And now a fun thread takes a dark turn. Ah, well.
I would suggest you watch a film titled, "Choosing to Die."
In it, it shows exactly why assisted suicide is something we should have an option for.
The film follows Sir Terry Pratchett who, at the time, was in the early stages of early-onset Alzeheier's Disease. He follows two individuals who have chosen suicide.
One of them is a 42-year-old man with multiple sclerosis who had already attempted suicide twice, both times taking months' worth of pain killers. Both times it failed and he survived. Both times he also had to be alone - because if anyone had been with him they could have faced charges in his death. He went to Switzerland with his mother and brother where he finally committed suicide in a place where he was able to be with his loved ones as he died.
The problem is that even under Swiss law, the person who is going to die must take the drugs that will kill them, the drugs cannot be administered by another person.
And that means that he died early, because if he waited until he could no longer hold the cup, or could not fly to Switzerland, he would have had to continue with the incurable disease that would eventually leave him unable to move or care for himself.
The same is true of 71-year-old millionaire Peter Smedley, who had Motor Neuron Disease. He also went to Switzerland, with his wife, to die before he could no longer take the drugs himself.
In both of these cases, the individuals had incurable diseases that cause great pain and would eventually leave them locked into bodies that would no longer move. They would find themselves in nursing homes or under the care of friends and family. Neither of them wanted to end that way, and they wanted to preserve their own dignity - so they died before they really wanted to because people like you want to force your beliefs on them.
And yes, this is a hot-button issue for me. I watched my step-father go through the agony of metastasized melanoma. He went from a strong, vital man to someone in constant excruciating pain that no amount of morphine in the world could ease. I watched him suffer the indignity of soiling himself on a regular basis, and the eventual rapid onset of dementia when the cancer reached his brain.
Before it got to that stage, he said that he would prefer to die in as little pain and with as much dignity as possible. But he was denied that.
So you go ahead and tell me which is the higher moral obligation.
If you believe that assisted suicide is murder, then the simplest suggestion is that you do not assist anyone in their suicide. But how dare you or anyone else try to condemn others to months, years or decades of pain - physical, psychological and emotional - and the stripping of their dignity to satisfy your own moral prejudices?
