What excesses have happened under the current system that would have been prevented by even a flawed system?

And yes. But when you’re a hospital administrator trying to figure out which schmo you need to sign the form so your hospital doesn’t get sued out of business and you don’t end up eating catfood out of a can in an alley that asterisk is a big deal.

“Conservatives were supposed to be all about the precious sanctity of marriage in the law.”

You and I both know that the law is an asterisk when it comes to marriage.

So merely just having a policy where medical science is not used to kill people is not “good enough”. It’s something that, obviously, needs to be improved upon.

On a National level, no less.

As for Schiavo, the husband seemed pretty crumby. But lousy husbands are not grounds to disregard marriages. Conservatives were supposed to be all about the precious sanctity of marriage in the law.

Jaybird, I think you’re making the perfect the enemy of the good. They are not ideal, but the (UK) Crown Prosecution Service’s interim guidelines assisted suicide prosecutions (BBC or pdf) or Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act seem like good balancers of the considerations you mention (as well as those considerations mentioned upthread by North). I think its right that the state tries to ensure that people make informed choices while trying to ensure that the unscrupulous don’t pressure the vulnerable into early deaths. You’re right that striking a balance is difficult, we won’t get it right 100% of the time. But these seem like legitimate aims of state power to me, and ‘none of the above’ leaves the individual worse off than thoughtful (UK, Oregon), even if imperfect, state intervention.

I jab my finger at the table. “If you make the Official State Policy to be euthanasia is acceptable in hospice cases, or in cases where the person is a kabillion years old, or a close of one of those Kevorkian patients, there will be, inevitably, cases that will push that boundary. Moreover, there will be cases where people will say ‘Gee, Pawpaw, keeping tabs on you is really eating into my day and you have all this stuff we could sell. Could you knock yourself off?’ and while that particular case is overstated, there will be cases at the margin that will result in people knocking themselves off who will be otherwise inclined to not do so. It’s outsourcing murder at that point.”

I take a deep breath and pound my fist upon the table. “And if you make the Official State Policy that you do *NOT* support euthanasia, you’re going to end up with bullshit cases where The State starts investigating deaths that were requested by a patient in his or her right mind to ease pain in a situation where death was (otherwise) inevitable. You’re going to end up with Terri Schiavo situations where people are left to starve over a period of weeks rather than within a moment of a pinprick. You’re going to end up causing pain there as well.”

I take my boot off and start banging it against the table. “The only proper official policy is none at all. This is something that is so very personal and private that The State ought not be involved at all. If there is a family that needs to come to terms with Pawpaw’s inevitable death, they should come to whatever conclusion they come to without the state yelling in their ear that ‘Hey, you can always put him to sleep like you did old Spotty!’ or that ‘Conspiracy to commit murder followed by commission of said murder is murder one, baby!!!’ It needs to be something that is taken care of on an individual basis and the second a general plan is developed and put in place by politicians it will be worse than nothing at all NO MATTER WHETHER SUPPORT OR OPPOSITION IS CHOSEN.”

I collapse in the corner.

I didn’t bring Schiavo up because it clearly demonstrates under what circumstances I support the idea of euthanasia (@Dave). Rather I brought it up because it is a good example of how we tend to shy away from talking about issues like euthanasia until such a time as we have a highly charged and emotionally-clusterfucked situation on our hands and then everyone loses their mind making their points.

An issue that is between a family (albeit estranged) because a topic of national political discourse. Presidents come back from vacation to make ideological, if not wholly inappropriate, moves on the issue, and very little in the way of truly constructive discussion ensues.

Whether you agree with euthanasia or not, I’m suggestion that a debate about legalizing it and under what circumstances it ought to be legalized is a discussion that is worth having. And yet, we tend to not want to have those conversations because they’re hard. Given where public opinion seems to be here in Canada, I would offer it is all the more important that we go ahead and steel ourselves to have that debate. Ergo, the linked is good news, no matter how messy it might turn out to be.