Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Some of the media in the UK have become the cheerleaders for the legalization of assisted suicide and the suicide lobby. The article in the UK Sunday Times and reprinted world-wide.It is interesting that the media considers an actor commenting on assisted suicide to be newsworthy. I guess selling newspapers is more important than finding an objective and educated response.
The reports fail to present the issue accurately. Legalizing euthanasia and/or assisted suicide creates a right to be killed or allow a physician to actually cause or be involved with causing your death, it is not about a right to die.
There is another issue with the complicity of the media in promoting euthanasia and assisted suicide cases. The reality of the copy cat suicide effect is well known and that is why the World Health Organization established a set of guidelines for the media to help prevent suicide.
People, like Patrick Stewart, do raise legitimate concerns about the care of people who are dying. These concerns are properly dealt with by a society that improves the care of the dying, improves the care and attitude towards people with disabilities, maintains an effective suicide prevention strategy and understands the need to prevent the scourge of elder abuse.The sad reality is that the media does not consider a position of opposing euthanasia to be newsworthy because it promotes the "status quo."
I challenge the media to focus on people and organizations that care for others and help them live comfortably and with dignity rather than killing them.
Patrick Stewart has spoken out for allowing mentally competent, terminally ill people to have a choice about how they die. It's not about legalizing suicide for just about anyone.
ReplyDeleteIf you're dying of say, cancer, and are in constant pain and agony, and the only "care and attention" from educated medical experts is to hook you up into a machine and restrain you in a hospital bed, it should be right for a patient to choose to be allowed to die. It's not moral to keep someone suffering.
When coming to euthanasia, why do we never ask for the terminally ill, suffering patient's opinion, but look for advice from grieving family members or worse, complete outsiders? Shouldn't the patient's need come first?
Not all terminally ill patients die nice and comfortably in their beds surrounded by friends and family. Some die in tremendous pain, slowly. It's those people who would like there to be a choice.