag have the audacity to tell me what's "moral" while their church has spent decades covering up child abuse?

Hi Obnbklcnblu,

As an atheist, I've never been sure what religion has to do with euthanasia. From my point of view, we each have only one life, there is no after-life, except perhaps for the worms. So life is very precious, our one and only. We most certainly should take very seriously the notion to end it.

But it should be our own personal choice. I don't believe that it is fully legal yet, otherwise doctors could, after proper counselling, prescribe medication for it quite legally.

Suicide has, of course, always been possible, if not legal, but the point is that there are still probably all manner of legal obstacles and problems that it throws up.

Please let's keep clearly separated the issues of suicide on the one hand, and some sort of assisted euthanasia on the other. They are very different kettles of fish.

Joe

"As an atheist, I've never been sure what religion has to do with euthanasia."

It is the intolerance of modern leftists that makes it so. The old or 'real' Lefties would be turning in their graves at the intolerance of the modern leftists. Then there is their preference for totalitarian Islam.

The modern leftists must have compartmentalised minds. Perhaps it is as simple as personal powerlessness (and jealous hatred) that has caused them to suspend their critical faculties and judgement to be led by nose by others with secondary agendas in mind?

The old Lefties knew religion as quaint and prop for some, but hey, each to his own, the real enemy is fundamentalism, totalitarianism. The modern leftists ARE totalitarians, it is their way or the highway and they support fundamentalists for the idiotic, unjustifiable, short-sighted convenience that 'the enemy of the Islamic fundamentalists is their (the leftists')enemy, usually the US (regardless of whether the US policy is good or bad too). It is they, the modern leftists who are the enemy.

'I thought this thread was about euthanasia, not abortion? Runner strikes again....'

obviously mouthing off without reading the article Susie. Progressives really do even deceive themselves ( or is it deliberate). If the article was about euthanasia why did the author speak of homosexulaity, God unjustly 'killing people'. The author being Christophobic like yourself Susie draws his hopelessly flawed conclusions through Christophobic eyes. He does not even attempt to hide his dogmas.

Rhosty, far from being " spineless, whining whimps" and “hopeless people just giving up" members of Exit international (and other voluntary euthanasia groups) are strong-minded, clear-headed people who have decided to take control of their own lives and own deaths. They make preparation for possible future ill health, and then get on with enjoying life.
runner, maybe David Swanton could have better worded the passage about people's dislikes. But a short reflection should make it obvious that he is referring to homosexuality and the currently much-discussed topic of equality of marriage. It is foolish to twist his words this way, and does you no credit.
Joe, your romantic picture of swimming off happily into the sunset gives a very wrong impression off that situation. If you have ever almost drowned, as I have, you would know that it is a terrifying ordeal and that you would be regretting your decision as instincts kick in when you are breathing water instead of air. That is why it becomes necessary to provide safe, reliable and gentle means of death when required.

Er, wrong, onthebeach. (There goes that annoying Chris Rea song in my head again.)

<<It is the intolerance of modern leftists that makes it so.>>

The answer to Loudmouth's question is that (most) theists make it so by claiming that euthanasia is playing God and that it devalues the sanctity of God-given life. Suicide is a sin in the eyes of many religions.

Just how do you propose - in the bizarre and delusional reality that you have created in your own head - that “modern leftists” could drag religion into, and mobilise it on, a topic that they (according to you) originally had no interest in in the first place?

That’s some feat!

You never attempt to hide your warped dogmas Runner, and you push them on the rest of us relentlessly....continuously....

AJPhillips, well said!

if u stopped to think for one minute you will realise that it is the regressives looking to change the laws to suite their own dogmas Susie. I am just pointing out the obvious which you seem to easily miss.

Runner, you and your mad crowd do the very same thing! You want to change the abortion laws to suit your own religious dogmas!
Pot calling the kettle black....