One of the arguments deployed by opponents of the abortion act was that it would result in a “slippery slope” – that its strict criteria would inevitably be widened to allow “abortion on demand” up to a pregnancy’s full term.
A similar argument is being used by opponents of assisted dying. But the fears raised more than half a century ago in relation to abortion have not been realised.
We’ve got 200k abortions a year, well over 90% of which are justified on “metnal health of the mother” grounds and as that CoE curate has been shouting about, abortion up to term for things like a cleft palate or club foot does, in fact, happen.
What the fuck do the bint mean there’s been no slippery slope?
Abortion rose, upon legalisation, from 3% of all pregnancies to the current 25% or so. This is evidence against there being a slippery slope?
She’s not thick, just a lying bag of shit. Setting aside abortion, the slippery slope in assisted dying can be seen everywhere it has been legalised. FFS even in pre-assisted dying UK, we have had various bits of the NHS engaged in systematic attempts to murder the inconvenient elderly.
“It is entirely possible that future generations will puzzle over how such a fundamental right could ever be denied to them.” These are the words of David Steel
Don’t worry, David. It’s a dry heat.
What has happened with abortion is that the legislation has not slid down the slope – the legal criteria in themselves have not altered all that much – but the social context has. Now, sixty years on, the mother’s mental health is considered to be in danger if her career is disrupted, or if she is forced to confront the realisation that shagging some bloke who would make a dreadful father is a poor life-choice.
But this woman is still wrong regarding the legal aspects of the slope. Now we are blessed with the Equality Legislation (Peace be upon it!) there is every possibility that the disabled, depressed, etc. will also try to claim this right. That wasn’t the case with the Steel Act. Cambridge academic Philip Murray has done some very good work on this aspect.
Maybe they shouldn’t have used the slippery slope argument about abortion back when? Looking at the figures, abortions seem to have risen fairly rapidly to meet demand (why they were legalised). Then roughly plateaued against population numbers. A continued slope would put them today at about twice the numbers.
With assisted dying, I can’t the argument for the slippery slope at all. Since you’ve already got the do-it-yourself version. All I can see is societal reasons why you might get an upslope. The continued & cumulative failure of the NHS? Starmer’s re-election in 2028? But otherwise, why would increasing numbers of people want to top themselves? A fashion statement?
All I see is the antis flailing about for reasons to be anti.
@Simon Neal
That sounds very much like your imagination. The only abortion I’ve been a possible participant in was way back in ’69. I say possible because I was far from convinced I was only candidate but I was probably the only person who had the money to pay for one. And her justification would no doubt have been dropping a kid would get in the way of further shagging around.
there is every possibility that the disabled, depressed, etc. will also try to claim this right.
Why would you want to exclude them except on the “I know better than you do basis”? Cvnt.
“…why would increasing numbers of people want to top themselves? ”
The argument is not that they’ll want to, it’s that they’ll be (or feel themselves to be) pressured into it in order to “save the NHS”. Or because the rellies want the dosh.
Let’s be honest about things for once. The “mental health of the mother” stipulation was only included as a sop to the antis of the time. Or they wouldn’t have abortion on demand.
If that was a real reason then compulsory abortions for women with mental problems would be entirely justified.
@PMacF
But you don’t have any problem with convincing grannie to go into the care home when she doesn’t want to because because you know best?
Amusing how this issue sorts out fake libertarians from the real.
bloke in spain:
“That sounds very much like your imagination.”
Much like your personal anecdote, really.
“Why would you want to exclude them except on the “I know better than you do basis”? Cvnt.”
Did I say I wanted to exclude them? I was explaining how one variant of the “slippery slope” argument might work.
Just a guess, but I imagine the “mental health of the mother” bit includes depression. Which means that if a woman decides to claim the sads, OK, it’s got to be really big sads, you’re good to go. But that doesn’t mean you end up with abortion on demand at any point in the pregnancy because nobody would ever do such a thing.
Marius is spot on, she’s not thick, she just assumes her audience is.
