It's the ultimate tyranny, cause if the worse people bring about the worst possible world and you don't want to live in it................THEY WON"T LET YOU LEAVE.

She does. She's a well-known advocate for assisted dying (around here). You can imagine the debates we get into.

Maybe your friend or some one in a similar situation would like such a choice, a choice to die in such a manner and at a time of their own choosing.

I have a well-developed understanding of the situation insofar as the individual is concerned. My best friend lives with me, and she is in the final stages of a really malignant cancer. While I pretty much follow the Catholic approach as far as my own beliefs are concerned, I see the other options come alive in my home on a daily basis. The bigger picture nevertheless bothers me. The ripple that is designed to help the individual spreads across such a big pond, there are so many issues to bear in mind, even if one leaves dogmatic and theological considerations aside.

It is a vast subject, and the more I study and experience it the more I come to think that the Catholic position has it all but completely correct.

We can always change the analogy if you think you have one that fits better, but that isn't the important thing here now is it.

On the most fundamental level, it's about choice, or lack of.

There are things worse than death in this life, in such a situation some of us, most of us, would like the option of an easy death, a option that some of our fellow human beings will move heaven and earth to deny.

We don’t euthanize suffering human beings precisely because we show them more mercy than we do cats and dogs.

What does the author mean by "Old Yeller" treatment? It's sounds pejorative or undignified or at the least, uninformed. I'm here to inform.

Modern veterinary euthanasia, relieving the pain and suffering of non-human animals via analgesia and anti-anxiety disassociative anesthetics is anything but less merciful. I know countless (countless!) people who wished that such treatment was available for their human loved ones when their quality of life was non-existent.

Mike
Edit done.

A terrible analogy, Jason.
No-one stops such a person from dying, from committing suicide. The laws and regulations are there to protect the bigger interests and concerns. The claimed "right" to euthanasia often misunderstands the bigger picture, or simply does not care about such interests.

And of course, the analogy is even more inappropriate when it is made on a Catholic site, where people are not regarded as slaves, and where it is believed that this life is not all there is.

Oh we have freedom, so much glorious freedom they say, but if you want to leave this world, no you can't, you must live.

Slaves can't leave the plantation.

Resistance is futile.

I do think people should have the freedom to forfeit their right to live, and I think that there should be care-workers tasked with helping these people end their lives with dignity, hospice nurses maybe. But I'm not comfortable with doctors becoming involved, given the amount of trust we put in doctors to do no harm.

I go to a physician to find a cure. Maybe I would go to a certain kind of hospice care to find an end, when there is no cure.

That's my opinion, anyway.