Depressed & Your Wheelchair Hurting? Time For Assisted Suicide!

Margaret Page, the NZ woman who is refusing food and almost all hydration, has become the poster person for why NZ should legalize assisted suicide. Of course, they quote a pro-death person who did jail time for trying to help someone else commit suicide a while ago. Great!! The thing that caught my attention is some insight into how flimsy the reasoning has become to want to die - Page had a wheelchair that was ill-fitting and caused her great discomfort and pain, and she was depressed. How about getting her a new wheelchair and taking care of the depression? Nah, might have reduced her discomfort to where she didn't want to die. Now, we don't want that, do we?

Starving woman 'tip of the iceberg'

Disabled woman Margaret Page, who has refused food in an attempt to end her life, represents "the tip of the iceberg'' in a country which has not adopted voluntary euthanasia, Dignity New Zealand founder Lesley Martin says.

Mrs Page, 60, suffered a brain haemorrhage in 1991 which severely limited her speech and mobility.

A patient at Wellington's St John of God care home since 2006, she has now gone 11 days without food and with only a small amount of water.

Euthanasia advocate Ms Martin, who was jailed for 7-1/2 months for the attempted murder of her terminally ill mother in Wanganui in 1999, said she often spoke to individuals and families of those who were planning to end their lives.

"We see cases like this surface all the time, but they really are the tip of the iceberg. They don't necessarily make the media in this way. more