To think people should not use 'we put pets to sleep' as an argument to allow assisted dying?

It’s only a supposition that this will happen.

Unknown Number?

Indeed. As opposed to thousands who actively want it and whose rights have been sacrificed.

No, what is disturbing is that you are using an unquantified and completely unverified risk of alleged 'murder' to prolong immense pain and suffering for so many people. I have stated upthread that lots of things are potentially subject to coercion and manipulation. This is not a reason to ban them for everyone. It's a balance of risks and harms. Having experienced someone beg to die and watching them suffer, I will never be convinced that this isn't an enormous harm that we should be able to devise rules to avoid.

A fetus is a distinct living organism. Cancer is made of living human cells but is not a distinct living organism. Science would say that a fetus is alive and cancer isn't. This is biological fact.

You suggesting a fetus never 'had a life' is a subjective statement on personhood and strays into very dangerous territory. Some would say that some disabled or very old people effectively aren't living and don't have a meaningful life to preserve. We need to stick to scientific fact.

Abortion and AD don't need to be compared in the way you insist. You can compare the death of the fetus with the death of the person that chooses AD. Value judgements are made on the value of the life (by the mother or the individual on the case of AD) and we as a society potentially condone and facilitate the ending of the life.

No one’s life is worth less. What is disturbing is you are saying that avoidance of pain and suffering is worth an unknown number of people being murdered.

He was able to consent for the suicide attempts - but he’s a middle class, well to do gentleman. He tried to overdose on paracetamol as that was all he had access to in the house. He was quite frail so probably would’ve struggled to do anything physical. He would never have done anything to inconvenience others (like jump in front of a train or off a motorway bridge) and has driven away so he would be found by the police and not family. He would absolutely have happily, informedly and with dignity chosen a legal way to get lethal drugs to die surrounded by family.

You’re right he probably can’t consent now, but actually 3 months being sectioned in a psych ward because he was saying he would absolutely try to kill himself again if let out with people who were much more mentally ill than he was has truly institutionalised him and hastened his decline significantly.

He’s basically now a shell sitting in a (very expensive) care home, that luckily he can afford. It’s the saddest, most undignified thing I’ve ever witnessed and I’ve already started to think about how I would end it if I was in the same situation that he was.

About 12 years ago, I had a cat. I got the cat when it was already "senior" and it loved about another 3 years. Towards the end of its life, it slowed down and then one weekend, it became obvious the cat would die in the next day or 2. On day 3, the cat was exactly the same as Day 1. Just laying there, occasionally eating and drinking very small amounts. Laboured breathing, but not distressed.

Bear in mind I'd just watched my uncle die of cancer. A horrific, graphic death.

Anyway, I decided to call the vet and they saw the cat via a video. All I can say is that they were very surprised that I hadnt brought the cat in to be euthanised on day 1. To me, this cat was just dying. It wasnt distressed and spent most of the time asleep. What was happening was just the normal end of life process.

Right now, I've been helping to care for a relative who has been sick a long time and at the brink of death many times. They will die. There is no cure for what they have. There is barely treatment. Again, we sit wondering if they will make it back through this but be left in worst general health than they were before. Every thing my cat experienced on that last weekend, my relatives has experienced 5 to 6 times. All the way up to agonal breathing and terminal agitation.

The difference is stark.

The foetus never had 'a life'. Being alive is not the same thing as having a life; cancer is alive, it doesn't 'have a life' that we end when we kill it. Although I'm not sure what stage of pregnancy you're talking about; obviously later miscarriages or stillbirths carry a much greater toll for the woman.

Thinking about it, I think the treatment of miscarriages has improved as infant mortality rates have dropped, and the survival rate of premature infants has developed, and women's healthcare has improved – I don't think it has much interaction with abortion, as abortion isn't really about the embryo/foetus, but rather the pregnant woman, and while abortion laws may have an effect, the other factors likely have far more impact.

Anyway, to compare abortion to assisted suicide would be to compare the pregnant woman terminating the pregnancy, to the person choosing to kill themselves, not to compare the foetus to the person killing themselves. So once more – you can get pregnant again, but you can't live again.

Much like pet euthanasia, it's a poor analogy.

Are you sure?

Have you had loved dogs in pain at the end of their life?

You can see them in fear. One of my boys couldn’t breathe, I could see the terror he felt and how he tried to find a place to die.

