A helping hand?

JohnAnt

Only if it was her nearest and dearest, one supposes!

Gilbert Belwether

The difference is who should have the final say, Hewitt or the person in the wheelchair.

George

Exodus 20:13

Shaun

Why should it be legal to commit suicide but see that legality tied to being able bodied enough to do so? Do you not see how that discriminates against the disabled? The able bodied can end their own lives but the disabled can't. Legally speaking. I have MS and this annoys me greatly!

Crawford

Amen, George. We are reaping the fruit of kicking God out of the equation.

Ronnie

Depends who it is. Its not such a clear-cut decision as you might think.

Michael Booth

This is a dangerous piece of legislation on several fronts - Clause 152 gives sweeping powers to the government in terms of data collection and the sharing of personal information.

Max Kaye

Surely any Labour MP walking on Beachy Head would be in danger of being thrown off.

GaryO

The person who wants to commit suicide has to be properly assessed by an authorised doctor and a psychiatrist before allowed to be assisted to commit suicide. Proper legal and medical tests and steps have to be followed before a person can be assisted in this way.

Person standing on the edge of a cliff would fail all these and therefore has to be saved. They can then follow proper guidelines, be properly assessed by qualified persons and then finally, upon a unanimous agreement by a panel of medics, the patient should be allowed have the lethal injection.

Assisting someone to commit suicide on a whim is and should be illegal.

Your analogy is not accurate.

Nick Pullar

I think it’s clear that there is a difference between someone who is impetuously attempting to commit suicide, and someone who is seeking to end their own life on their own terms and timing to give themselves a good death.

http://kafirthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/03/helping-hand.html

Ronnie

GaryO, would the person in question administer the lethal injection themselves or would someone else do it for them?

Boris

"Come away from the edge dear, guidelines! guidelines! we must follow the proper guidelines! The proper persons have to assess you first, then the panel will have a vote, THEN we'll help push you off the cliff."

phil

I think this is a flippant analogy to such a serious subject -We have been here before and Shaun has written on this subject earlier as a person who is deeply affected by his vision of his future ,I find it hard to believe that most of us would put their pets out of their misery and will not have the courage to face up to their GOD and say that the souls we were given by him demands the compassion needed for the sufferers . I know there will be those that wish to be rid of relatives for nefarious reasons but it cannot be beyond the wit of man to devise ways to protect those unfortunate people -it needs courage to face up to our doubts and we must find it .

Alex Creel

Surely the decision to legalise assisted suicide is just another advancement of a civilised society. Ignoring suicide doesn't stop it happening, bringing it out of the shadows will allow people to seek help, this may help them die but may help them find reasons to live. If you need psycholoical testing to be assisted then exascerbating factors like long term depression or lack of care could be discovered and remedied. The religious imperative that one wasn't to take one's own life was fine when your life expectancy was 3 score & ten. Now we have the ability to prolong life in the face of disease and disablement we have to accept the need for assisted suicide.

stanley Jerusalem

Well if it were Carl or Glasgow University George I would uphold their human rights to do what they wanted, but sadly.....
However, "Never judge a man till you stand in his place" - Ethics of the Fathers [Talmud Babli]

Gordon Neil

I agree with 'crawford's' comment. In the Judeo-Christian tradition God is both just and merciful and our law is informed by both these values. I think that the English Law has traditionally reflected the Judeo-Christian belief that Life is given by God and as such has intrinsic value and is deserving of the utmost respect. Any taking of life, including the taking of one's own life, should thus to be judged in light of that absolute but applied with compassionate consideration for circumstance. Taking this approach ensures that all human life is duly respected, irrespective of any utilitarian value or cost to those who hold the reins of power. However once you remove God from the equation then there is no arbitrator (absolute) to whom the powerful must refer and they are free to cast the law according to their own utilitarian considerations. In seeking to change the law on suicide these 'progressives' are following the path previously used to create the free for all we now have on abortion. There a case was originally made for 'limited abortion on compassionate grounds. Very rapidly however that mushroomed into a scale of abortion that owes nothing to compassion and everything to arbitrary utilitarianism. Here we have the same pattern emerging. Statistically rare but very sad cases are highlighted and then used to drive a legislative change that has implications far beyond the very few. Once assisted suicide is sanctioned in law the boundaries will be stretched, assisted suicide will become first an acceptable albeit extreme alternative and then a legitimate 'treatment' option in increasingly larger numbers of cases. In such circumstances it doesn't take much leap of imagination to envisage the pressures that will be applied to the terminally ill to take this option, particularly where alternatives involve excessive costs or major and prolonged inconvenience. In my view once you remove the sanction of the absolute and utilitarianism becomes the arbiter of boundaries, those boundaries will eventually cease to have any coherent and sustainable meaning. Assisted suicide must remain illegal

