Should Euthanasia be legal?

Well as many hubbers and readers that live in the UK may well be aware. A soap opera called Emmerdale has just done a story line on an assisted suicide on a petraplegic. A petraplegic is some one who can not move from the shoulders down because of paralysis.

A young man fed up and depressed with his life after an accident that left him in the petraplegic state of being, decides he can take no more. He comes to a long drawn conclusion that he wants it all to end. However as he can not move, some one has to make the deadly concoction he takes to kill himself and also hand it to him. In effect killing him. In this circumstance it was the character's mother and boyfriend. Was it selfish of him to put his loved ones, who may not have been thinking rationally to do this? If they had left it long enough would he have changed his mind? Who knows. But shouldn't we all be allowed to choose?

Some say only God has the right to take a life. But what if that God is not your God? Or if you believe that God will understand. After all doesn't he have compassion to see suffering? Anyway, let us not go down the religious path, but rather one of self choice.

In my minds eye, it would be kinder to give people an option when they are terminally ill or in a debilitated state where the life experience is near zero to end it all with what dignity they have left. Why should there be no legal way, when loved ones are pressured by the one wishing to die? Surely there should be a well thought legal way?

Yes I know, we have all heard of Harold Shipman and he is always the one brought in when people are scared something like this would be abused.

But we are not talking about people committing suicide on Governments deciding they will kill people because they have no voice. I am talking about people who are still able to give their consent and it is their specific request. People who would be open to this option would have documented medical notes and it could be made clear that it had to be done at a medical centre and signed by a gp, a consultant and a doctor that has taken care of the patient. That means that unless you had 3 separate people somehow conspiring, there would be no room for abuse.

This is a delicate subject and I by no means suggest that everyone who is left petraplegic wants this. Some have a fulfilling life that they are happy with. And I am not just stating this need for that reason.

I once had a friend that fought cancer with her dying breathe. But in that last week she was in so much agony, she begged her husband to help her die. She died in pain and hardly knowing who was who. She did not get a dignified goodbye with all her young children and her husband was left with the memory that he could not stop her pain.

Update on this subject of Euthanasia.

I am writing this update as currently in the UK a man called Tony Nicklinson is desperately fighting for the right to end his life. Tony Nicklinson is a man who lived a very sporty and fulfilling life until he had a stroke that he by rights should not have survived. By a strange twist of fate he did survive but has " locked in" syndrome. Being mentally aware of everything and being unable to live as he wishes, he wants to end the misery of living a stunted life.

Tony's case has made me realize that the reason people can't decide whether they are for or against euthanasia is because euthanasia really needs to be looked at on an individual basis and not as a blanket cover for all.

I for one hope that Tony Nicklinson wins his case and gets his right to escape the prison his body has created for him.

Poor Tony has been refused his "right-to-die" by judges in London. He emotionally started crying with all his heart as this means his anguish and pain is now prolonged. How cruel to leave a man in this position when if we left our pets in this position people would deem us as cruel.

Tony's legal team will back him all the way and get a new president set but for now the man has to keep living through his own living hell.

Tony Nicklinson could go to Switzerland, but it is not in the hills and valleys we think of as Switzerland, it is in a horrid industrial estate. Also the other facts of it being expensive and that he would not be in his own country when he died. Surely every person has a right to be in their own country to die?

Tony Nicklinson dead

Bless this poor man. This will be my final update as Tony died at home of natural causes, only 58 years of age.

Life had been cruel to him when it gave him a stroke, a man who lived life to the full had his body stolen from him.

The courts may have denied Tony his wish but he got it any way. He managed to die in his own home, in his own country, with his family. This was all he ever asked for and we could not give it to him, yet the fates did.

R.I.P Tony, I hope you move on to happiness, where ever that may be.