Saturday, November 21, 2009

Excellent response to VES


Alison Davis, co-ordinator of the disability rights group No Less Human, has an excellent article in Mature Times, responding to VES director Sarah Wootton's case for assisted suicide. She tells her own story about how she made repeated suicide attempts before choosing to live and the implications an assisted dying law would have for people like her who are severely disabled, mentally capable and feel a strong desire to die at some stage of their lives.

Ms Wootton apparently sees only two possible groups of people; those who want to die and those who don't. But life isn't that straightforward in reality, and people not infrequently change their minds. I am not the only vulnerable person who once wanted to die, and is now glad that the law prevented them from being assisted in bringing it about.