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French Support Doctor-Assisted Suicide
Angus Reid ^ | 3/30/08 | Angus Reid

Posted on 03/30/2008 10:37:30 AM PDT by wagglebee

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - The vast majority of people in France would support legislation to allow a doctor to end the life of a person with an incurable disease and enduring unbearable suffering, if this person requests it, according to a poll by Ifop published in Paris Match. 91 per cent of respondents would be at least partly in favour of enacting such a law.

In November 2004, France’s National Assembly endorsed legislation which legalized "passive euthanasia." This concept allows doctors to withdraw life-sustaining medication from patients, but not to, for instance, administer poisons. Assisted suicide or "active euthanasia" occurs when an individual who is not physically capable of ending his or her own life requests the help of a physician to do so.

Assisted suicide based on medical grounds is legal in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and the state of Oregon in the United States. It is not legal in France.

On Mar. 19, Chantal Sebire, a French woman suffering from a visible face tumour, was found dead in her home, apparently after taking an overdose of barbiturates. The 52-year-old Sebire had been denied a request to end her life by a French court earlier this year. She claimed she deserved the right to die to alleviate the "atrocious suffering" caused by the incurable tumour, which had completely deformed her face, and caused her to lose her eyesight and the senses of smell and taste.

Jean Leonetti, a member of the governing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, wrote the passive euthanasia law in 2004. On Mar. 20, Luc Chatel, a spokesman for the government of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, said that Leonetti will review the legislation and see "if there is now the will to go further than the law of 2005," adding, "We will have to act quickly, because exceptional cases like that of Chantal Sebire are occurring regularly."

Polling Data

Are you personally in favour or against enacting a law that would authorize a doctor to end the life of a person with an incurable disease and causing unbearable suffering, if this person requests it?

Completely in favour

51%

Somewhat in favour

40%

Somewhat against

6%

Completely against

3%

Source: Ifop / Paris Match
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 956 French adults, conducted on Mar. 20 and Mar. 21, 2008. No margin of error was provided.



TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: assistedsuicide; bioethics; euthanasia; france; morabsolutes; prolife
The French have a long history of acting against their own interests.
1 posted on 03/30/2008 10:37:31 AM PDT by wagglebee
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To: cgk; Coleus; cpforlife.org; narses; 8mmMauser

Pro-Life Ping


2 posted on 03/30/2008 10:38:29 AM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: 230FMJ; 49th; 50mm; 69ConvertibleFirebird; Aleighanne; Alexander Rubin; An American In Dairyland; ..
Moral Absolutes Ping!

Freepmail wagglebee to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.

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3 posted on 03/30/2008 10:38:55 AM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee
Are you personally in favour or against enacting a law that would authorize a doctor to end the life of a person with an incurable disease and causing unbearable suffering, if this person requests it?

If I was asked that question over the phone , my response would most certainly be "somewhat in favour". It's a very well crafted survey question. Afterall, who is in favour of "unbearable suffering"?

4 posted on 03/30/2008 11:00:22 AM PDT by planter
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To: wagglebee

Just another example of the “sickness unto death” that afflicts much of the western world. Abandonment of faith has created a mix of hedonism and hopelessness.


5 posted on 03/30/2008 11:00:51 AM PDT by Malesherbes
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To: wagglebee
The French are the only people on Earth to treat the tourists as wretchedly as they treat each other.

I'd write them off my tour schedule Fur Shur if they got into sending their doctors out to kill people.

6 posted on 03/30/2008 11:09:25 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: wagglebee

I read about this woman, but didn’t have time to see if anything had been posted on FR. She was not in any way incapable of ending her own life, as we see from her self-administered overdose of barbituates after the French government declined to kill her. On some level, she knew suicide is wrong, so she wanted someone else to end her life for her. That doing so would cause that person to bear the guilt for her murder meant nothing to her. What a supremely selfish person.


7 posted on 03/30/2008 11:12:03 AM PDT by nina0113 (If fences don't work, why does the White House have one?)
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To: wagglebee

I’m sure that just 50 years ago the poll would have looked inverted. It’s the consequence of secularization. The French like the Germans and many others in Europe like to tout their rich and vast religious heritage when it fits into the argument, but reality is that no one practices or believes anymore. When you go into a church in Europe all you see is the old, sick, and tourists. Much of Europe has been consumed with a socialist way of thinking that has displaced God. There is a reason why these people don’t have children anymore, it cramps their hedonistic life. You’ll find a red light district in every major city, Eros Center or some swinger club even in the smallest towns.....

This in reality is just part of a much bigger picture, a reality which is true in the US as well, just not as pronounced yet. Abortions on demand, euthanasia, “lifestyles,” legalization of drugs.............. it’s all tied together, and it all boils down to a decay in society. Essentially, societies that have lost the value of life and liberty and are in pursuit of simple immediate self gratification is what ensues after God is taken from the picture. There is a reason why there are today ethics classes in every major university that are mandatory, and ironically ethics attempts to teach in a vacuum of God right and wrong. People who believe in God speak in terms of morals, which have as their foundation a concept of divinity. Societies have become permissive where everything is OK. There is no consequence for bad behavior may it be within families, those who break the laws, etc. It’s a slow decay process and like getting fat, you don’t wake up one morning like that, but slowly and surely you get that way. Likewise, over decades we have eroded as societies.

Freedom for most Europeans and Americans today equates to burning a flag, watching on line porn, and sticking their penis in someone’s butt. That’s hardly what our founding fathers had in mind when they spoke of freedom. Years past the spread of freedom and democracy, the shot heard around the world, the revolutions that followed, where a guiding concept in the average persons psyche. Today, the average German does not care if in the Balkans they build concentration camps reminiscent of their own in WWII in the late 90s, vast numbers of Americans accept the idea of throwing 26 million Iraqi’s to the wolves.

Is it surprising that in such a decaying society euthanasia is seen as an acceptable practice? What is life worth when it’s nothing more than Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Calcium, Phosphorus, Potassium, Sulfur, Sodium, Magnesium, Copper, Zinc, Selenium, Molybdenum, Fluorine, Chlorine, Iodine, Manganese, Cobalt, and Iron?


8 posted on 03/30/2008 11:23:07 AM PDT by Red6 (Come and take it.)
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To: nina0113

This woman was cruelly manipulated by the culture of death. They used her case to try to advance their euthanasia agenda in France, while at the same time convincing her to refuse all palliative pain management including a medically induced coma that would have ELIMINATED her pain.


9 posted on 03/30/2008 12:08:26 PM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee

Let’s not forget it was a Frenchman that wrote “Waiting For Godot”.


10 posted on 03/30/2008 12:50:12 PM PDT by yldstrk (My heros have always been cowboys--Reagan and Bush)
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To: wagglebee
Pinged from Terri Dailies

8mm


11 posted on 03/31/2008 3:33:51 AM PDT by 8mmMauser (Jezu ufam tobie...Jesus I trust in Thee)
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