’…why would increasing numbers of people want to top themselves? ‘
Don’t underestimate the power of social contagion- why would increasing numbers of people claim to be ‘born into the wrong body’?
BiS
Would opposing Assisted dying make you a ‘fake libertarian’ in your eyes?
My primary concerns here are twofold:
– As already hinted, given the potential windfall to be made from inheritance, then there’ll be significant pressure from inheritors to tell the elderly to shuffle off this mortal coil so they can ‘inherit the earth’ (especially in the UK given house prices!!)
– Additionally, you only have to look at ‘Net Zero’ to see that thousands of its proponents are in favour of reducing the population by as much as 90% – this would potentially enable them to do that. I think those that are in meltdown over the Trump victory would happily extend the criteria for assisted dying to ‘racism’,’sexism’ and ‘homophobia’ without so much as a second thought
It’s a challenging dichotomy, If we didn’t have militant environmentalists and taxes were much lower so it was easy to build wealth without an avaricious state stealing 50% of it than it would be easier to go ahead with the bill but with those two circumstances it’s a challenge.
Esteban: Actually, it doesn’t. Something like 98% of abortions carried out for the sake of the mother’s mental health have the risk logged under the ICD-10 system as “F99: Mental disorder, not otherwise specified”. Depression comes under the F5x block; post-natal depression specifically being F53.
So nothing shady going on there, then.
If you’re not whoring out dirt poor African women and Dr Shipmanning pensioners, are you even a real libertarian?
@V_P
Would opposing Assisted dying make you a ‘fake libertarian’ in your eyes?
It is very much a matter of personal choice. For a libertarian that should be an absolute. So it’s interesting seeing libertarians opposing it for any reasons. Just shows one how libertarian they actually are.
It’s no different from socialism. “I am a socialist!” said Polly. “Except when they’re socialist policies I don’t approve of. (Coz they hit me in the pocket) “
But I’ve long thought libertarianism was bollocks. It’s essentially the same as communism. Nice theory on paper but can’t work in practise. I can’t survive contact with real people. As this issue is proving.
It can’t
Why would increasing numbers of people want to abort their children or feed the ones who lived tranny hormones and sterilising surgeries?
Oh yeah, the existence of evil.
Actually, we already have assisted dying. If you are sick enough, the NHS won’t feed you.
My mother-in-law had an advanced case of cancer when she was living with us. She wouldn’t take the diamorphine ‘in case she got addicted’! So a lot of avoidable pain. The Macmillan nurse said that if she was in their care, she’d be on a dose 20 times bigger. She lived less than 3 weeks afterwards (with us, in pain). She might have lived a couple of weeks less, pain-free, in a care home. She was 89. She wasn’t really ‘with it’ for those last weeks.
@EM
Roughly what happened to my late-father He was on a heavy sedative – Midozalam – so he was totally uninterested in eating or drinking & probably died of lack of liquids I would imagine
The ever efficient & responsible NHS – in the shape of the District Nurse – actually left the care kit with me. Several ampoules of midozalan & some diamorphine for seasoning. Both class A drugs? Even a couple of hypos.
I most definitely do not want to go out the way he did. And have no intention of.
Why do you connect the two, Steve?
Oh, your imaginary deity & its value judgements.
Amusing how this issue sorts out fake libertarians from the real.
Only if you assume libertarianism is an absolute set of rules rather than a starting point for a way of thinking about problems.
There is no set of libertarian truths and believe me if you go to a libertarian meeting its no different to any other political meeting, there are more opinions than people.
I start from the libertarian end of the spectrum and in theory am for the my body, my life argument which is applied to both abortion and assisted dying, but I also accept that there are trade-offs. In the case of abortion that will be the foetus and assisted dying those who get coerced.
I don’t see feel any cognitive dissonance in arguing for time limits on abortion and siding with those who would be coerced when it it comes to assisted dying because of what I’ve seen in real life. Give me more protections, especially in assisted dying and I’ll happily change my mind.
