The legalisation of assisted suicide

Christian Today ^ | 8/3/10 | John Hayward

[wagglebee]

The arguments for legalising assisted suicide and euthanasia are in the process of imperceptibly changing from a duty of compassion towards the suffering, into the right of self-destruction for the hopeless.

They are predicated on a potent individualistic delusion of isolated autonomous choice, a refusal to acknowledge the reality of our mutual interconnectedness and interdependence as human beings in society.

The principled opposition of our current law to homicide and assisted suicide provides an essential safeguard for carers, for the medical profession and for the elderly and vulnerable who may fear that their lives have become burdensome and valueless.

In our latest Cambridge Paper, Professor John Wyatt argues that the increasing public support for the legalisation of assisted suicide provides an urgent challenge to the medical and legal professions and to the Christian community as a whole.

Many people have a fear of inappropriate and burdensome medical over-treatment at the end of life, and this drives the demand for assisted suicide.

The provision of skilled palliative care is inadequate, few doctors receive detailed training in palliative techniques, and tragically, many people in the UK still die with inadequate pain and symptom relief.

Vastly more resources are spent by Government and medical charities alike on researching treatments for life-threatening illness, than are devoted to improving the quality and availability of end of life care.

As a community we need to insist on a reorientation of priorities so that care for the elderly, the chronically disabled and the terminally ill receives the focus that it deserves.

The growing focus on personal autonomy and self determination provides a challenge to the Christian community to demonstrate a countercultural and alternative understanding of the sanctity of human life and the nature of human interdependence and interconnectedness.

In a society where millions of elderly suffer isolation, abandonment and the silent horror of abuse, can the Christian community provide a resource of compassionate and sacrificial caring?

John Hayward is executive director of The Jubilee Centre, a social reform organisation established in 1983 to explore an alternative social paradigm to capitalism, socialism and other ideologies from a distinctively faith-based perspective. This article is printed with permission. www.jubilee-centre.org

[wagglebee]

Vastly more resources are spent by Government and medical charities alike on researching treatments for life-threatening illness, than are devoted to improving the quality and availability of end of life care.

As a community we need to insist on a reorientation of priorities so that care for the elderly, the chronically disabled and the terminally ill receives the focus that it deserves.

Perfectly stated.

[wagglebee]

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[wagglebee]

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[ExTexasRedhead]

Hussein, Pelosi, and Reid intend to dictate who lives and who dies utilizing their Death Panels.

[wagglebee]

Ping

[Mr Ramsbotham]

They are predicated on a potent individualistic delusion of isolated autonomous choice, a refusal to acknowledge the reality of our mutual interconnectedness and interdependence as human beings in society.

I think they're also predicated on the notion that a person has a property right vested in himself. I've always repudiated that notion in the belief that if a person owns himself, he has a right to sell that ownership to someone else. I think such a notion is incompatible with the ideals of freedom upon which U.S. society is based.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

It is fascinating how our civilization is learning to love death.

Livy faced a similar situation: “... I would then have him trace the process of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them.....of late years wealth has made us greedy, and self-indulgence has brought us, through every form of sensual excess, to be, if I may so put it, in love with death both individual and collective...” TITUS LIVIUS 59 B.C. TO 17 A.D.

Interesting isn't it?

[wagglebee]

Amazing quote!

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

The quote is from Livy’s own introduction to his histories.

[nathanbedford]

Naked we come into this world and naked we will go out. We come in alone and we will die alone even if we die in the arms of our loved ones.

All of the verbiage in the world about, "mutual interconnectedness and interdependence as human beings in society" cannot alter the essential reality of our aloneness at the time we meet our maker. But what this mindless verbiage can do is cloud our thinking about the real meaning of the Declaration of Independence:

that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Declaration of Independence does not tell us that we lose the power of choice because of our "interconnectedness" or because of our "interdependence." My Declaration of Independence tells me that my creator has endowed me with the unalienable right of choice and that includes power over my life.

There is no mumbo-jumbo that can come between me and my creator over the ultimate questions of life and death.

While I would be extremely careful about how we might permit, for example, Dr. assisted suicide because of its profound implications for the doctor patient relationship, I say that the very idea that society has the power to "permit" or "withhold" the option of suicide among the mentally fit is an outrageous presumption.

[trisham]

The provision of skilled palliative care is inadequate, few doctors receive detailed training in palliative techniques, and tragically, many people in the UK still die with inadequate pain and symptom relief.

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Evidence that the concern is not out of compassion for the terminally ill.

[Salvation]

Pray for these people to be converted to the virtue of life!

[wagglebee]

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