Saturday, April 16, 2005
IN FRANCE
your doctor can't kill you yet:
The bill allows doctors to stop giving medical assistance when it "has no effect other than maintaining life artificially".
It had already been approved by the lower house of parliament.
Supporters of the legislation say it stops short of permitting euthanasia, because it does not allow the doctor actively to end a patient's life.
They include the conservative government, the opposition Socialists and the Roman Catholic Church.
It occurred to me recently, though, what the next step would be. Those who would like to sanitize society according to their own definition of worthiness will probably present us with the compassionate position that it would be so much kinder to end your loved-one's life immediately rather than let him suffer through a slow and painful death, and then top it off with a comment about how we treat our animals better than that.
With such an agenda, it could explain why a judge would insist on slow starvation rather than risking that an offered glass of water could end up in a choking episode that the patient doesn't survive. First the cruelty of prolonged death must be made to penetrate the minds of the talking heads and the listening public.
I'm becoming an entrenched cynic. I'm not wrong nearly often enough.