BiS – there are two competing views:
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”
Or
“Evil should not be tolerated, but destroyed”.
The first one comes from the same place David Steel is going to (Hell).
Assisted dying? Surely it’s assisted killing.
The argument against the slippery slope isn’t that it’s a fallacy, it’s that by the time your bare arse is skidding along rock bottom, you’ll be too degraded and dehumanised to care.
That’s how we ended up with over 150,000 child rape victims and a Home Office that’s determined to cover up for their rapists.
Steve: Define ‘Evil’. I’m sure it’s one of those “I know it when I see it” things, but no doubt there are a lot of edge cases to keep the arguments going, as in this case.
For the record, I have reservations about assisted dying but I’m not totally agin it. I have absolutely no wish to go down the long loss of faculties my mum suffered so if I need assistance at some point it would be useful.
I don’t see how wishing to see the state restrained from killing people makes anyone a fake libertarian. Quite the opposite, I would have thought.
If you want to kill yourself as things stand, you can still do it. It’s harder to do it without the state’s help, no doubt about that. But that’s fair enough. It ensures that you must really want to do it to go through the trouble and risks involved. But the important thing, if you insist on viewing this matter in libertarian fundamentalist terms, is that it is indeed currently doable, and there is no libertarian argument for the rest of us being forced to make it easier for you.
TG – the simple version is, all evil is rebellion against God and the simple instructions he gave us.
The more complicated version has something to do with the sacredness and fragility of intelligent life in a temporary eruction of spacetime and our holy mission* to fill the worlds with our children.
*This was once revealed to me in a dream
Rachel from accounts is having a bit of a ponder
What if we scrapped all IHT exemptions in assisted dying cases?
When my mother was dying (elderly but fairly fit before the accident) the NHS withdrew fluids. Took a couple of days, but did the job.
If you want to kill yourself as things stand, you can still do it. It’s harder to do it without the state’s help, no doubt about that. But that’s fair enough. It ensures that you must really want to do it to go through the trouble and risks involved.
You really do not think it through do you? What happens after you’ve done. Sure, you’re not there to deal with the problems but someone else gets lumbered with them. It’s not something you can share your intentions about. Or there’s a good chance some “caring”person will attempt to intervene. Because they will know far better than you what is in your interests. So some poor soul’s going to have to through the unexpected experience of discovering your remains. Maybe after a week or two when they’re nice & ripe. And then they’ll be asking themselves “If I only I’d known. I could have done something. i could have prevented him.”
It’s the problem isn’t it? Like so many people commenting here. Particularly Steve. You really think only of yourselves, don’t you?
bis: I don’t see how the state giving its blessing to a person’s suicide is going to help the victim’s family and friends in living with the consequent upset and (often) guilt following the act. Unless they’re the sort of political extremists for whom the blessing of the state cancels any personal feelings. And in the latter case, again, I don’t see how opposition to state-approved suicide counts as hypocrisy on the part of libertarians.
And yes. I am thinking of myself here, bis.
I’m deaf now. Completely deaf. I live alone. The woman I lived with (and loved) got shot of me when I could no longer hold a conversation. Parents are long passed on, no brothers or sisters, just some cousins in Ukraine I’ve never met. Friends are limited to people I got to know while I still had some hearing, but they all live hundreds of miles away.
I’m 63 now. I’ve adapted to things, as you do, and life is good. But I take a lot of care over staying fit and in good health, because I really am scared of being hospitalised and alone. The thought of being 73 or 83 and being hospitalised if this legislation passes terrifies me, because I can so easily see the medical profession looking at me and my situation and helping me end it for my own good.
TG – the simple version is, all evil is rebellion against God and the simple instructions he gave us.
Replace God with the Party and he with it and you have a neat Chinese definition
@BiS,
A slippery slope doesn’t have to have a constant gradient.
