Quote:
Originally posted by Stormymystic:
why not spend and enjoy your last days with your family, so they can remember you as a fighter?
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And thereby hangs the nub of the problem. I have seen my grandfather waste away from cancer until he became a pitiful shell of the person he once was. There was no "enjoy" in his last months, only an increasingly painful and undignified deterioration.
We would convict a person who kept an animal in a state of suffering, yet we still insist that we take extraordinary measures to preserve human life, even when the quality of the life so preserved is bereft of any human dignity or rational hope of improvement and the individual expresses a wish to choose the time and manner of their passing.
I don't claim to speak for everyone, and these are my own personal views. I would also defend the right those whose religious or moral tenets militate against such a course of action to be protected from forced euthanaesia. Just as I would hope that those opposed to assisted suicide would respect my conviction that when or if I was faced with the inevitable end of my life, I could make the informed decision to leave this world in a manner, time and place of my choosing.