Op-ed: ‘Why I’m uneasy about assisted suicide case’
June 14th, 2008
Columnist Tom Utley in the UK Daily Mail says he’s wary of Debbie Purdy’s efforts to challenge Britain’s assisted suicide law. Purdy (left, celebrating court victory with husband Omar Puente) has multiple sclerosis and says she plans to kill herself at Dignitas, a controversial euthanasia clinic in Switzerland. She says she wants to make sure that her husband will not be prosecuted if he aids her in making arrangements for assisted suicide.
Utley thinks Purdy is really trying to legalize assisted suicide in Britain — a prospect he finds alarming.
In the Netherlands, MPs voted in 2000 to legalise euthanasia, assuring the world: ‘This is only for people who are in great pain and have no prospect of recovery.’
Within three years, more than one per cent of all deaths in Holland were being deliberately inflicted by doctors.
We saw the same phenomenon here with abortion. When it was legalised in 1967, we were assured it would be carried out only if continuing the pregnancy would mean risk to the life or mental health of the mother, risk to the physical or mental health of existing children or ’substantial’ risk of the child being born ’seriously handicapped’.
Today, abortion is widely seen simply as an alternative to contraception, and 500 fetuses are killed every day. Do we really want to go down that road with euthanasia?
If so, how long will it be before doctors start bumping off old women like my grandmother, who say they want to die but don’t really mean it?
Related story: Woman wins right to review of law on assisted suicide
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on Saturday, June 14th, 2008 at 5:38 am and is filed under abortion, assisted suicide, end of life, eugenics, euthanasia, general news.
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