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First, there is no reason whatever why she would "live her last days in excruciating agony and pain." If there is one thing modern medicine CAN do, it is eliminate pain in terminal illness.

And this has long been true. A favorite and very experienced doctor --- Dr. Jose Espinosa --- told me 30 years ago, "I have never seen intractable pain, BUt I have seen intractable doctors and nurses."

Second,what she proposes to do affects not only herself, but many, many other persons in a disastrous way. Legal "assisted" suicide deeply corrupts the medical, legal, and political professions. It turns medicine, law and government away from the desiderata of what is naturally good, and in favor of mere demand.

Anyone who wants to commit suicide on their own can do so, and 30 minutes' worth of mousing around on the Internet can tell you how.

But don't insist on "authorization" or "participation" from church or state or medico or politico. Surely in the name of autonomy, a would-be suicider can take care of business without insisting on corrupting everybody around them.

A self-respecting suicider (I am not recommending this) should be responsible for himself. This "legalized" "physician-assisted" crap just puts more death-dealing power in the hands of the State, to be used against persons far more vulnerable than this proud, attractive, articulate, but terminal and terminally self-serving lady.

Mrs Don-O, so well said. You have articulated perfectly the pragmatic opposition I have towards state-assisted "euthanasia". (I don't believe in the concept at all, BTW, of "euthanasia".) I could articulate my moral grounds perfectly, but you just made the case as to why the official "state-assisted" variety is even more pernicious.

I believe the recent law in Belgium is Exhibit A for what you explain (the "euthanasia" of children, children who are too young too consent to sex, to vote, to drive, to be out of parental care). This can only be the slippery slope,as is every inch of ground we have ceded on moral issues.