I understand that a survey commissioned by the BBC's Panorama reported that 73% of those surveyed (a sample of one thousand) believed that friends or relatives should be able to assist in the suicide of a loved one who is terminally ill.
I don't know where this sample was taken or what their experience with suffering or terminal illness was but it seems to me that I am now firmly fixed in the minority regarding this topic. Or perhaps more accurately I am in a group who have neither been swayed by the media spin or persuaded by extreme cases to embark along a road which will find itself having an impact upon lesser, or at best - completely different, case with life-terminating results. In fact, so much does the potential exist for those who are terminally ill to be 'helped' that rather than offer less protection for a life I feel that there may soon be a need to offer more!
The problem is that many vulnerable people are at risk, potentially, not just from their illness or situation but from the caring persuasion and actions of their loved ones. To make legal 'assisted suicide' is to effectively remove protection for the vulnerable and many who would otherwise have worked to prolong and ensure a quality of life as long as it might be had would find themselves drawn into new criteria and the fallacy of 'seeking what is best', which as this is death is not a 'best' as I understand it!
Having read a little about the situation in the US, Oregon in particular, I understand that there, assisted suicides have risen by almost five hundred percent. My fear is that the majority of these occurred on bad days and had they continued to the next, a sunny day may have been the reality, sadly this was not to be seen by the 'helped' person. I work with this reality in the lives of many and have experienced people who have asked to be 'put down' should things get worse and yet when they have gotten worse have realised that life was still there in not only a fullness but with a certain dignity (although not always).
I fear that just as 'Whose Life Is It Anyway' changed attitudes to euthanasia, Sir Terry Pratchett's involvement will be another step towards something that I have to say, I do not agree with. That said, having worked with terminally ill and knowing that at some stage the 'pathway' process is engaged to ease people from this world gently I am not against working with life, even when this infers moving towards death. I'm just not for rushing it or losing perspective or balance.
I agree with Sir Terry regarding the need for sound and effective measures to be put in place to give a degree of confidence that those seeking to procure their own demise were of 'sound mind' and free from the influence (or perhaps coercion or active persuasion) of others. But I also see in this whole situation the live life to the full - die at the top of your game mentality (or at least not the bottom of it). But this removes the variability of life - it decrees some sort of right to decide where life has value and where it should be regarded as a disposable asset.
To write 'DNR' (Do Not Resuscitate) on notes is to refuse to have medical and technological means of continuing life - this is akin to pathway, this is to accept that life ends when it ends and, regardless of technology, it is allowed to be so.
I pray for those who are faced with the choice of 'letting nature take its course' and for those who seek for themselves an active end to their life or the life of a loved one. It is never simple - it should never become so.
All the days numbered for me were written in the Lamb's Book of Life before one of them came to be . . And I will praise you because (regardless of my situation) I am wonderfully and marvelously made. From the being knit together in my mother's womb to my last breath may our lives praise you, Creator and LORD of all.
ps. A thought regarding 'quality of life' in the form of Richard Gomm whom I first met (via the network) back in the eighties! Were he born now I wonder if he'd be around long enough to make the success of his life that the 20th century version made of his short life? (I just loved the anchor man's, "Isn't that just magnificent?" Potentially not so much so in the 21st century, especially as ending life is obviously so popular.
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