Posted on 12/08/2008 4:07:05 PM PST by wagglebee
Edinburgh, Scotland (LifeNews.com) -- The Scottish Parliament, the devolved national, unicameral legislature of Scotland, is not receptive to legislation to legalize assisted suicide in that portion of Great Britain. Margo MacDonald, the MSP behind the bill, failed to garner enough support to introduce the measure.
MacDonald is hoping to get a private member's bill introduced at Holyrood next year but only has the backing of four out of the 129 that comprise the legislative body.
That means she is 14 short of the number needed to get the bill introduced and well short of the level of support necessary to get an assisted suicide bill approved.
MacDonald's bill appears to be modeled after American laws in Oregon and Washington state that require a waiting period before a terminally ill patient can request a physician to provide a lethal drug prescription.
After realizing she didn't have enough support to get her measure introduced, she talked with the London Times about why she brought the bill.
"There are lots of people up and down Scotland who would like to make sure that they miss the last - and for them most intolerable - part of life, because of incapacity, loss of dignity, loss of control, insufferable pain perhaps," she said.
Pro-life advocates oppose assisted suicide and say that doctors should not be in the business of killing patients. They say patients should be given more help to cope with pain and depression and better hospice care.
Though a bill to legalize assisted suicide doesn't appear to be advancing in Scotland, pro-life advocates in England are more concerned.
A new piece of legislation, the Coroners and Justice Bill, which British Parliament officials announced at the start of the parliamentary year, will deal with assisted suicide. The measure, would reportedly modernize the law "to increase public understanding."
What that means, however, is another question.
The bill could make it more clear when people would be charged under the law for aiding in an assisted suicide, as in the case of Debbie Purdy.
John Smeaton, the director of the pro-life group Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, explained some of the concerns on Thursday.
"We are concerned that radical, so-called right-to-die MPs or peers - urged on by media coverage for assertions that some elderly people have a so-called duty to die - might seek to use the bill to weaken the legal protection of the right to life," Smeaton says.
Yet you want the GOVERNMENT to legislate policy whereby physicians would be REQUIRED to end a patient's life.
If the government is the ultimate arbiter of life and death (as you want it to be),
No, I believe that God is the arbiter. You are trying to force the government to make MAN the arbiter.
Pro-life means choosing to kill is not an option. You cannot be both pro-life and pro-death. The views you’re expressing are certainly not pro-life. No one here is suggesting that the government should decide who lives and who dies. The government should not have a choice in the matter. Murder, in all its forms, is off the table. Period.
But, but the Rooty Rooters said that you could . . . oh yeah, they all got zapped.
zarodinu
Since Nov 27, 2008
December 1, 2008 post by zarodinu
I am an outright atheist and I believe in evil.
Irrelevant comparison. Drunk driving actively, by itself, puts other drivers at risk. Euthanasia does not, by itself, put anyone at risk.
Your arguments are totally baseless, you are supporting government legislation to legalize euthanasia, yet you claim to want the government out of it.
And in case it escaped your notice, we are talking about the UK which has socialized health care, so physicians would be REQUIRED to participate.
It is fairly obvious that you are a libertarian and, though you share some beliefs with conservatives, you are not a conservative.
Nonsense.
Hitler was an atheist who believed in evil.
Really? Keep thinking that. it’s only what it could lead to - people being killed under the guise of euthanasia - that puts the rights of the citizenry at risk. The euthanasia itself does not. The two are separate.
Read the links I posted in #19, they are already talking to make euthanasia INVOLUNTARY in the UK:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2145184/posts?page=19#19
I’m a libertarian. I’m a conservative. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Actually, they are.
“We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out”.
-Adolf Hitler
And they would never return under a new troll name, right? LOL
What are you trying to say?
I don’t know, but the Bug Zapper was just Peachy!
No, they aren’t. Libertarians are simply not in the business of using government to meet social ends, or to prevent social change.
Taking human life is morally WRONG and it is MURDER and should therefore be ILLEGAL.
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