By Michael Skywood Clifford
Of course we can all understand why anyone in dreadful pain might want to end their life. All of us are empathetic to such situations. However if one allows the state to end life, as opposed to protecting and feedling life, the floodgates are removed to all sorts of very dangerous creeping changes in the law. Society moves into a very dangerous place.
A warning from history tells us that the Nazis wanted to bring in euthanasia (and did to some extent) because they knew it would save massive amounts of public money in saving pensions, hospital operations, long term care and much else. It is no exageration to say that laws could mission creep where the state managers deliberately kill the less productive members of their charges at a certain age or disability to keep their economics in line and impress those powers above them.
And that horrific scenario does not mention the people who might be bullied into ending their lives for all sorts of reasons, such as family members keen to plot so they could receive their inheritances early. And people may feel obliged to end their lives because of a sense of duty to their families – ending the feeling that they are a millstone around the family's neck, because of illness, care, space, and any number of unknowns.
The whole idea of euthanasia is easy to argue when you can show people in pain and discomfort, that is easy to do, but it is completely wrong for many ethical and lack-of-perception reasons.
People get great ego satifaction to say they changed the British law, but ego is dangerous in such matters as this, No one can know unknown unknowns, and unforseen consequences. Lawmakers may be persistent and technically qualified but they are not always wise or sufficiently cautious.