Quotes About Euthanasia

I believe it should be possible for someone stricken with a serious and ultimately fatal illness to choose to die peacefully with medical help, rather than suffer.

My mother begged doctors to end her life. She was beyond the physical ability to swallow enough of the weak morphine pills she had around her. When she knew she was dying I promised to make sure she could go at a time of her choosing, but it was impossible. I couldn't help.

Almost everybody accepts that some people can be killed. 'The concept of 'brain death' - the belief that people on respirators can legitimately be killed - shows that.

They asked me what I thought about euthanasia. I said I'm more concerned about the adults.

How ethical is it to let these animals go a long time before they die?

Its job was to arrange the painless deaths of handicapped people who could not survive without costly care. It had done splendid work in the last couple of years, disposing of tens of thousands of useless people. The problem was that German public opinion was not yet sophisticated enough to understand the need for such deaths, so the program had to be kept quiet.

I guess this is what it's like to be a Vegetable; you lose yourself in the fog. You don't move. They feed your body till it finally stops eating; then they burn it. It's not so bad. There's no pain. I don't feel much of anything other than a touch of chill I figure will pass in time.

Dying - you can't do that to a cat.

The vet, a fiercely caring professional, told them the horse was dying. Knowing her duty, she said: "I want to euthanize it.

Never was there a creature more appropriately placed to be the poster girl for euthanasia.

The law is cruel.

The Society for Creative Euthanasia

We can already see this process at work in geriatric hospital wards. Due to an uncompromising humanist belief in the sanctity of human life, we keep people alive till they reach such a pitiful state that we are forced to ask, 'What exactly is so sacred here?

There is a tendency today to turn moral issues into amoral ones, to argue that many of the decisions and choices we make are merely personal choices that lie outside the ethical purview. For example, in the current debate about euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide, some argue that this is not a moral issue but simply a matter of controlling one's life. Ethical questions need not be raised.

First, sodium thiopental is used to put the condemned individual to sleep; then follows Pavulon, a muscle relaxant similar to the South American poison curare, together with potassium chloride to stop the heart.

A few terminally ill persons I have known have quietly ascended their favorite mountain late in the day and made sure that they were above the freezing line for that particular time of the year. They used public transport to get there so that a parked car would not be spotted. Then, wearing light clothing, they sat down in a secluded spot to await the end.

Remember, there are two ways to starve oneself to death: without food and fluids, which is the quicker way but more painful; and with fluids only, which is slower but less painful. In both methods, painkilling drugs and skilled nursing are desirable.

EXIT's justification was that until a law permitting voluntary euthanasia was passed (which would place responsibility to help primarily on physi­cians), people had no alternative but to take their dying into their own hands.

If I cannot give consent to my own death, whose body is this? Who owns my life?

If I had terminal cancer, I had a few weeks to live, I was in tremendous amount of pain - if they just effectively wanted to turn off the switch and legalise that by legalising euthanasia, I'd want that.

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. There may be legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not... with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

I just wish that more people would be welcoming to dogs and cats so they didn't have so many that got killed and had to be thrown in a landfill.

I would not want to live with a tube in my neck and not be able to move a finger. I wouldn't - that to me is not life.

My intent was to carry out my duty as a doctor, to end their suffering. Unfortunately, that entailed, in their cases, ending of the life.