Ray

Gordon Neil makes a valid point - offer the utilitarians a reasonable inch and they will soon have it tunnelled out into a horrifying mile.

stanley Jerusalem

George
March 23rd, 2009 3:36am
Just one observation:-

"Thou shalt not kill but needst not strive, officiously, to keep alive." A.H.Clough

N

Melanie,

Please be fair. You imply that because Hewitt wants this passed that she's forcing people to help kill others. In your example of the wheelchair cliff guy, who says there are only two options: Push off or pull away from the cliff. Why couldn't Hewitt simply pass and say she won't help?

I know you are making a point, and assited suicide is bad but i think you are missing the whole point. Assissted suicide doesn't refer to the sad and depressed, my life sucks i want to die people, assisted suicide is in regards to the medical field. My father is a physician and sees people all the time that are in pain and that want to be free. If someone is dying and in pain, would it not be a service to them to quicken the process and spare that person some pain? If a person is suffering and or dying i don't really have a problem with assisted suicide, but if it's the guy who recently got fired then no. Life sucks get over it, suicide is a cheap way out.

P Fox

But if the person in the wheelchair was dying,sweating, vomiting and screaming in pain and you pushed him back to his home and left him, whose discomfort would you be easing - yours or his? The idea that pain relief is available to all is laughable you seem to choose to do nothing like your cruel, omniscient god.

poetcomic1

The problem as the Dutch discovered is the PRESSURE to commit suicie. "Gee Gramps, how can you stand to go on living like this and incidentally spending all our inheritance that could put the kids through college etc etc." It steers someone to suicide who may not otherwise chose it.

George

Stanley,

I totally agree with you. But there is a huge difference between not striving to keep alive and assisted suicide. One is passive and the other is active. As I'm sure you are well aware, Judaism forbids the touching of a person in his final death throes in case by doing so, the toucher shortens his life by even as little as a second.

Oliwagino Alefava Yihiri

The day you are born, the day you die, the day you have a children, the day you will get married only G*d will know not you, so you should not kill yourself if you are sick or not you could always talk to the Samaritans not Patricia Hewitt, it is G*d to decide not you, remember destiny

Random

If it is legal to choose to die in a dignified manner with care and compassion, once careful consideration and counselling have been given, then only those who have not given time for such consideration will jump from Beachy Head. Until then, who are you to decide how a person chooses to die?

George Laird

Dear All

Helping someone kill themselves is always a controversial topic.

It is also open to abuse.

Hewitt's amendment like her is badly short sighted and should be voted down.

All attempts to allow legalised killing should be denied.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

stanley Jerusalem

George - I am.

Boris

Random 5:13pm,

We are members of society. As a society we have every right to weigh up the benefits and the risks to society of legalising assisted suicide, and based on that to decide whether or not we will allow it.

You're going to have to wake up and realise that individuals don't live in a vacuum.

phil

George Laird and his asinine description speaks again because it is compulsive .Does he not see how emotional this subject is and deserves at least a little explanation of the thoughts of george ?-people like George (the real one above) and Random have written with care and compassion about their feelings and explained themselves.

I sat with my late mother for months and watched her suffer and I do not believe that is what our lives are for -what purpose did it serve ? She did not want to continue and she did not want to see my brother and I enduring her pain -It is a strange thing to feel but I was happy when she passed away ,hopefully to a better place .The difficult decision is ours, not theirs and I believe we should have the courage to face it ,and subsequently our maker if and when we need to explain ourselves .

George Laird

Dear Stanley

And?

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

George Laird

Dear Stanley

"However, "Never judge a man till you stand in his place".

Do you say that in your kebab shop to the customers?

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

stanley Jerusalem

George
March 23rd, 2009 4:18pm
I still am!

George Laird - What are you wittering on about, child?

George Laird

Dear phil

Your opinion is meaningless to me.

You are not the first person to have suffered bad experiences.

I also find the notion of you wanting to help someone bizarre.

You don't have that track record on here.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Augustus

All of us can sympathize with people who feel so discouraged by their illness or disability that they want to die. However, a change in the law that would permit active euthanasia or assisted suicide, while seeming desirable to many, would, without doubt, have wider ramifications. This is because we live in an imperfect world full of imperfect people. And it is certainly naive to think that all people, all families, are compassionate and caring.

