ABC.net.au reports that some leading euthanasia supporters are pushing the counter intuitive argument that legalized euthanasia will actually help people live longer:
The architect of the Northern Territory’s overturned euthanasia legislation says denying people the right to die is forcing them to take their own lives when they are still relatively healthy.
Former chief minister Marshall Perron spoke at a public forum on the issue in Darwin last night in a bid to rally support for a new bill, currently before the Senate in Canberra.
If passed, the private members bill would allow the territories to again pass laws legalising voluntary euthanasia.
Mr Perron says many sick people take their own lives when they are still relatively healthy because they fear their illness will make them incapable of doing it later.
“It’s a fact that once people qualify for voluntary euthanasia, they actually go on and live longer than they otherwise would,” he said.
“The relief of having access to the means to die [can] reinvigorate the will to live.
Soooo we’re supposed to believe that people are killing themselves because they don’t have the right to kill themselves? The joy of knowing that they can kill themselves is what gives their lives meaning?
What kind of sickened mind makes these arguments?
And believe it or not pro-euthanasia types also argued that euthanasia should be legalized because it’s…well…less messy than suicide. Seriously.
“At the moment, Australians at 75 and older suicide at the rate of three a week,” he said.
“Most of those people die in terrible, violent ways and they die alone.
“It’s a tragedy that families have to find them that way, people have to clean up. And it’s all just so unnecessary.”
Isn’t that so much of what this is all about? We no longer can deal with mess. We just don’t like it. Old people can make messes and we don’t want to clean them up so we start wondering if maybe killing them is just easier…less messy than letting them live.
We’ve effectively removed older people from the family by pretending that the ideal is “independent living.” And anything less than the ideal is…well…a mess. I ask you who really wants independent living? Even the term seems lonely to me. We’re all dependent on each other. For centuries older generations lived with younger generations helping out and being helped. That’s called life. Taking in an aging relative is too big of a burden. We’ve somehow forgotten that imperfect life is not a burden.
The moment someone stops pulling their weight we legalize killing them. No fuss. No muss. Easy.
Dark and scary. And all too easy.
