General Article ‘I should be allowed to end my life’

Topic Selected: Euthanasia
This article is 8 years old. Click here to view the latest articles for this topic.

The person who wrote this article has asked not to be named.

To my mind it’s not enough just to reconsider the way we think of and deal with death. I think we also need to change the way we allow people to deal with their own death.

When I lost my wife to cancer aged 41, my views started to solidify. It was clear to me that despite her having the best possible palliative care, palliative care did not have all the answers.

I have always been uneasy with what I perceive as a degree of hypocrisy in our cultural and political attitudes to this ’thorny’ issue. There are those who advocate not just assisted suicide but out and out euthanasia. For me this is far more than just a subtle semantic difference. I cannot and do not support the latter.

There are those that say the desire of some to end their own life reflects inadequate palliative care but to me this is just a smoke screen. My wife had outstanding palliative care, but that couldn’t stop the hair loss, the faecal incontinence and ...

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