Topic: Suicide tourism? (Read 1555 times)

.....for me it wouldn't be so much the pain that I wanted to escape, but I would absolutely hate to become a burden on my family. The minute I could not take care of myself...my life would not be worth living. Life is not wasting away in a bed...not mine anyway.

I see. So you and yours get to decide how I die simply because you have the majority vote? Majority votes supercede any personal rights, or just the right to die as one chooses to? That sounds awfully risky to me when you might someday not be in the majority. I suspect then you'd scream to the world about how no one else should decide how and when you die. How about we ban all use of any painkiller, even on a deathbed, that to ANY degree will hasten one's death? Is that fine with you, so I could not take the "easy way" out? FYI, drugs like morphine already are commonly used in every state for what amounts to doctor assisted suicide at the end stages of cancer, etc. So it still amounts to suicide, but unfortunately only after the person has had to endure great suffering that could have been avoided if our laws gave better protection to the doctors.

Most major religions and large denoms of our majority Christian population support their respective version of the sanctity of life, the exceptions are those which are heavily based or influenced by humanist tenets. It doesn't always follow that what the individual or majority of religions believe is immoral should be reflected in law....I don't ascribe to that view because there are lots of things which the government has no compelling interest to prevent heathens from doing if they are only harming themselves or other consenting adults.  If someone wants to kill themselves, I wouldn't stand on "moral principle" to make that illegal per se because once they are dead, what in the world can you do to them that would matter?    But the problem with suicide is that if it is not made illegal, then you have no authority to try to stop someone in process and get them help.  Furthermore, assisted suicide (another euphemism) is not just the person offing themselves, it is the sanctioning of a government authorized doctor to kill you with your permission.   So setting aside the morality,  how do we logically reconcile that we need to keep suicide illegal so we can intervene to stop someone who wants to do it themselves with making suicide legal as long as it is someone else killing you after you beg for permission from Big Brother?  That is about the screwiest justification of a "personal right" there is, not to mention compassion.

The main benefit in this is that someone with a hopeless disease or condition can DELAY killing himself past the point where he could do it all by himself. The assisted suicide laws actually prolong his life.

You are the one manipulating the meaning of words to try to advance your argument. It is not murder. It is not euthanasia. The person wanting to die is the person who does the killing in assisted suicide. The doctor or other person merely provides the pill or other means by which the person may kill himself. The main benefit in this is that someone with a hopeless disease or condition can DELAY killing himself past the point where he could do it all by himself. The assisted suicide laws actually prolong his life. Now tell me what is wrong with that. Tell me, do you really want to have a law that prevents a person who wants to die via assisted suicide from doing so? What gives you, or even the majority of voters, the right to deny him that choice?

I realize not everyone has what it takes to do what my friend did, and I can't honestly say I do...but I WANT to be like him, so do hundreds of folks who watched him, and yes, IMO, that is the culture I want to live in.  One that values REAL courage, and REAL compassion, and REAL life, all of which I think are turned upside down in state sanctioned murder.

If I was dying of a painful disease, like cancer, I would ask for whatever got rid of the pain and take in as much as I needed, whether it killed me or not.  I don't want to be in pain at the end of my life.  I want to die in bliss.

If I was dying of a painful disease, like cancer, I would ask for whatever got rid of the pain and take in as much as I needed, whether it killed me or not.  I don't want to be in pain at the end of my life.  I want to die in bliss.