The real question for myself is this;should the departure from this life be one of a drug induced stupor,or will I have the courage to face the pain and reality that has transported me to this place in time?Out with a whimper,not a bang?Is this the way the world ends?Yes T.S Elliot

There are many ways of ending it all,from hanging ,jumping off cliffs or car crashes.Why do we need legalised forms of drug exits,when there are other forms of death,that will take real courage for the individual to exit in a clarity of mind that honours the life that they fought so hard for?

For the Japanese of the past,honour was everything and Seppuku would have taken courage way beyond any notion of our western weakness.

Do soft option exists respect the worth of an individuals life?

Arjay, for an act to be courageuous, there has to be a good reason to permform it. To undergo pointless pain is not an act of courage, but of stupidity. You might as well challenge someone to lie down on a busy road and wait for a car to run over them. It would be absurd for someone to ask if you had the courage to do that.

For the same reason, it is absurd to suppose that it is couragous to reject palliative care and die in unnecessary agony. And it is absurd to suppose that a person for whom no drugs can any longer ease their pain would be courageous in refusing euthanasia.

And on a second argument, however sacred one might think a normal human life is, there is nothing sanctified about a person in prolonged final agony. In such circumstances,even Catholic theologians permit giving enough drugs to ease the pain, in the knowledge that doing so will also kill the patient.

There was a West Australian court case a while ago where a doctor and relatives of a dead woman were charged with being unlawfully involved in her death. I don't recall the details or what the actual charge was. The woman was in a situation of pain and ill-health and she wanted to die.

From what I saw in the media, it seemed to me that there was no doubt of the defendants' involvement, but the jury quickly came to a 'not guilty' verdict.

This is the way I see it. A jury of twelve, picked at random, would likely include nine people who wanted voluntary euthanasia to be lawful and felt cheated by dishonest politicians who would not pass such a law. So why would they find someone guilty of allegedly doing something which they did not think should be unlawful anyway? Probably many people thought that's what happened on this occasion.

If I was on such a jury, no way would I support a guilty verdict and I would do my utmost to persuade the others jury members to acquit. After a few fiascos of this nature, maybe the politicians would get the message.

Arjay - have I misunderstood your point? You seem to be suggesting that medically supported suicide for the terminally ill should not be available in part because there are other ways to go

"There are many ways of ending it all,from hanging ,jumping off cliffs or car crashes.Why do we need legalised forms of drug exits,when there are other forms of death,that will take real courage for the individual to exit in a clarity of mind that honours the life that they fought so hard for?"

Putting aside the fundamental issue of the rights and wrongs of suicide for the moment
- hanging, jumping off cliffs and car crashes all leave a mess for outsiders to clean up (along with pretty much any other self performed suicide). The trauma for the unsuspecting person who finds the body, the danger for the people who will need to retrieve the body, the dangers to road users as ambulances race to the scene etc.
- The kinds of suicide methods you talk about are not foolproof, people can be left trapped severly injured but not dead by any of the means you suggested. Car crashes can also harm others very easily.
- I would suspect that for the majority of the terminally ill who have reached the point where medical suicide is a prefered option access to hanging, jumping off cliffs and car crashes is getting fairly limited.

R0bert

To God-botherers like Martin
Here is a question for you. When do individuals have the right to control their own lives? The christian community did NOT create us. It did NOT provide our living for us or provide us with a partner. If it did NOT any of these what gives it the right to stop us from being allowed to CHOOSE our time to die?

That's right choose. Not forced to do something by fundamentalist christian legislation. When will you get it through your heads? There is a fundamental difference between sdomeone being given a choice & someone forced to do something.

Then people like Martin have the nerve to compare other people's choice with their mandated choice & say "hey they are just two options." No they definately are NOT martin. One is tyranny one is individual liberty. Guess which is which.

The main issue as I see it is that assisting suicide is a crime while suicide, attempted or sucessful is not.

If I am in palliative care and can adjust the morphine pump myself to a level where the drugs will kill me that is legal, if a nurse or family member does it they commit a crime.

So I must die alone, without holding the hand of people I love, to stop them from breaking the law. This is cruel and unjust, but so much that the Lyons Forum does is cruel and unjust - they are just cowards hiding behind their god.