Assisted Suicide

I have trouble with this issue because of my faith and the implications of what is being asked of the courts.

My faith is one that says there is that of God within everyone, to kill a person is to kill that of God within them.   Could there be a case where killing someone is the right thing to do?   I am not sure, I have not thought of all the options possible and it gets into a lot of 'what if' thoughts.   What I am clear on is that I really do not like the idea of the state sanctioning death for any reason.

My current concern is about the specific arguments being suggested in the courts.   The argument in court is that people are sovereign over their own bodies and should be allowed to let someone kill them.   The person moving the case forward is suffering from ALS and makes a compelling case for why she should be allowed to seek help to kill herself.   It is the implications of the argument that concern me.

For the case to successful, the petitioner in the court is asking the judge to say there is no place for the state in a situation in which a person seeks help to kill themselves.    The argument is not one of if you are sick enough you have this right and if you are healthy you do not, it is a right that people should always have.

The end result of this is that a depressed person can seek out help to kill themselves and the person that does it is not responsible.   A perfectly healthy adult could decide one day to kill themselves and seek help to do so.   The argument leads to this.

Wanting to kill yourself is in my mind in the vast majority of cases an indication that there is something fundamentally wrong with a person's mental health.   I can understand the urge to end it when you life is full of pain and in hospital bed but how do you deal with people that are not in their dying days?   Can a mentally ill person reasonably go to someone and ask them to kill them?

I worries me that the sacredness of life is in the courts.   This is not an issue for the courts.   The state should be there to protect life and not make it easier to end it.   It feels like the whole process is making death into a convenient commodity product you could buy when you decide you are done with living.   It just feels so wrong to me on so many levels.