I want to be up front when I say I don’t support Euthanasia, but I do support us having a really vigorous debate and I am open to hearing the other side of that debate.
I don’t believe it is respectful to the incredible courage and strength of Lecretia Seales to debate the issue so soon after her passing, so I will wait to voice my opposition until the debate begins in front of Parliament, as it should.
I hope to have half her strength at the end of my days
But while we are having an adult discussion about euthanasia, can we please do the same for medicinal cannabis, because the situation of Alex Renton lying in a coma at Capital & Coast District Health is simply despicable.
There is clear research that cannabis can have positive medical impacts. It is our mad war on drugs mentality that is stopping us being adults on this issue. Parts of America, the home of the war on drugs for God’s sake, are decriminalising medicinal cannabis.
If they can. We can.
Allowing a teenager to stay in a coma for moralistic problems with marijuana is beneath us as a country.
And if we have an adult discussion about medicinal cannabis, can we please have an adult dissuasion on children in poverty? One way we could help those on the bottom is by providing universal breakfasts and lunches in schools. For every NZer who claims ‘the parent is responsible for feeding their kid, not the state, personal responsibility etc etc’ , I bet not one of them can identify what the parameters of how the benefit was established are.
Ruth Richardson slashed the benefits, and she did so based on a formula that calculated the minimum adult nutritional amounts. The benefit was actually constructed so that the average person was hungry each week as an incentive to not remain on the benefit.
This historic fact is so often ignored and forgotten in the debate of child poverty, let’s have an adult discussion about that.
And while we are talking like adults, how about we throw in affordable homes? Education debt entrenched Gen Y and Gen X have been speculated out of ever owning their own home, the solution for them and the scores of other working NZers who are locked out is a serious crack down on speculators, a real Capital Gains Tax and a massive state housing rebuild that adds 20 000- 30 000 new state houses to the market.
Let’s not limit these adult discussions on these issues, our country can no longer put up with us being children.
Indeed Martyn, i would rather spend my energy on the right to life, and, a decent start to that life, for every child in this country than expend an ounce of energy promoting anyone’s ‘right’ to have someone else kill them,
Like you i do not support such a ‘right’, and, like many of my peers am nonplussed that the opposition party’s are calling for select committees to debate the issue while the death of baby Emma-Lita Bourne looks likely to be quietly swept under the carpet,
My view of such a ‘right’ is that the question should be put to a referendum…
Let me be clear at the start, I wish to be able to make an easy choice of how and when to end my life when the time comes.
I watched my mother die of cancer and although she never said she wanted to speed the end she did indicate that she wanted to be in control and be able to decide that she could end it if she wanted to.
At the moment I am looking after my father who is blind and legless and has recently lost some of his ability to navigate around the home and so requires some one around to keep an eye out for him. He has been asking for easy methods of ending it for some time but there is no easy way available. The euthanasia people suggest sleeping pills and a plastic bag but that requires planning well in advance. I have told my siblings that sleeping pills and hypothermia is the route I will choose but that can become unavailable if one is hospitalised or some how become incapable of getting outside in a southerly storm.
My father is now refusing any treatment other than that necessary to keep him comfortable but for a man who was tramping and cleaning windows well into his seventies, who had a large garden and who played bridge and read every day to be blind and legless has considerably reduced his joy in life. Everyday he says “this is no way to live” and “I want to die”
Everything you say about poverty and the need for a tax system focused on ensuring an equalible distribution of wealth and opportunity is true but it doesn’t mean having the right to decide that today is a good day to die should not be a greatly facilitated right
I tend to agree with Stephen.
And with large part of Martyn’s post.
Though I’m an advocate of my right to choose. As pro-choice advocates in the abortion debate say; “my body, my choice”.
It’s been said that legalised euthenasia “might be abused”.
Let’s answer that, in part. Voluntary, assisted euthenasia is not a matter of wandering casually into a euthenasia centre like from the scene in “Soylent Green” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOV8mBjHHYg).
It would have be be a system bound up in checks, and geared toward those terminally ill. They are the ones who, generally, bed-bound, cannot terminate their own lives without assistance.
