From The Telegraph:
In a submission to a consultation on relaxing the rules on assisted suicide – which ends today – a coaliton of five disabled groups, said that “to see suicide as the right solution is to abandon hope. Severely ill and terminally ill people do no deserve society to give up on them.”
The group, which is lead by Baroness Campbell, accused others who were pushing for the change as “seeking to change the law by the back door by creating the impression that those who assist in a suicide will be immune from prosecution”.
(Note on article – the headline is misleading, making the claim that the “disabled should not be able to kill themselves.” The actual statement is about the actions of family members and friends who facilitate and encourage the suicides of people with disabilities. People who are intent on killing themselves will find a way to do so. Many thousands do so each year – in the US alone.)
Hopefully, the submission document will be available in the near future – either as a document that can be posted here or linked to wherever site it is posted to. –Stephen Drake
I’m not sure whether I’m pure proponent of assisted suicide. It has its pros and cons but I think that the official or legal way of doing so is much better solution than when people decided to end their suffering are looking for some painful way how to do it. Moreover, I suppose that before they decide to do it by a legal way they would be provided by professional help.
Best regards,
Lorne
Lorne,
You sure *sound* like a proponent of assisted suicide. When you say there should be a “legal way” – that’s what being a proponent is.
Is this a “solution” you would only offer to old, ill and disabled people? Or would you expand this “solution” to eliminate the messy and painful suicides of healthy, young and nondisabled people?
Seriously.
“Disability Rag” pointed out, in the mid-1980s that German physicians carried out “euthanasia” by lethal injection on disabled individuals in hospitals at the request of the government in the 1930s. It was legal. In this country, disabled women were sterilized without their permission. It was legal. In this country, the Tuskegee experiment (by the CDC) was done, resulting in deaths when medical treatment for syphilis was available (the men were not told they were being given no meds, just observed):it was legal. Long list of legal but harmful laws, events. So often on people who cannot protest/stop it, “throw away” people, like the kids in NYC who were experimented on in the last decade or so, with AIDS meds that were in research for adult patients. Kids died. The experiment, done by “reputable” hospital clinic with gov’t permission, was legal. There has not been full disclosure, but enough so some of the dirty story is out.