The fetus has lost its life. It won't get another one.

Do you think the treatment of miscarriage worsened when abortion was legalised? I would argue it's actually improved since abortion has been allowed and we now treat miscarriage far more seriously. People will support the mother to grieve her baby and validate the fact that the fetus was a living entity and that it has died. If a fetus is aborted at the same stage though, many including yourself seemingly, are unable to even acknowledge a life has been lost.

I don't think you do want to respect my view at all.

Dignity is both an objective and subjective concept. We should ensure that the care we offer people preserves their dignity as far as possible but equally we have to accept that for many this will be unacceptable and they will still feel like they have lost their dignity. Lucy Webster feels a certain way about the care she receives and this is absolutely her prerogative but some people greatly value independence and being able to do things for themselves. Everyone is different. I'm not suggesting that she has lost her dignity and should therefore apply for AD but by the same measure she can't insist I won't feel like I have lost my dignity if I need help to use the toilet and that I must be denied access to AD.

Plenty of my family members have received care (both disabled and through old age) and most have resented needing the care and had all sorts of problems with the carers themselves doing what they're supposed to do and sometimes even turning up at all. They don't dance around their kitchen with their carers and certainly don't live a full life at full speed. I think that column has been written with a certain agenda that doesn't reflect a lot of people's lives when they get to the point that they need such high levels of care.

Gerda Lerner is also writing with an agenda that in my view is naive and doesn't reflect most people's reality. Her Christian ethos and bizarre notion that all older people will have children or younger family members to love and care for them at the end of life like their parents loved them as a child, undermines her arguments. There is no moral imperative to fully complete a life, it's not a computer game where you have to finish every level. Not all old people have wisdom they can or want to share nor do they want to lose their independence and accept dependence. Dependency leaves you vulnerable and you will lose some elements of control. Control is different for young children versus adults. Not everyone is happy to lose this nor should they be forced to give it up if they don't want to just because Lerner has decided we should.

You have to believe me when I say my friend was poor think poverty. We made friends from 17 through a mutual interest . We had very different upbringing. Though out his life I helped him but he was never my project just my friend.

He lived in the tiniest council flat in a rough area ( a number of murders while he was there) he had no carpet on the floor and as he was dying the visiting health staff didn’t address that. He was poor and he was under no pressure to die. His partner in fact begged the ambulance to take him to hospital even though he had a DNR.

His cancer was Oesophageal cancer it isn’t common I believe in younger people. it was the closing of his pipe and the thought of not swallowing which terrified him and was just awful to watch it get worse and him struggle.

He had excellent free palliative care at an amazing local hospice and we did make as many memories we could before he left us including him marrying his partner.

I honestly believe that if you took religion out of the equation. Nobody would want what I saw or he had . I was on the fence previously but I am 100% behind AD now.

I hope this will change some peoples minds too.

I’m afraid I’m not quite sure what you mean by that. That non-human animals should have the same rights as human ones? That people should be able to be euthanised in the same way as animals are? If so, I'm not sure either of those things would be a good idea.

Boy, do I know it...

I will take this opportunity to post one of my favourite quotes:

"If the law supposes that,' said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass - a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience - by experience." Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

And - as far as I'm concerned and for the purposes of this discussion - that quote may be applied equally to the legal status of non-human animals and to the current illegality of human euthanasia.

Are you saying that elderly people and sick people are so pathetic that they can be coerced into saying they want to die when they don't? And that doctors are so stupid they can't recognise coercion?

We accept that pets can be in so much pain that they no longer have any quality of life, based on our observations of their non-verbal behaviour, but we don't accept that humans might also be on so much pain they no longer have quality of life even when they explicitly say they want to die?

I agree that is a terrible situation, but why on earth is her mother caring for her? Surely she would be better off in a care home, where her mother could visit her just as her mother rather than being at home with her as her carer.

An amusing attempt to denigrate my opinion, but the answer is both no, and very much no.

I see I was right that there's little point in talking to you seriously, given your views aren't internally consistent. You both think that killing someone who can't consent to it is acceptable, but that killing someone who doesn't consent to it isn't acceptable. I'm not sure that really works as a coherent moral position.

I mean, we eat animals.

No. I don't agree with the death penalty. I don't know if you're young or lived a sheltered life but I'm not going to engage with you any more.