Those in reasonably good health, or otherwise not eligible, would not be bed-bound.
The crux of the matter is; if you fall into the latter camp, and wouldn’t be eligibly for assisted euthenasia; are not bed-bound; then a person determined to take his/her life would not be constrained by any laws on this Earth. S/he would find a way to suicide, regardless, and our how rates of suicide point to that already.
So, any proposed law wouldn’t apply to them.
If a person fits the criteria for assisted euthenasia, then they’re in a bad way already, and death is imminent.
The question then isn’t whether a person should die, but the time involved. Do they “go” at a time of their choosing? Or when the body’s internal organs have finally, painfully, given up the struggle.
I find very little “noble” in dying when biological processes dictate I should.
In one case, the body’s system decides. In another, it’s our own conscious decision. Which one do we want for ourselves; autonomic or conscious?
I’m against euthanasia because it gives the state the right to kill its citizens and therefore sets a dangerous precedent. As for medicinal marijuana I’m a libertarian and think all drugs should be legalised – after all one of the most dangerous drugs in the world – alcohol – is legal, so why not the others?
If you are really a libertarian, you would oppose the state using the threat of prosecution against your family or friends, to blackmail you into staying alive when you are terminally ill, suffering, and ready for a death which is inevitable and imminent.
“I’m against euthanasia because it gives the state the right to kill its citizens”
You are entitled to oppose euthanasia on ethical grounds, but blatant lies about the nature of what is being proposed add no credibility to your argument. As I said to the commenter on Curwen’s piece, it gives people the right to assist a friend or family member to kill *themselves*. In every voluntary euthanasia proposal I’ve heard about, the method is assisted suicide – the citizen dying is the one doing the killing – and no agent of the state is given any right to suggest or “prescribe” suicide, let alone carry out executions.
I find Frank MacSkasy’s position unsatisfactory. As I undestand him, a person who is of sound body and mind is to be denied euthanasia because, if they are determined enough, they can find the means to kill themself.
I recall reading that during the French Revolution, one of it’s original leaders, who had sent hundreds to the guillotine, had lost popularity – which was a common event – and faced being guillotined himself. Not wanting that ignominy, he decided to shot himself, put a pistol in his mouth and … shot off half his face, but survived in awful agony until the next day when they guillotined him any how.
There is the weakness in your argument. You require the fit and able to run the risk of a botched amateurish job (and still not meet your criterion for euthanasia) when it could be done professionally and free from risk or pain.
Why not discuss intravenous vitamin C too?
After the Smith saga in Auckland where the family needed legal help to make the doctors give the treatment requested, the happy ending had a nasty sequel. The FDA shut down the facility that made this form of Vit C.
Big pharma loves it when we are half sick from toxic overload caused by sprays, gmo, fluoridated water, depleted soils, excess sugar, outright incorrect/ outdated medical treatments & patient information etc. Add in the vaccine compromised, adverse drug reactions (21.000+/- reported, properly prescribed & taken as directed- Dept of Stats 1998) & medical misadventure, renamed medical accidents by ACC perhaps because 1500 or so a year & an increase of 335% in 10 years, is not a famous 5 adventure any more. No wonder the top 10 of the fortune 500 coys are pharma coys that make more profit than the other 490.
Why not discuss intravenous vitamin C too?
After the Smith saga in Auckland where the family needed legal help to make the doctors give the treatment requested, the happy ending had a nasty sequel. The FDA shut down the facility that made this form of Vit C.
Big pharma loves it when we are half sick from toxic overload caused by sprays, gmo, fluoridated water, depleted soils, excess sugar, outright incorrect/ outdated medical treatments & patient information etc. Add in the vaccine compromised, adverse drug reactions (21.000+/- reported, properly prescribed & taken as directed- Dept of Stats 1998) & medical misadventure, renamed medical accidents by ACC perhaps because 1500 or so a year & an increase of 335% in 10 years, is not a famous 5 adventure any more. No wonder the top 10 of the fortune 500 coys are pharma coys that make more profit than the other 490. Only when they can make as much money from youth in asia as from human misery, will anything change.
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