Paul. I can understand that. You’re concerned that someone might push your button for you against your will. I think that is rational of most people commenting against have. The bollox about grannie & the slippery slope for others is just an excuse. They don’t really give a monkey’s about granny. They just don’t want granny to be them.
“God and the simple instructions he gave us.” Yeah, kill all those sodding Amalekites.
I don’t think everyone’s selfish in this matter, bis. But even if they are (and I’m happy for my view to be interpreted that way) it’s a very valid point of view: protecting your own interests as an individual. A libertarian one, you might say.
I don’t think the button would ever be pressed against my expressed will, but I can well imagine my expressed will being temporarily manipulated in that direction. As I said, life is good for me, but being blessed with good health is key to that. Sometimes embarrassing events happen where I find myself shouting to myself: “If only I could hear!” But then I think, ah well, I’ll be getting on my bike for an afternoon at Taunton races on Thursday, and Alan the Beard and Gad and Plymouth Steve and the rest of the punters will be there, and we can gossip via the eyeHear app, and aren’t I lucky.
But put me on a trolley and in pain with no clue as to what is happening and no one around to help me, and my thoughts could well be, just kill me. Literally.
BiS – Like so many people commenting here. Particularly Steve. You really think only of yourselves, don’t you?
According to my psychiatrist, I don’t think of myself.
So some poor soul’s going to have to through the unexpected experience of discovering your remains.
It’s better to find a corpse than to create one.
Asiaseen – Replace God with the Party and he with it and you have a neat Chinese definition
Absolutely right, which is why all attempts by men to replace God manifest terrible evils in the world.
DM – Yeah, kill all those sodding Amalekites.
Don’t forget the Midianites. Fuckers.
Paul, Somerset – I assume, like the last time this was tried systematically (in Nazi Germany), that first, they’ll come for the mentally ill. Us loonies are quite a big drain on the NHS, and not as sympathy inducing as children’s oncology, for example.
It’s also very easy to talk depressed people into suicide, most of them are already at least halfway there.
Grim.
Can anyone think of why this, and not the horrible urgent problems we already face in the economy, immigration, Net Zero, rising crime, or the wars we’re involved in, is suddenly the obsession du jour of the establishment class?
“I’ve got a brilliant idea… Death!” – some coked up SW1 policy twat
Eh, choose life?
Oh I would admit to being selfish. For someone who’s survived to my age I live a remarkably good life. But I’m not much interested on carrying on past the point where I can live it that way. Am I supposed to continue for other people’s benefit?
My views on the subject & my apologies if this gets a little philosophical.
I don’t believe in deities or souls or any equivalents. The brain is a calculator running ware on ephemeral memory. Turn it off & all you have left is a lump of meat. Since one’s memories are gone, there’s nothing whatsoever there.. If one has continued existence, it’s in other people’s memories as long as they are around.
I believe we actually life in our own memories. In our own pasts. What we think is the now is the past of a second ago. Because we can’t perceive the world without interpreting it. So that sort of deals with abortion issue doesn’t it? If there’s no interpreting going on because there’s no real memory been created there can’t be a person there. I believe the state of being a person is the result of accumulating memory. So the best you can say of any unborn child is there is a potential person there. When does that person start to exist? At what point has sufficient memory accumulated & been perceived & considered to say this is now a person? So as abortion’s concerned, at what stage & even if is entirely societal. There’s nobody actually there to consider. So there’s nobody to harm.
And end of life is the same. Once you’re dead, there’s no perceiving going on & no memory to perceive & consider. So you can’t harm someone who no longer exists. Someone has to bring up murder at this point don’t they? Of course you do! But you can’t harm someone by murdering them because there’s no person there remembering being harmed. However we don’t approve of the practise because we don’t want it to be done to us. Presumably. Unless of course, we do.
I don’t find the concept of death the least bit frightening. Because there’s going to be no me there will remember experiencing it. Although I wouldn’t fancy have any short term memories of having made a mess of it.
When I come to the end of my days, if I have a clear choice between an extended period of pain & decline or a nice strong sleeping pill then I would choose the latter.
