I support assisted suicide, but what we’re proposing goes too far

National Post

John Moore

I have spent years campaigning for the right of doctor assisted death. Now Canada is about to establish that right and I find myself arguing against the very thing I asked for. This is not the assisted death I was looking for.

In debates on TV and radio I was always pitted against people I regarded as tedious scolds. They have moral and religious objections to anything but a natural death and they’re presumptuous enough to think all of us should hew to their personal convictions. They have a habit of grossly exaggerating or misrepresenting stories from jurisdictions where there are frameworks for the state helping people to die. They pretend that fully functioning people, the disabled and unwanted elders are being dispatched not only with glee but often against their will. These arguments were never hard to refute.

But now I find myself somewhat uncomfortably sharing the same side of the table with some of these people, even if their “I told you sos” don’t quite add up. . . [Full Text]