Imposing Religious Beliefs

The anti-euthanasia people are primarily motivated by a desire to impose their religious beliefs on others. They discovered such arguments would not fly, so are now pushing a bogus argument that legal euthanasia leads to increased elder abuse. Nonsense! Obviously there is much more unbiased scrutiny of legal euthanasia than illegal. People rashly attempting suicide will be much less likely to carry through if they go the legal euthanasia route which would necessitate reevaluation and talking it over with a trained counselor.

What it boils down to is, who is in a better position to make wise decisions about my end-of-life, me or Dr Will Johnston, (the B.C. spokesman for the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Canada). Who has more at skin in the game? Dr Johnson or me? Whose business is it anyway? How arrogant he is to claim he knows better than I just how bearable my suffering is. Suffering is multi-dimensional and subjective. Nobody else can possibly know as well as I how bearable my existence is.

This notion that all pain is manageable is ridiculous. Have these meddlesome busybodies never had an infected tooth, a kidney stone or HIV-induced nausea? In my experience, pain laughs at any analgesic modern medicine can throw at them. They may work for some people, but not for me.

Religious fanatics like Dr Johnston intimidated the Liberal government to disallow physician assisted suicide in cases of unbearable suffering. You must be on death’s door as well. However, death is imminent, you don’t particularly need deliverance because the suffering is limited. People whose suffering is protracted most need help. Dr Johnson enjoys seeing people writhe in interminable pain because he believes his god likes it that way and it his duty to make everyone bow down to his god. If he were not doing this for religious reasons we would call him criminally mentally ill. He reminds me of Paul Bettany as Silas in The Da Vinci Code.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)