Assisted Dying

[Nordione1]

I dont know what section to put this in. Im more upset about the vote for it than I thought I'd be. I feel like we have crossed a rubicon somehow.

No, it means you put your personal religious beliefs to one side.

Much like a Civil Servant carries out policies that they may not personally agree with, or even be vehemently against.

Yes, like other areas where religious beliefs shouldn’t be allowed to determine how MP’s vote like gay rights or abortion.

I have seen two relatives suffer terribly for the final two months of their lives. Those months of suffering and pain give me one hope that whenever I do go, I hope I would be spared this. About a year after the second one passed away we had to put down a family dog and it was so peaceful and the little pet had been spared months of her body degrading and failing her and I didn't understand why we denied this compassion to humans.

Huh, here we have euthanasia and we also have freedom of religion and so every doctor and nurse has a right to be a conscientious objector to any medical procedure that conflicts with their religion. They just have to refer the patient to another doctor/nurse that is ok with it so the patient isn’t being denied care.

Even the military are allowed to be conscientious objectors even though they knew they might be killing people when they enlisted.

The U.K. can’t be a free country if you think forcing doctors/nurses to euthanise people on demand is acceptable. Doesn’t the bill have a section that says that it has to be voluntary for doctors to prescribe and nurses to attend? I skimmed it, but I thought I saw that there.

I'm confused. MP's were given a free vote, and surely they all voted for what they believed to be the best outcome, regardless of faith? Some will have voted in line with the majority of their constituents, some won't, some won't have known what the majority of their constituents thought.
Plenty of MP's of no faith that I know of have voted against this bill, including my own.
I cannot see how you can dismiss the opinion of a person with a faith simply because they have one.
What if someone used to practice a faith, but no longer does? That faith will still have shaped them to an extent, does their opinion count?
What if someone grew up in a country, like the UK, who's society was founded on Christian principles, but doesn't attend Church - does their opinion count? What if someone grew up in a Jewish family, but isn't themselves practicing? Does their opinion count?
We are all shaped by our experiences and upbringing in a wide variety of complex and interlinked ways. It is not as simple as dismissing someone because they are 'religious'.

Is it ok for MPs to vote against gay rights and abortion for non religious reasons?

They obviously can, but i don't think that their religious beliefs should be taken into account when dealing with or upholding laws.

If the only reason this law failed was because of religious people meddling in it then that would be terrible considering we are supposed to be a secular society.

But at least satanists dont seek to block laws based on their own personal religious beliefs that humans ending their own lives is a bad thing and that humans must suffer or they won't get into a fictional heaven.

But @Dreammalildream how do you know satanists don't seek to block laws ? Is there something you aren't telling?
BTW Satanists bump their nature probably don't consider Heaven to be fictional

I'm not a satanist if that's what you're asking. I'm very happily religion free, thanks very much.

But i don't see why satanism is less worthy of respect than any other religion. I view them all the same.

@Dreammalildream I m just pointing out how ridiculous it is that people are blaming religious views for the way MPs have voted. Asking all MPs to declare religious affiliation is completely unacceptable.

But if any of them are Satanists it would be quite funny.

I meant in the coercion

You say that, but really, all beliefs are essentially religious. Even if they're not codified into an institutional religion like you have in mind, I promise you, all beliefs are religious in a sense, because they concern values, of which there is no objective grounding.

I 100% agree

I'm so so glad tbh. I have a history of illnesses and autoimmune conditions in my family. I hope I'm able to have this treatment if I get bad in the future. At least the bible thumpers won't have something else to take away from us. If the imaginary man in the sky was real. He wouldn't be giving us illnesses and death.

We already do. Misuse of alcohol kills over ten thousand people a year.

But you don't see lots of people on this forum calling for alcohol to be banned because it's kills and harms so many people through misuse, no it's just the misuse of assisted dying that people have a problem with, because they like alcohol.

Don't you mean moral rather than religious?

Morality is a human invention but it's not the same as religion which usually believes in a higher power.

That is probably because it takes more than one drink of alcohol to put you six feet under.

Hardly surprising they are angry. I am thoroughly ashamed of this country for considering this culture of death legislation.

But over ten thousand people die from it each year

And you can buy it down the local supermarket

I suspect there will be a lot less deaths from the misuse of assisted dying than the misuse of alcohol

Yes but people are against any restriction even where it’s a pregnant woman drinking to excess and we more or less know that the child will end up with lifelong problems. But we can’t intervene because of absolute bodily autonomy. But why doesn’t absolute bodily autonomy apply for the question of assisted dying.

Moral decision making in the UK ( on a personal level) often mirrors Christian teaching and writing such as the ten commandments.

Nothing in the bible against drinking, that's why

Ok, so if I believe it will rain tomorrow, that's religious is it?

There is a difference between misuse and coercion though.

A better comparison is kids dying from spiked drinks than alcoholics dying after 30+ years of alcohol abuse.

You don't think people are coerced into drinking alcohol through advertising and peer pressure?

What about people being coerced into suffering at the end of their life when they want it to end? Isn't that the biggest societal coercion we have right now?