"What I don't understand about people with these views is why you as a group (not getting at you as an individual) are so determined that other people should not have the right to similarly determine their own view?"
Where did that come from? You have your view, I've got mine. I'm guessing we would disagree on most topics but theoretically Australia is a democracy so that shouldn't be a problem.
Well, that's where you're quite wrong. Repeated surveys have shown that more than 80% of the Australian population want voluntary euthanasia.
But our politicians are for the most part so called Christians who believe they have the right to impose their views (which are as yours) on the entire population.
The Northern Territory had the gumption to go its own way and instituted legislation about ten years ago. It had plenty of safeguards as I have previously detailed and was working well. However, the esteemed Kevin Andrews of the Howard government supported by the Tony Abbott etc cabal, and no doubt Howard himself, decided that the views of Northern Territorians were of no matter, and ditto the legislative capacity of the government, and simply wiped out the legislation.
So, Peter, that is 'where that comes from'. Plus the fact that the current government is similarly disposed to place their own personal agendas on the population at large, viz just one example the soon to be effected internet filter. I expect you're completely in favour of any sites which discuss the right to end one's own life being inaccessible when this happens.
The point I'm trying to make about euthanasia is that we need to think about where these decisions could possibly take us, and I don't like some (possibly all) of the possibilities.
If the law has the necessary safeguards it will take us nowhere other than simply allowing perfectly rational individuals to choose the time of their own death. Nothing more. This is a cliche which is perpetually trotted out and means diddely squat.
The doctor-patient relationship can be weakened.
Nonsense. No single doctor is ever going to make this decision. The N.T. legislation had four doctors being required to agree that the ending of the person's life was a completely rational decision.
When the medical profession becomes involved in the killing, the delicate trust relationship between patient and doctor is undermined.
One of the things I most dislike about you people who are anti the right to choose is your insistent use of emotive terminology. e.g. Killing.
I have addressed your assertion of the patient/doctor relationship above.
You are ignoring the ironic fact that euthanasia is practised all the time anyway by doctors increasing the dose of life ending drugs. We simply want this to be made legal.
Patients might become more fearful of doctors and health care workers, and doctors and health care workers could become desensitised. The taking of a human life is just another procedure.
You could apply this sort of emotive reasoning (?) oxymoron? to anything at all, as Dalek has pointed out. Silly, really.
Legal euthanasia sends out the message that "some lives are not worth living." To solve the problems of the suffering by killing them does not help the next suffering person, it sends signals of despair and helplessness.
Ah, you are at least partially correct here. Some lives are definitely not worth living when the patient has no control over bodily functions, cannot do anything for themselves, endures each day and night in intolerable pain despite the best palliative care available. Who are you to say that people should have to endure this ?
Currently very few people request euthenasia, and many then change their mind
How do you know? Please provide some link to such stats.
. But once legalised, it may well seem to be an option to many people, simply because it is legal. Indeed, people may feel they have a duty to be killed.
If such a perversion of thinking were to occur, it would be sorted out amongst the psychiatric assessment.
Another red herring.
There are not rights without corresponding duties. If society goes down the path of legalised euthanasia, this right to die will lead to its corollary, the duty to kill.
Nonsense. Again, the legislation and safeguards would deal with this.
Once a society has said that its citizens have the right to die, it will be forced to provide the means to do so. Once legalised, it is possible that doctors may one day face lawsuits if they violate someone's rights by not killing them.
Well, if someone were to resuscitate me when my Advance Health Directive specifically says I do not want this to happen, I would indeed be sueing
the health authority concerned.