Should the British Press be Helped to Die?

It's all for your own good!

It is worth revisiting, at this time when so many people in influence are calling for 'assisted suicide', the Terri Schiavo case that divided the US a few years back.

I'll post a few links to a good YouTube documentary dedicated to the memory of a woman who was eventually starved and dehydrated to death by order of a court.

It is made more than apparent that at no point had Terri asked for this to happen. This was what her husband had decided would be 'in her best interests' despite the fact that Terri's family loved her and care for her until her death. The judge, astonishingly, agreed with the husband, who by the time of Terri's murder was shacked up with a new woman.

The new minister for Death, sorry, Health Minister, Anna Soubry, has publicly let it be known that she thinks that terminally ill people ought to be allowed 'help to die'. Her words are quite nuanced but it clear what the newspapers think she means. Her words are thus:

“I think it’s ridiculous and appalling that people have to go abroad to end their life instead of being able to end their life at home.” 

Great! The inference being that laws should be made more 'honest' and that they need to 'evolve' in order to allow patients to die at home.

We need to be very clear about what is at stake here, in any relaxation of current laws on 'assisted suicide'. I agree that the Department for Health needs to be more honest. It needs to be honest and own up to the fact that the Liverpool Care Pathway hastens death by dehydration, removal of feeding and basic care and then by morphine anyway. You can even see comments under the articles by family members who have seen their loved ones bumped off by the NHS.

But secondly, we need to be very clear about what is at stake because of the power of a certain Court in the United Kingdom named the Court of Protection. Under the awesome powers of the Court created specifically under the Mental Capacity Act, powers are given to judges to order on issues of 'life and death' for those who are incapacitated to make decisions for themselves.

That such a court exists in the United Kingdom and seldom are journalists invited in to report upon its proceedings, its verdicts seldom heard of, means that this notion, expressed by defenders of assisted suicide in the comments under the article, that relaxation of these laws would just be for those who 'express their desire for assisted suicide' is an absolute bare-faced lie.

The whole idea of 'mental capacity' in UK law today means that along with family members, the State can rule, theoretically, on whether someone should have 'treatment' or even 'care' removed, without the consent of the patient who is 'incapacitated'. Worse, this individual doesn't actually have to be in a 'vegetative state' in order for a judge to rule on their life or, potentially, death. One report from the Court of Protection states that a judge actually ruled that someone of a low IQ should be banned from having sex, despite the fact that obviously the person never asked for this to happen.

The powers over individual autonomy are evidently clear, already, in the decisions made (those which have actually been made public) by the Court of Protection. Therefore, in a time in which British law states categorically that when a person is deemed to be unable to make a reasonable decision on their own behalf, a judge can make it for them, this idea that individuals will have autonomy and no State interference in the hour or timing of their decision over 'assisted suicide' is a diabolical lie of immense magnitude and gravity.

Yet, we don't hear anyone in the Press actually reminding us that such powers exist. One wonders, is it the British press, indeed, that is in a 'vegetative state', some kind of torpor that stops them from informing the general public of the realities of British law, at a time when the idea of the State killing its own citizens, or recognising the right of its citizens to be killed by a third party, is under discussion. I look forward to the day the British Press awakes from its coma and begins to act in the interest of the public, rather than as a mouthpiece for a Government so eager to bump us off that the first statement by the new Health Minister is an opening salvo in the media-driven 'debate' on assisted suicide!

Watch a documentary on Terri Schiavo here...

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

I say it again, we're entering into a new vision of society which is so ruthless, cold-hearted and steeped in social and economic Darwinism, that only the strong are welcome. It's all the bad things about Thatcherism (darwinistic) and all the bad things about Socialism (big statist) mixed up in a poisonous drink left by your bedside for you to sup upon and then keel over.