VERSION|0.5.1|SUBJECT|Bishop Tom Butler |CONTENT|[b]Rating[/b] 1 out of 5 (Not platitudinous)

[url=http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap130802.html][img=images/2013/08/pic130802.jpg popup=false float=right][/url]Given the subject matter of today's TFTD, on assisted dying, I don't think a parody would be appropriate. However, a short comment doesn't seem out of place.

Bishop Butler's invocation of a god is essentially irrelevant. His main argument is the slippery slope one, where a right to die becomes a duty. Unusually, he offers some evidence of this in the form of an anecdote about a disabled priest with a rapidly deteriorating condition. In an extraordinarily inappropriate and insensitive gesture, someone leaves the priest a "right to die" leaflet. 

Disturbing as this story might be, it's my understanding that, wherever the right to assisted dying has been enshrined in law, there has been no massive increase in the number of elderly or disabled people choosing that option. Nor has there been any withdrawal of palliative care in those jurisdictions. I haven't researched this in detail, so I'm happy to be corrected if this isn't the case. If that's correct then the slippery slope argument is proven wrong and the story given today by Bishop Butler is a ghastly aberration.

I'm strongly of the opinion that a person's life is their own and that, provided appropriate safeguards are in place to protect the vulnerable, we should all have the right to end our lives at the time of our own choosing. To me, the thought of spending my last few months alive in pain, unable to move, unable to do anything, stuffed full of tubes in a hospital bed, is the very opposite of a dignified death.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01dn5w2]Listen/Read[/url]|CATEGORIES|29,82,26|IP-ADDRESS|94.168.119.214|CREATEDBY|admin|DATE|1375430811
