Legalising assisted dying would be a failure of collective human memory and imagination

Posted on September 20, 2017 
Filed under Culture wars, Opinion

“Dying and death is not a new phenomenon: we have always become ill, suffered, were going to die and someone else could have killed us.

So why now, at the beginning of the 21st century, after prohibiting euthanasia for thousands of years and when we can do so much more to relieve suffering than in the past, do we suddenly think that legalising it is a good idea? I propose a major cause is a catastrophic failure of collective human memory and collective human imagination.

Let‘s look at the approaches taken on each side of the debate. …“

– An important article by Margaret Somerville, Professor of Bioethics in the School of Medicine at the University of Notre Dame Australia, in The Guardian.

Photo courtesy University of Notre Dame Australia. (h/t SydneyAnglicans.)