Yes Alan, I agree with your last comment. Anyone who has spent any time observing the legal system would tell you that it is not a moral arbiter in matters of life and death. Whilst the defendent's character is considered, no judge acts alone, but seeks to be guided by the social context of the times.
It is just like the modern phenomenon in which a policeman loses confidence in enforcing the law when he perceives that society will not support him, such as when sections of our social fabric is broken. Those who enact/enforce the law require its precepts to be upheld by upstanding citizens, churches and/or social interest groups. Incidence of police impotence and rioting, such as in East Timor, is evidence of this key relationship.
Furthermore, the relationship between doctor and patient is severly compromised when the doctor has legislated power to induce the patient's death. Marginal indigenous communities, who witness to their relatives 'going to hospital' and dying there, already distrust Western Medicine. This fact was crucial to the Andrews Bill successfully overturning the brief window of Euthanasia in the Northern Territory of Australia.
The last message a sick person needs is that their life is of no value. Those with no faith in God could already tell you that.

Alan Grey wrote: "I have known enough people who have already been involuntarily euthenised or been pressured towards euthenasia in this country." Alan, if you have any evidence to back your assertion, I hope you have provided this to the police, who are obliged to investigate.

We are talking about something quite different: voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide.

Arjay and others have questioned why anone would require assistance. The reality for most terminally ill people is that the means of exiting cleanly, reliably, and comfortably do require help, if only in the form of accurate information. There are few things sadder than a botched suicide attempt from someone who has made a sensible and rational choice to end their own life. For many terminally ill people I have known, just the knowledge that they can choose to end it if the going gets too tough has given them the courage to face the dying process without the terror of what they might have to otherwise go through. This is no small thing. Palliative care can do much, but you can't convince everyone that it will relieve all unbearable suffering.

Like it or not, our society is changing, and one of the changes is that more and more people are refusing to have dictated to them what they may or may not do with their own bodies. There are undoubtedly challenges with such a change: how to protect the vulnerable, the mentally ill, and those whose decision to not continue living is based on reversible neglect. But it is wrong to assume that anyone who is seeking voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide belongs to those groups. Or that everyone who wants the choice will want to exercise the euthanasia option.

Bosk, settle down turbo.

You have a habit of raising questions that are at the very heart of your potential enlightenment, but you continue to just miss the point. I wonder if you have a vague sense of it.

The question about who created us is a crucial one.

The human situation: we did not choose to be born, we did not choose that there should be a universe, we did not choose our parents, we did not choose the society we were born in, we are not able to choose to not be subject to the moral law, or whether we would or would not accept timeless principles. I'll bet you'll find oneday that even your partner wasn't wholly of your own choosing. You really want to dismiss all Greek, Jewish and Christian thought on this? It just seems to me like sawing off a branch one is sitting on for the sake of 'individual freedom from the tree'.

We have free will indeed, but the best use of it is accepting our freedom in God who made us. Who loves us, who loves YOU Bosk and who has things to do with our life that we know nothing of.

We can't say how our life is meant to be a blessing to others, how our sufferings may redeem even complete strangers. Pope John Paul II witnessed to that. And the Church's role is to remind us of these transcendent values. Society is culture, and all cultures have a religious base. That can't be avoided.

Bosk I'd much rather be called names than be proved wrong.

You wouldn't need to resort to that if you were more aware of your own religious beliefs. Starting assumptions that must simply be taken on faith.

Your name calling is your shadow giving a hint of all those wonderful secrets hidden in your religion that you've disowned - maybe because giving them the light of day might require some painful re evaluations.

God bless.

I mourn for those human beings who have sufferred involuntary death as a result of the politics of the hypocritical world leaders who as church going ,devout christians 'regret' the loss of innocent lives whilst they continue to supply technically sophisticated weapons of mass destruction that are slaughtering the innocents as I write. This 'Christian Chorus'dares to object to assisted, voluntary suicide of terminally ill people who choose to end their lives peacefully at a time and place of their choosing.
There is no end to their hypocricy...I congratulate Philip Nitschke on remembering the anniversary of a brave decision by an Australian Parliament in the Northern Territory that sought to alleviate the unnecessarily prolonged suffering of terminally ill people who had the courage to consciously end their lives with dignity.

Maracas...
"I congratulate Philip Nitschke on remembering the anniversary of a brave decision by an Australian Parliament in the Northern Territory that sought to alleviate the unnecessarily prolonged suffering of terminally ill people who had the courage to consciously end their lives with dignity."

'terminally ill' ??

Thats just what Nitschke lied about wasn't it? Are you trying to be just like him?

Alan

I am assuming you are talking about Nancy Crick, who did have colon cancer before 3 surgical attempts removed the cancer leaving her with a coloscopy bag. (You crap through your abdomen)

She continued to be in pain due to an undiagnosed "twisted bowel". Of course they had cured her cancer but killed her will to live, she did not want to go on and asks Dr. Nitschke for help.

This has been twisted by you and fellow travellers like David the Doc from Poowoomba.

Nancy Crick did not want to live, she could have killed herself alone and nobody would know. She wanted to have her family around her and kill herself with them.

Why should anyone have the right to stop her.