“Terminal sedation” has been approved by the French National Council. That’s euthanasia to you and me. They called it a “Duty to humanity.”
News reports show:
“In the case of repeated and lucid requests to die from terminally ill patients who are in palliative care, a legitimate medical decision must be taken with regard to these exceptional clinical situations. This is provided, however, that they have been identified not by a single doctor but by a medical panel”, a text from the FNC for doctors called “End of Life, Assistance to Die,” reads. Since 2005 France’s Leonetti law has protected against “aggressive medical treatment”. However, euthanasia remains illegal.
According to French doctors, the law is applicable for most “end of life cases”. But, it doesn’t extend to certain cases of prolonged agony or psychological and/or physical pain, which despite medicinal intervention remain uncontrollable. “These situations are rare, but they can’t go unanswered.
They are exceptional, and not covered by the current law,” the text said.
“A strong, terminal method of sedation practiced in respect to human dignity and administered by a panel of doctors, could be considered”.(ANSAmed).
So it looks like by saying it’s to be used in “exceptional” cases, they’re promising to make it safe, legal and rare. We all know how that works. Of course, it will be one of the three. It won’t be all that rare. Killing certainly isn’t safe. How could it be? But it will be legal.
February 19, 2013 at 3:41 pm
Rights the state gives, the state can take away. Thomas Jefferson. Our Creator is the God of Life. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. Caesar belongs to God. Now that the state in France pretends to be God, will their money be Holy? Will Divine Providence bring forth a new generation? Will Divine Justice make all men equal, or will war wipe put the killers?
February 19, 2013 at 4:47 pm
It's going to be an uphill battle on this one. I expect that defending redemptive suffering will not make sense to the secular.
February 20, 2013 at 10:28 am
@sparrow: and that's why you don't take that tack. You simply point out that, while dignity is indeed preferable to life—otherwise "death before dishonor" and "better to die on my feet than live on my knees" would be rank lunacy—there is no real basis for claiming that suffering is undignified. Certainly not now, when we have the means to ameliorate most if not all of the less-dignified aspects of sickness.
If Mother Teresa's Calcutta patients, who frequently had to sit in their own filth, covered in flies, didn't kill themselves to escape that indignity, why should people with modern medical care be so fastidious? Are the euthanasia advocates going to pretend Hindus have less concern for their dignity than modern secularist Europeans?