Right to die?

This case has once more raised the debate about assisted dying (suicide if you like) for terminally ill patients and I don't intend to take up the argument or set out the rights and wrongs. I remember looking at my dad and saying goodnight to him as he lay pretty much helpless in his bed in hospital certain in the knowledge that he hated that.  He couldn't get up, he couldn't do anything much for himself.  He had some movement in his arms and could do small things like turn a newspaper and drink and eat but he could not move himself.  As I drove home I remember my mum and I saying that it would be better for him that he didn't wake up and that everything would be over and done with as much for him as for us too.  No one wants to see this happen to their loved one.

But I also thought that neither could I be the one that would help him shuffle of this mortal coil.  I'm afraid this bit gets a bit dark and a bit deep.  I knew that I couldn't put a pillow over him or "hurt" him that way even though it would end what must have been to him a sort of realisation that things weren't going to get any better and everything was sliding away.  I think, if it was an animal, perhaps I would have been able to do something - perhaps with a gun or something which detached me from the deed.  There's something deep inside that pulls you up a long way short of this sort of behaviour and I would have been unable to pull the trigger, administer the poison, cut off their air.  I'm not sure I want to go much further as I feel quite bad writing this but there is a trigger point that you just don't go beyond, there's a line of "acceptable behaviour" whether that's learnt or inherent I don't know but there you go.  I couldn't do it or have it on my conscience.  In the case above, you can see why the  test case was brought and you can see why it was refused. It is a difficult area of the law and of our inherent morality.

I'm not sure if I could deliver the coup de grace but perhaps assist someone to take them to the Dignity Clinic or perhaps some other action like that shows humanity but to actually assist or to take the life of someone surely isn't right?

Anyway - it isn't a debate to be had but it is a thing to think about.  How we deal with these things makes me think hard about those days where I wished something could be done but would never have been "Brave" enough to have done it.  Maybe I would be happier having someone else do it?  Messes with your head doesn't it?

Just added this which follows on a bit from the above.