I can understand the need for safeguards but I don’t really trust politicians to solve that satisfactorily so this law will probably be a crock of shite.
And God? Probably he doesn’t exist so he can fuck right off. And, in the unlikely event he really does exist, he can provide the solution that our politicians can’t or he can fuck right off.
Dear Heavenly Father… step up or shut up.
BiS
Fair point on ‘Pure Libertarianism’ – it’s impossible to achieve in practice – Good to see your arguments as always. One key reason where despite the often backbiting repartee this is such a haven for free speech, at least in comparison to ‘Bluesky’….
In other news Tim you didn’t compliment our friend on Ely on his imminent retirement from Sheffield Uni Management school!!
I’m in favour of assisted dying because of the after care service. Although a good send-off party would be fun.
@Geoffers
And God? Probably he doesn’t exist so he can fuck right off.
I’ve often requested He* comes down to discuss His existence. So far, He hasn’t even had the manners to decline.
*One uses the capital letter out of courtesy.
“It is very much a matter of personal choice. For a libertarian that should be an absolute. So it’s interesting seeing libertarians opposing it for any reasons. Just shows one how libertarian they actually are.”
What if we oppose it on the grounds that we don’t want to pay taxes that will be used to kill other people?
“Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks” [Psalm 137:9]
BiS 15 —- RoW 33
@Paul, Somerset – “The thought of being 73 or 83 and being hospitalised if this legislation passes terrifies me, because I can so easily see the medical profession looking at me and my situation and helping me end it for my own good.”
You’ve got it backwards. It’s lack of assisted suicide that should have you terrified. The debate has produced very many stories of people who were assisted in their dying with the current legal position. Due to the lack of assisted suicide, they may not be asked their opinion as it is vital to keep it secret that they have been killed. The choice is not between having assisted dying and not having it: the choice is between assisted suicide (i.e. where a person gets to choose for themselves) and assited dying (where others – usually the medical profession -make the choice).
@Peter MacFarlane – “they’ll be (or feel themselves to be) pressured into it in order to “save the NHS”.”
The alternative is that they are pressured into staying alive to save these hypothetical others.
@Jim – “What if we oppose it on the grounds that we don’t want to pay taxes that will be used to kill other people?”
That’s only a valid argument against publicly funded assisted dying. And even then only if it’s more expensive to kill them than to keep them alive.
Charles – And even then only if it’s more expensive to kill them than to keep them alive
Yes, that’s how they saw it in Germany:
A new bureaucracy, headed by physicians, was established with a mandate to kill anyone deemed to have a “life unworthy of living.” Some physicians active in the study of eugenics, who saw Nazism as “applied biology,” enthusiastically endorsed this program. However, the criteria for inclusion in this program were not exclusively genetic, nor were they necessarily based on infirmity. An important criterion was economic. Nazi officials assigned people to this program largely based on their economic productivity. The Nazis referred to the program’s victims as “burdensome lives” and “useless eaters.”
Even if you don’t believe in God, the historical record of societies that practiced human sacrifice is quite discouraging.
PS – this is what you’re missing, over at Carrie’s blog:
The Missing
I was honoured to lend my voice to The Missing, an episode of The Quilt, the LGBTQ+ audio exhibition and podcast in association with the Queer Britain museum. It’s an oral history of queer lives in the UK; this episode, the third in a series of eight, focuses on Scotland from the Highland Clearances to the loss of Glasgow lesbian bars.
I’ve jist come doon from the Isle of Skye
I’m a wee bit queer and a muckle bit shy,
All the dykes shout when I go by,
“Morag! Get the dildo!”
“Amusing how this issue sorts out fake libertarians from the real.”
It all comes down to, do you consider the kid to be a living human being.
If you do, then the NAP has something to say about the situation.
If you don’t, well, that’s convenient.
What if we oppose it on the grounds that we don’t want to pay taxes that will be used to kill other people?
