LIFE IS ALWAYS WORTH LIVING: ASSISTED DYING OR LIVING? - Softcover

ONUOHA, MARTIN IFEANYI

9798396822245: LIFE IS ALWAYS WORTH LIVING: ASSISTED DYING OR LIVING?

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798396822245

Publisher: Independently published, 2023

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It is a current and extremely passionate debate in the United Kingdom, the USA, and many countries - We need to think clearly about euthanasia. Is it good or bad? Should it be illegal or not? Assisted Living or Assisted Dying addresses these questions directly and openly. It does so in four different ways. Martin Onuoha examines the argument in favour and shows that they do not stand up to scrutiny. He does not deny the intensity of feelings aroused by euthanasia but warns against sentiment clouding judgement. Secondly, the book sets out the huge impact of legalising euthanasia which changes the character of medicine and hospital care, puts undue pressure on the infirm and elderly, and alters the understanding of human life. Here the book uses the careful and authoritative teaching of St John Paul II on the sanctity and given character of life. Finally, Martin Onuoha draws on his experience of those who are set on ending their lives and how they can be helped to change their mind.

Most of those in favour of euthanasia would want it to be legalised, as has already happened in some countries, but the two things are not quite the same. Legislation for specific purposes often has unintended consequences quite different from those originally intended. The mainspring of most support for it is in understandable sentiment—the avoidance of suffering and the primacy of individual choice—but neither morality nor legislation can be based simply on sentiment …. Fr Martin is keenly aware that this is a very sensitive subject which raises passions. So too was Pope Saint John Paul II whose unwavering concern for human life produced some of the most telling modern statements about the errors behind the advocacy of euthanasia. To these public statements is the witness of personal experience. Having watched people, including close relatives, endure cancer pains, Fr Martin is conscious that watching a loved one go through this ordeal is the grimmest and most distressing of experiences, but he cautions that the sentiment which provokes the legalisation of euthanasia will not be able to determine its character. It is a very slippery slope, and we should not abandon the steady ground of reason and faith by letting understandable but misguided sympathy for those who suffer, together with our own fear of suffering, push us down it. What we need, he argues, is Assisted Living and not Assisted Dying.

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