Assisted suicide should be legalised

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2016

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The law allows me to kill myself, but what if I have a progressive illness and reach a stage when I long to end my life but cannot do so unaided. Isn't it needlessly cruel and illogical that as the law stands, no friend or family member or doctor can then help me die without risking prosecution and a possible jail sentence? No it isn't, say those who oppose legalising assisted suicide. Think of the pressures that would build once it became a legally sanctioned option - not least the pressure to extend the category of those whom it is permissible to help kill beyond the terminally ill to the old, the frail and even the mildly depressed. Think of the internal and external pressure on elderly relatives to seek assistance for an early exit so as to avoid being a burden and using up the family inheritance; or the pressure on the NHS to create more bed space. Would it not be better, say opponents of legalisation, to retain the kind of fudge we've got at the moment, allowing the Director of Public Prosecutions... Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:00.0	Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and good evening to our online audience. We're here this evening to debate a topic which has already been much in the news this week with the publication yesterday of a paper by the Center for Policy Studies, but then it's a topic which is rarely far
1:16.2	from the headlines and which regularly divides opinion, that of assisted suicide.
1:22.1	The motion this evening is assisted suicide. The motion this evening is assisted suicide
1:24.7	should be legalized. The terminally ill should have the legal right to be helped to
1:30.2	end their lives. Each speaker has up to nine minutes to make his or her case.
	...

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