The idea of assisted dying being a public service actually rather horrifies me. I don’t think it should have anything to do with the State. Like most of the reliable & trustworthy services we use, it should be firmly in the private sector.
The only question would be, how would fund the service for people couldn’t afford it? I’d be open for suggestions.
Paul, Somerset,
I would not give up yet, technology matches on. I don’t know if something like a cochlear implant would help your condition. However, brain-computer interfaces are rapidly advancing and by the time you are 73, they may be very helpful in your situation. Also speech to text interfaces are available and improving in the interim.
Not allowing assisted suicide won’t prevent a death, it’ll just delay it.
Die peacefully today, or be kept in a drug induced coma / suffer in pain / waste away, for the next 6 -18 months when you’ll die anyway.
A mate of mine has bladder cancer. In remission after immuno therapy, but he says he’ll take his chances if the cancer returns as the treatment was so bad…….
Mohave Greenie: Thanks for taking the trouble to reply. A cochlear implant might work in terms of generating audible sounds for me, though that’s not certain, as I have tried bone-conducting headphones, and I can’t hear a thing through them. The bigger problem is that the brain simply loses the ability to recognise and decipher speech. By the time that digital hearing aids had become smart enough to isolate and process the sounds a person needs to hear speech, my hearing had got so bad that it couldn’t make sense of the speech which those aids were blasting at me (that’s another thing you lose – the ability to tolerate sound at ‘normal’ levels).
But you are correct about advances in speech-to-text technology. I mentioned the EyeHear app, which has been around for about four years, I think. It’s changed everything for me. It’s free to download, and is simply a dictation app, but one which cunningly displays the speech of the person talking to you in giant letters, so you can sit or stand a normal distance from the other person. That might appear to be a minor point, but believe me, it’s not. It’s a huge encouragement for others to converse with you in a relaxed manner.
One caveat: it’s only as good as the microphones on your phone. I have an iPhone SE (the small, budget one) and it’s excellent. Acquaintances with normal hearing who have downloaded it onto Samsung or other Android phones out of curiosity have found it poor.
To me it’s the answer to the question, why spend all that money on an iPhone, when other ones have all the same functions? Well, the answer is that they don’t perform all those functions quite as well or quite as reliably, but that’s something you don’t realise until you really need it.
We don’t need to theorise about where legalising assisted suicide would take us
Look at Canada.
Where an athlete asks for a wheelchair ramp and receives a response “Have you considered assisted suicide?”
Terrifying.
What if we oppose it on the grounds that we don’t want to pay taxes that will be used to kill other people?
Can we opt out of military funding as well?
I’m so old I can remember when Dr Shipman was considered ‘a baddie’.
Now he’s a vanguard of the NHS.
@Chernyy Drakon
Do you just swallow that story whole without thinking about it? It’s being widely quoted by the “antis’ which makes me immediately suspicious. And one has no idea of the context. The ramp may be part of a care package for someone suffering an unpleasant incurable life ending condition. So the question, if in fact made, might have related to the condition not the provision of the ramp. Surely, in this day & age, one is used campaigners for & against anything being highly economical with the actualité when making their case. The entire Goebbels Worming industry is built on doing this.
One thing has come out of this conversation for me. We can all agree that legalising assisted dying would have risks around it being forced on the unwilling. But there’s been absolutely no discussion about how one could go about avoiding or minimising the risks. Seems very odd for a commentariat that’s usually of a Libertarian bent. I would have though the principal of that was, if there’s a demand for something one tries to find away of supplying it without harming others. Thus maximising freedom of choice.
Thinking about ramps. I did in fact fly up & build one to facilitate my late-father’s ability to get in & out of his house. Being my father, in his late seventies, he’d bought one several miles from the nearest shops with a route from the front door to the driveway like scaling a young alp. Cost me over a thousand pounds in timber & fixings, required a hellishly complex design & took me three days to construct. I think it got used about half a dozen times.
