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Legal safeguards can make euthanasia a legitimate option : Comments
By Leslie Cannold, published 14/12/2006People should have the right to make choices about their own deaths.
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It is in regard to "the assertion of anti-euthanasia forces that the effectiveness of modern-day palliative methods obviates the need for legal reform."
Senator Haradine, during his successful fight to prevent civilised assistance to those in need of it during the desperate terminal phase of their lives, swung votes his way by giving an assurance that availability of palliative care services would be enhanced.
It was an assurance that he, an experienced politician, knowingly could not guarantee.
Further, during the remaining years of his tenure in parliament, he took up other causes at the expense of monitoring the assurance he had given. During those years, palliative care services were subject to bureaucratic shuffling within health matters, and provision of palliative care declined from the point of view of those in need.
Quite apart from needlessly increasing the physical and mental pain of those in need, the decline in effective service to their clients was distressing for the nurses employed to administer it.
Enforcement of their particular religious belief by one segment of society upon the whole of society is bad enoough. Resorting to dishonesty in the achievement of such enforcement is despicable. Such immorality remains unchanged from that senator's day.