Life choices of the common person (Who really wants to die? : Part III)

This is the third in a series of articles by Gordon Friesen.

• Who really wants to die? Part 1: A brief quantative analysis of the purported "need" for euthanasia (Link).
• Who really wants to die? Part 2: The popular impact of celebrity suicide (Link).

By: Gordon Friesen
http://www.euthanasiediscussion.net/

-- the prosaic commonality of perseverance in life

Objectively speaking, ordinary folk are in no way more likely to seek voluntary death than are their privileged counterparts; and probably much less.

In actual fact, people who accept humbly the changes of time and fate, with philosophy and fortitude, are everywhere to be found. We all know them. They are our family; our friends; our workmates; and indeed, ourselves.

The famous public obstinacy of Terry Fox, to remain standing regardless of the pain incurred, finds a more modest yet perfectly faithful reflection among that vast throng of ordinary people, for whom each active day is, also, a marathon: the waitress with swollen ankles; the mechanic with stiff knees and a sore back; all of those whose pressure is too “high” or whose sugar is too “low”; those who consume phenomenal quantities of ineffective pain remedies; all of those -- when healthy neighbors are leaving for evening activities on a Thursday night – who can think only of bed (and dream of sleep), in the hopes that tomorrow, again, they will once more be able to take up the same extenuating tasks, responsibilities and satisfactions.

But such, to be sure, is the shared destiny of everyone, and particularly as we grow older; a destiny assimilated naturally (with greater or lesser serenity) by nearly everyone, including those, also, who have been unhappily placed -- despite themselves -- in that newly targeted class of individuals for whom medicalised suicide (voluntary euthanasia) is now presented as the preferred option.

It is these people, then, who bear the brunt of this extraordinary innovation in social and medical policy. It is they who are so particularly ill-served by the mainstream media renderings of “death with dignity”; accounts which are biased in vocabulary and in tone; a bias which undermines both the personal confidence, and the public perception, of such “everyday heroes”.

And yet it is they (and not their suicidal brethren) who so obviously comprise the overwhelming majority of those now designated, as the intended clientele for euthanasia!

Surely it must be possible to create a vehicle, by which these typical patients might benefit from the euthanasia free institutions (and from the unconditionally life-centric care), which they deserve and desire.

But here again, in making such sweeping and general statements, one might easily predict forthcoming accusations of scholarly malpractice, in a lack of rigorous quantitative argument. With the reader’s permission, therefore, it would now seem necessary to reveal a few hard numbers.