National MP Maggie Barry is opposed to voluntary euthanasia.
Ms Barry said many advocates of euthanasia were unaware of the
world-class palliative care available in New Zealand's 35 hospices,
palliative care homes, and in hospitals.
I am not one of them. I am aware of the care available. But being knocked out on opiates and blown up from steroids is still something one should be free to choose to avoid. I've seen it and it didn't strike me as a peaceful exit.
Back to Maggie Barry's assertion. Grey Power members are amongst the strongest supporters of voluntary euthanasia. They more than most will have had the experience of watching a slow death. Claiming they may be ignorant of palliative care is patronising if not insulting.
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My mother went to a hospice (run by catholics)last year, she was dying of bowel cancer. She was skin and bones. Unfortunately... she wouldn't die. After 28 days they wanted to kick her out into a nursing home. Most people aren't aware of the kick out rule. I argued with the admin... I said "look at her!" She died 5 days later. It was dreadful and cruel -starvation, dehydration, kidney failure...that is what killed her not the cancer. I hate anyone who is against voluntary euthanasia, and I urge people not to become organ donors until it is legalized. They will euthanize you for your organs but not let you do it yourself when you are dying. Hypocrites.
This is how "liberty" always ends: advocating for death: babies in the womb, old people, people who just don't want to live anymore, all in the name of "freedom".
Because we really care for you, that's why we advocate for freedom so you can be killed and kill yourself.
This bill of Street's is a lot more complex than Wall's bill on homosexual marriage. If it was passed in its current from I can see a lot of downside.
Why should these contentious issues not be decided by all the voters and not small militant pressure groups?
Why are MPs so opposed to a Voters Veto?
Between the statists on the left trying to spend my money for me, and the statists (God freaks) on the right trying to run my life and death for me, freedom is completely AWOL in New Zealand.
Maggie Barry needs to get out of my life, and my death, because she has no right to be involved in either.
People who advocate for abrogating the responsibility for taking their own life are cowards. Plain and simple.
If you are so keen on arguing that you are in charge of your own life and your own death, then why chicken out on the death part? Why not kill yourself instead of disgracefully asking someone else to do it for you?
The only person who can judge that the pain of living is greater than the pain of dying is you. Not your best friend. Not your doctor. And it is disgraceful and immoral to make them the scapegoats for your inability to face your own mortality.
Berend, spare us the scare quotation marks and misrepresentations.
You want to determine how my life will end rather than let me. That's pretty arrogant.
For a humane and reasoned defence of euthanasia, go to http://choiceindying.com .
Blair, no one can stop you from taking your own life.
So please, don't put up a strawman.
The issue here is that we want to give doctors the responsibility, duty and ability to kill others.
And obviously we should get the possibility to kill mum too.
That's the crux.
But that's "liberty". And nothing will go wrong. There won't be any pressure. Just like welfare dependency, don't try to point out the drawbacks.
Have you guys ever read Hippocratic Oath? Let me give a quote: "I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion."
You think going back to the time before that is progress?
Blair you're a monster and a moron. The right to die with dignity is the right to die with your loved one's present - the final loving parting. That's the main beef of those who currently take this option 'illegally' by killing themselves. If their wives/husbands, etc, are present they are open to prosecution, so the person has to die alone.
I've had a gutsful of monsters and barbarians like you.
And Berend include yourself in the monsters of my above post. Not another God freak?
Agree with Mark. It isn't about asking someone else to top you. It's about preventing the state from criminalising anyone connected - directly or otherwise - with your (chosen) death.
Lindsay, you just want to have liberty to bash mum to death? No state involvement?
Obviously you don't want that. You want safeguards, procedures, checks and boundaries, the whole state mechanism to become even more involved in life and death.
Berend, get my point: the need is to be able to die with your loved ones. That's called civilised and compassionate, not what we have at the moment which is barbaric. And this is simple: do we own our lives or not. Be honest about what your agenda really is?
Is it religious (that 'babies in the womb' stuff)?
