Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Even now, some people are still shocked by shrugging as homicide.
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
The U.K. loves itself some “Liverpool Care Pathway” and killing patients, so when a former Labour Prime Minister has qualms…
“Time is running out to right the wrongs of England and Wales’s assisted dying legislation. The House of Lords is holding committee sittings, which involve line-by-line examinations of the bill, on 5 and 12 December. Meanwhile, the second stage of the Scottish assisted dying for terminally ill adults bill has recently been completed. In many ways, the Scottish legislation is even more troubling.
“The shocking revelations from the National Audit Office and Hospice UK in October about the worsening financial crisis faced by end-of-life care are a sharp reminder of what needs to be changed if we are to be fair to dying people.
“No one can doubt the sympathy that the bill’s supporters feel for the plight of those struggling with pain and fear at the end of their lives. But the starting point should not be a hastily implemented law to allow doctors to administer death – it should instead be improved end-of-life care.”
Even if equivocally in opposition, opposition to medical homicide should be welcomed:
“One of my great frustrations has been the general silence of suicide prevention organizations in the face of the legalization of assisted suicide in various jurisdictions. To me, this failure has been an abdication of such groups’ core responsibility because it ignores some suicides, does not oppose facilitation of the suicides of the ill and disabled, and does not grapple with the adverse impact that assisted suicide advocacy can have on suicidal people generally.
“That silence has now ended. The International Association for Suicide Prevention just issued a (not quite strong enough) position paper that (equivocally) opposes legalization.”
The French Senate rejected a euthanasia bill (for now as of writing)… though sadly not because they opposed medical homicide, but because it didn’t go far enough. Still a temporary win is still a win, for life.
“The Sénat, the French Parliament’s upper house, on Wednesday, January 28, rejected a government-backed draft law on assisted dying that had been billed as one of the country’s most important societal changes in more than a decade.
“The law easily passed the lower Assemblée Nationale last year but was so watered down by right-wing and centrist lawmakers, in often angry and chaotic debate in the upper chamber, that supporters of the initiative said it no longer made sense.”
TTFN.
