I support euthanasia and assisted suicide i'm afraid. So for me Holland is making a progresive choice.
I'm quite sure I don't support euthanasia. It's possible we may be thinking of the same thing, but describing it all using very different language. I remember my mother dying a very slow and painful death. The sort of slow and painful death I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I remember when it was clear she could no longer talk to us or do anything for herself, and she'd been in a hospital bed for several months, the physician came to us and said he was fairly certain she'd not recover, but might be kept "alive" for a number of months, but that we'd probably all had our last intelligible conversation with her. I remember it was a very sad time. The saddest time in my life. I remember him asking my sister and me whether we'd like for her to be given more morphine. That it would be reported that it would ease her pain, which is true, but that in fact it would hasten her demise. My sister agonized over the whole issue before answering. I don't think I had as mixed feelings as her. I was quite sure I wanted the physician to give her an overdose of morphine. But my sister must come to that on her own. I am absolutely certain of what my mother would have wanted. I have no doubts about this. The following day, and I could tell my sister was still thinking of nothing else but what to answer to the physician, I suggested to her that it was not wrong to want her mother to rest in peace, though I did not pressure her. I chose my words delicately and patiently. She said to me that this is what she wanted. That was in January 1993.
I have never discussed this with my extended family. My sister may have. She may also have discussed it with her god, as I believe she thinks she has one. I don't think she's a killer. I don't think I am. And I don't think the physician is. And I'm quite sure this has nothing to do with congress, or the government or law. It was a quiet and intensely personal matter between myself, my sister, my mother, and her physician. I think similarly, if I had a child with the same affliction and in the same position, it would be an intensely personal matter for myself and my wife to discuss. I have no idea what I'd do in that case, but I'd thank the government to stay out of it. They certainly need not pass laws making what we did "legal" as it would lead to the killing of many people. It would make it easy to kill people. It would encourage insurance companies to pressure the families of terminally ill people to ease their own economic burdens. I'll also say that the government does not need to make what we did "illegal" In fact, it's none of the government's business, and frankly none of yours, but I bring it up as a brief history which suggests that it's possible to support the right of a family to do what we did, but to also be absolutely repelled at the notion that the government would take it upon itself to decide that it's okay to kill sick people.
This is not unlike all the "hate crimes" legislation out there, in the sense that all crimes labelled hate crimes are already prosecutable undering existing law. If I burn down your house, I am an arson. It doesn't matter where you come from. But to make it a "hate crime" sets the terrible precedent of government trying to regulate my thought, a decidedly un-American thing for government to do. Any legislation making legal or illegal the administration of pain-easing but death-inducing drugs to children is the same. First, it's unnecessary since murder is already illegal, and if a DA wants to attempt to prosecute a family based on the fact that a mother and father were simply too lazy or too hateful to care for a special needs child, the DA only needs to make the case. If he can't make that case, then it probably was not the situation and the child in fact was probably suffering so horribly that it was a justifiable decision. And a jury would see that. Maybe even a grand jury would see it before the taxpayers were forced to pay for an unnecessary trial. In any case, the legal system for murder already exists. And the intensely personal decisions of a family under stress needn't be part of any special legislation. Especially when to do so would either make it easier for insurance companies to cop out of paying for services (in the case euthanasia was made "legal") or easier for District Attorneys with axes to grind or elections to win to get convictions (in the case euthanasia was specifically made "illegal"). Once we decide to formally debate this, we commit ourselves to making it illegal or legal. One way or the other. And either way it's a bad business. This is best left alone. If you think a murder is being committed, then you should attempt to prosecute it under existing law. If you can't, then it's probably not murder.
So I am very much against the government specifically making euthanasia legal. I am also against the government specifically making physician/family overdosing of terminally ill patients illegal. And I know I am not alone. I have read of many others in the same situation, and most feel the same way. It's really not advantageous for the government to visit this issue and decide one way or the other. I do agree that the Netherlands is making a progressive choice. There's lots of progress out there. The invention of plastics which take hundreds of thousands of years to decompose represents progress. So does Nuclear weaponry. And communism. And high-tech cigarettes that contain more nicotine than would naturally occur in Tobacco is progress. Logan's Run is full of progress. Progress for the sake of progress. You like that, do you? That's too bad.