Mark, be honest: you don't want to be persecuted for killing mum?
And that's called compassion right?
Berend, I've never seen you being dishonest, childish, and evasive like this. I'm disappointed because it colours everything else you've posted.
So you're yet another God 'fearing' conservative theocrat, who, therefore, doesn't believe the highest value is one's life. Another cold, cruel, Christian. Right. Got it.
Oh, and by the way, if you can still see this reply from the gutter you're currently writing from, my mum is a Christian, so euthanasia isn't an issue there.
But I'm no Christian.
I agree with Chuck Schuldiner.
I'm pissed off now.
I meant to say on that last post, I'm no Christian, thank God, because Berend's attitude is what I've too often come to expect from that belief system: any system in which you've handed your life over to an Other.
Particularly, Berend, to phrase this issue as you do, 'bashing mum to death', only speaks to your personality, and against your argument, not to those of us who understand natural love and affection, and understand the free society is the one where compassion will be found.
You need to pull yourself up and read back over your posts on this one. Do they seem like the words of a rational, caring, human being? Because I doubt anyone else is getting that picture.
... though Richard's post is a good reminder to not escape to the hive mind and treat all Christians as having the same beliefs in the details. The stoned ones are fine :) It's those damned, heartless, conservatives. I just never had Berend picked for one.
Why not kill yourself instead of disgracefully asking someone else to do it for you?
Oh, I dunno. Because it's hard to beat yourself to death with your own eyelids?
Oh, I dunno. Because it's hard to beat yourself to death with your own eyelids?
Yes, and that is the other reason I'd not mentioned above. About four or five years ago there was an excellent TVNZ doco following four people who ended their own lives. In three of the cases, terminal illnesses, from memory, the heart ache came from having to die alone if they ended their lives (heart ache for the one dying, and the family). The fourth was an elderly lady who lived alone. She had spent her life as head nurse in old people homes, and from her experience of that had determined she didn't want to live out her days in one. She was also very healthy, but faced the conundrum that if she were to have a stroke and become incapacitated, she would then not be able to end her life and thus would have to live, against her wishes, in a state she would find unacceptable. Thus, and sadly, she ended up going to her favourite holiday destination, Norfolk Island, and killing herself there while she still had her full health, knowing she may have had many happy years left. She simply felt she couldn't take the risk of waiting ... and it was monsters like Berend that put her in that invidious position.
Berend, I think you misread my comment. I agree with you.
Mark, don't get your knickers in a twist and start calling me names. Life is not some sort of commodity like a piece of land or a television set. To treat it that way is monstrous. To give the responsibility to another person suggests a lack of courage and a will to live. Killing someone with the will to live unjustly is murder. It is therefore impossible to take the life of another person and pretend that you have their consent. If they really wanted to die, they would do it themselves. Stop being so damned emotive and look at the issue logically.
Blair, when people reach the time where their lives are unbearable, they are often incapable of taking their own lives -that was the point behind Richard's eyelids crack. Consequently, someone knowing the inevitable progress of their degenerative disease must either take their own life prematurely or rely on someone else to assist them, if they find intolerable the last stages of their condition.
http://newhumanist.org.uk/2848/the-case-for-assisted-dying
Quite by chance, I happened on the article above shortly after leaving this website.
I suspect that some people here (Mark, Blair, ...) are talking past each other.
There are three current events to consider. (1) Yesterday's meeting of Maggie Barry's All Party Parliamentary Group on Palliative Care, (2) Maryan Street's private member's End of Life Choice Bill which has not been drawn from the ballot, and (3) yesterday's High Court ruling in the United Kingdom that Tony Nicklinson cannot ask a doctor to end his life.
Tony Nicklinson is physically incapable of ending his own life without assistance.
I haven't read the Maggie Barry article in the Herald.
I haven't read Maryan Street's draft bill.
Chuck Schuldiner asks, "Why don't you pull the plug?"
And Blair, you didn't actually read the point I was making.
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