Here are two examples: Assisted sucide is now legal, an elderly lady is in a nursing home with failing health. She knows that she does not have very long to live. Her relatives have done their best to comfort her, visiting her regularly, but she can see that they are tired out by the worry caused by her declining health. She knows that euthanasia is now an option for her. She doesn't really want to die just yet, but rather than put her family through further misery she decides to end her life so they can get on with theirs.

Or, suppose the family in question are selfish, callous people (such people do exist). Suppose they have told their ailing relative that it's inconsiderate of her to stay alive when they desperately need the inheritance that's tied up in her Will. So, goaded by a sense of guilt, she gives in and opts for assisted suicide.

The first scenario would inevitably occur in some cases,
possibly many. The second scenario would be somewhat rarer, but it would happen. It follows, therefore, that some people would die sooner than they would wish. Shouldn't it be the duty of the law to protect those people?

Dave

A considered opinion from an elected representative? Or a paragraph on the internets tossed off by a professional controversialist? What's the difference?

Mustapha Bunn

Some of you may have been around long enough to remember when abortion was made legal,(and before anyone starts twittering about the niceties of that,or otherwise,let me say I don't have an opinion),then the authorities were at pains to assure everyone in the nursing/health professions that they would never be forced to work in an area,hospital or wherever,that abortions were carried out.I think that you will find that now it is a pre-requisite for employment in NHS hospitals that nurses can have no such objections if they are to be employed.Perhaps I'm wrong and someone on this blog can inform me as to whether I am or not.
However,if I am correct, then it re-inforces my belief that politicians are a lying bunch of b******s who will move the goal posts later on in life...or in death,as in the case of anything to do with euthanasia.

phil

George Laird we all know how far you can sink into depravity but now you have surpassed even your own pathetic standards .on a thread like this you could at least have shown you are a normal human being with compassion for others ,but maybe that was asking too much -shame on you

Original Tony

If it was a Jihadist I would push him over the cliff, otherwise I'd try and talk them out of it.

stanley Jerusalem

Phil - Why bother?
He's not even worth the ink.

phil

stanley Jerusalem that is sound sense but not emotion ,but you are right .

N

Original Tony,

"If it was a Jihadist I would push him over the cliff, otherwise I'd try and talk them out of it."

I actually laughed when i read this, thanks for the nice post.

George Laird

Dear Stanley

"He's not even worth the ink".

When we type on a computer keyboard there is no ink!

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Bailey

Civilization ends when the strong do not protect the weakest among us.

I am continually agast at political left...who would abort an INNOCENT child or assist in a elderly suicide BUT will protest and want to protect convicted murderers from capital punishment.

It is a twisted way of thinking.

Kill innocents but protect the guilty?

Mr Grymme Harbinger

If it was Hewitt, the dreadful patronizing drone offering to assist or otherwise would probably make up the mind of any prospective leaper!

hadrian

As the Scriptures say of those who want to play God- 'All those who hate Me love death.'
A telling statement of psychological acuity.

stanley Jerusalem

Mr Grymme Harbinger - Au contrair, mon petit choux! One shufti at the Hewitt person would convince the prospective leaper that things weren't as bad as was thought. BTW glorious monniker! Puts Jeremiad right in the 2/4d's.
Glasgow George " there is no ink"
Need one say more?

david skinner

I it has probably been said before on here. Why doesn't someone give her a helping hand?

inkling of doubt

No matter how much I agree with Phil and his plea for a compassionate and a common sense approach to these matters I am fearful of anything that NULAB, or any of its henchmen, actually wants to legislate for.

How many times have we heard, "This would only be used in the most extreme of conditions ...." only to see draconian provisions used and abused on a regular basis?

However confused and rubbish the status quo is, it is probably best left alone.

phil

inkling no doubt you are right of course, but it is the job of our society to ensure that the drafters get it right -I do see the doubts of others ,but doubts alone should not negate the purpose -apart from the appalling georgie we all care enough to think about this with the afflicted in mind and I believe that is the right way rather than placating our own consciences about the taking of the lives of Gods children. ---

Some months ago Shaun (above) wrote movingly about his own situation and I cannot forget his words -I have always thought this way but recently with my mothers passing it has been emphasised as no doubt it has for so many others in a similar situation .Precautions we should be able to deal with but the religious and moral requirements of others need to be respected .I suppose that is the dilemma we are faced with ,but we must realise it is our dilemma and the pain of the afflicted has more resonance with me .