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.
You’re trying to mandate euthanasia which has been forbidden in the Judeo-Christian world for thousands of years — THAT is using the government to meet social ends.
If someone asks you to kill them, it is not murder.
Hitler was not an atheist, nor was he a Christian. He was first and foremost a fascist whose faith was in the state. He believed moral issue should be decided by the government and not by the individual or the churches.
Actually, it is.
That seems to describe you as well.
Um, English isn't your first language, is it? There are many online dictionaries. Look up "euthanasia" and get back to us.
Wrong. I am trying to make it legal. There is a difference. I don’t believe in forcing anyone into any action they don’t choose. And what has been forbidden is irrelevant. Does it interfere with the rights of a citizen for you to kill them after they ask you to do exactly that? No. That is all that should be considered.
Yeah, the bug zapper had me howlin’ for days. LOL
Keep thinking that way. If someone begs you to kill them, it is not murder. The right to life includes the right to end your own, regardless of what society says. I don’t believe it’s morally right, but that is irrelevant to whether or not it should be legal, IMO.
But you’re not trying to make suicide legal. You’re trying to make a specific form of murder legal.
I don’t believe that ending someone’s life when they have asked you to do exactly that is murder. That’s the disconnect here. Ending someone’s life because they asked you to do so and murder are two vastly different things to me.
You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts. Euthanasia is a form of murder.
That is the opposite of me, I support an individuals right to decide. You want a government clerk to tell a person when he is allowed to die. And yes, I support the right of physicians to not preform any procedure they object to, the freedom from government tyranny extends to doctors as well as patients.
If I want to die and a physician provides the means, who exactly is the victim in this “crime”?
>> Which is a slippery slope fallacy. If the action - legalized euthanasia - does not interfere with the rights of another, the action should be legal, regardless of what it may lead to.
Consequences be damned? It’s not a right, it’s a permit to kill.
Which is still an opinion. The only reason it is viewed so is because of societal ideas. Murder is the forceful taking of another’s life. Forceful. Without consent. See the difference? Let me guess, no, it’s all the same to you.
The right to life includes the right to end your life, whether by yourself or getting someone to help you. As I said earlier, people killing other people off without consent under the guise of euthanasia is a completely separate entity.
So our military personnel are murderers every time they kill the enemy? And capital punishment is murder? If you believe that, you’re a loon.
And no, it’s not all the same to me, because I’m not you. I’m more intelligent than that. Murder is murder, and you can’t change that by having a whacked out opinion about it.
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