“Do you just swallow that story whole without thinking about it? It’s being widely quoted by the “antis’ which makes me immediately suspicious. And one has no idea of the context. The ramp may be part of a care package for someone suffering an unpleasant incurable life ending condition. So the question, if in fact made, might have related to the condition not the provision of the ramp. Surely, in this day & age, one is used campaigners for & against anything being highly economical with the actualité when making their case. ”
Here’s a pretty good summary of what happened:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/09/02/canada-paralympian-christine-gauthier-stairlift-euthanasia/
She asked for a chairlift for her property in 2018, by 2022 it still hadn’t been installed and she told the person who was ‘dealing’ with it (which means is being paid by the State to do nothing about it at all) that she couldn’t continue like this, ie without a chair lift, it needed to be sorted. And was promptly told ‘Well you do know there is assisted dying if you don’t feel like going on’. Said person was apparently also involved in 3 other cases of suggesting assisted dying to other disabled people.
So its a pretty cut and dried case of utterly inappropriate pushing of assisted dying to people who could well be in vulnerable conditions. If you don’t think the NHS will be on that like flies on shit to try and get rid of some of their workload I’ve got a bridge you might like to buy.
I believe we actually life in our own memories. In our own pasts. What we think is the now is the past of a second ago. Because we can’t perceive the world without interpreting it. So that sort of deals with abortion issue doesn’t it? If there’s no interpreting going on because there’s no real memory been created there can’t be a person there. I believe the state of being a person is the result of accumulating memory. So the best you can say of any unborn child is there is a potential person there. When does that person start to exist? At what point has sufficient memory accumulated & been perceived & considered to say this is now a person? So as abortion’s concerned, at what stage & even if is entirely societal. There’s nobody actually there to consider. So there’s nobody to harm.
That’s pretty much the argument of Peter Singer (“Practical Ethics”), but he takes it to its logical conclusion and points out that we should then equally support infanticide up to about 18 months, when the first long-term memories begin to form.
“Said person was apparently also involved in 3 other cases of suggesting assisted dying to other disabled people. ”
Sounds to me like someone shouldn’t be doing the job they’re doing, then. That’s supposed to extrapolate to a general policy? Seems pretty thin ground to me. But no doubt usable in anti propaganda with no context.
It’s a common tactic, much beloved by the Graun. Start with an individual, atypical sob story then build an entire general thesis around it. And this isn’t some vulnerable grannie. If she’s reached Olympic level she’ll be someone made a career out of her disability. And sports people at those heights are often known for their senses of entitlement & sharp elbows. They’re monomaniacs. Also good press.
For what it’s worth, Wiki: “Subsequently, VAC claimed they found no record that MAID has been offered as an option to Gauthier and only found four such cases, all involving a single now-suspended case manager”.
The only consolation if the NHS is in charge (and who would privatise THIS service?) is that the waiting list will soon exceed a normal person’s life expectancy.
@Chris Miller
Bingo. Came here to post more or less exactly what you posted re Singer. Also applies to those in a vegetative state.
“For what it’s worth, Wiki: “Subsequently, VAC claimed they found no record that MAID has been offered as an option to Gauthier and only found four such cases, all involving a single now-suspended case manager”.”
So they said she hadn’t been offered it, but the same employee had offered it to 4 other people. Not the best denial really is it?
And one doubts that there would be any evidence. Its not like some rogue employee (if they are indeed rogue, or in fact operating on verbal instructions from higher up, a ‘who will rid me of this turbulent priest’ type scenario) is going to meticulously record all the times they’ve verbally told people to off themselves.
This the problem for me. Ignore the morals of it all, forget the squeals of the religious, just look at how this sort of stuff is going to be administered. By the same people who gave us covid vaccines, wall to wall midazolam and the various scandals where troublesome patients were effectively murdered by NHS employees and nothing (zero, bupkis, nada) was done about it. At the moment there is still law against murdering people, all the NHS will have to do in future is fake your signature to say you wanted to kill yourself, and its hello St Peter (or someone more sulphurous) for you.