The suicide taboo

But let us be clear here. If a person is mentally competent and decides to take their own life what right do others have to stop them?

Are we better off living in a society where suicide is criminalised (there’s logic for you) or one where people of sound mind can access the proper tools to do it as painlessly as possible?

I read arguments from the likes of Gordon Brown in the British Parliament about protecting the elderly from pressure brought to bear by greedy relatives as a sound basis on which to maintain the suicide taboo. Are we so powerless to draw a legislative distinction between informed consent and forced consent? Is it so hard to agree to a set of steps that must be followed before informed consent can be presumed?

In Australia it is apparently still an offence to publish information promoting ways to kill yourself. Have these people never heard of the Internet?

Voluntary euthanasia is a subject we need to talk more about, if only to allay the fears of the “pro-life” lobby that we are on the slippery slope to some sort of Soylent Green-ish final solution. We are talking about painless exit strategies for those who do not subscribe to an afterlife proposition and who wish (like Craig Ewert wished) to exit at a time of their choosing, not at some unknown future point after months, maybe years of physical degradation and indignity.

Go visit a nursing home sometime and tell me this is your master plan for your final days. It is certainly not mine.

And as much as I like to travel I sincerely hope that when my time comes I don’t need to smuggle barbiturates in from Mexico or travel to Switzerland just to get some peace.

And I hope by then we can all agree that it is human dignity, not longevity, that is the greatest cause.