One should, I believe, always have that option. If there is interminable suffering, and/or pain, I see no reason to submit to it because of someone else's interpretation of ancient, or recent myths.

yes

appropriate* is subjective and i think that every individual should get to decide what they want to do with their own life, death is an easy out but i can appreciate a persons desire to die i suppose

Yeah Im fine with it in that situation.

Yeah

I was a member of the Hemlock Society which has now changed its name. Oregon was the 1st to legalize compassionate death methods. The misguided medical philosophy of prolonging life with undesired & extreme procedures is cruel & imposing. I have had my euthanasian stash ready for decades should some misfortune befall me. I have studied the methods & hope to dictate my life's end myself. I should be so fortunate. The government must remove themselves from our lives & bodies when actions do not harm anyone else. The decisions affecting ones own body & life should be independent of government And autonomous.

When I see that my life no longer has quality, I will probably ask for assisted dying or voluntary euthanasia, provided that I am still capable of making that decision. That said, no matter what hopeless condition I may be in, if my being alive still matters to my family and they wish me to carry on, I will do so for their sake. In other words, my decision to end my life must be agreed upon by my family because the quality of my life matters to my family as well as to me.

Who cares if it is "appropriate" . . . it is not like you are going to be around to worry about it afterwards. In fact, laws against euthanasia are pretty goddamn stupid if you ask me, what ya gonna do, throw a dead person in prison?

Of course, my life to live as I wish, without causing harm to anyone else. So, my right, if I am not living a quality existence, I have the right to check out when I chose.

Personal bodily, intellectual sovereignty and free agency thereof are the conceptual platform upon which our fragile political system rests. Unfortunately, because of group social, economic and migrated cultural mores and interests, complete protection of our personal sovereignty has been a bitter national struggle. Considering that our crumbling Republic has only existed for about 230 years, some astonishing leaps forward have been accomplished.

Most important progress among them, in my view, has been reestablishment of social and political parity for females and children. Parity, however, isn't full equality. Voluntarily preserved vestiges of the property system that reduced women and children to near livestock status remain in 'advanced' nations and little to no change has occurred in the so-called Third World. In also so-called advanced civilization, women and children still bear surnames of either fathers or husbands. There is still an assumed male 'head of household' unless otherwise stipulated. Men remain at the top of every large political, commercial and theological establishment; making this still very much a man's world.

Besides that most important advancement toward universal human dignity and equality, we also managed to rid our society of slave ownership officially; although it continues to exist de facto in commerce and familial arrangements. The institution, as it is called, of slavery is not one based primarily on race, but on procurement, in the erstwhile huge world, of those either taken captive upon venturing far from native lands or captured at home and taken to places far away. Both practices providing extra security by making escape difficult to impossible. Differences in tongues, races and cultures also made them easier to recapture. As with women and children as property, our part of the world has made great progress in having abandoned those forms of captivity and trade. In pockets abroad, slavery is still alive and well. Slavery is just the honest, straightforward admission that the practice of holding other humans captive is what political organization is about at all levels. Chains and bars are only the more obvious forms of captivity; ideological and theological cult chains and bars, though invisible are far more sophisticated and effective at making captives fearful of consequences of escape.

Chief among influences that surreptitiously deprive us of personal sovereignty rather than expanding and enhancing it are theology and ALL forms of governmental centralization. They are functionally identical, in common functional principles employed to herd timorous masses who fail to recognize that consolidation of power is antithetical to individual liberty. Labels by which totalitarianism is marketed to masses are just that: LABELS. Absolute power corrupts. That usurped power via false authoritarian labeling is it's earliest symptom was painfully understood by the generation that birthed the US political system. Future distancing and protection from theology and other elitist, illegitimate power grabbing was their fondest hope. They birthed a best attempt at fledgling documents twice and the second flew; but for how long?

They understood longing for freedom to be at the core of our natural existence. It instinctively felt right and a means of codifying it for the first time was thought to externally guarantee a future of fulfilling and protecting those longings. Their flaw in understanding was that something externally established could be expanded upon and maintained. It was doomed to insufficiency beneath their Promethean foundation.. Why? How?

Even today a major flaw in social thinking is the false notion of 'family' as the elemental building block of a free society'. It is in my view, the secondary building block, as a molecule is a building block of a chemical compound. The primary (atomic) building block of human societies is the composition of individual character structure. If individual character develops free of authoritarian, usurped male exclusivity of superiority and ownership, a healthier, freer culture can eventuate. This has been discovered and established as fact via still budding sciences of Archaeology and Anthropology; confirmed by discoveries and interpretation of ancient artifacts and observation of precious few surviving human cultures isolated geographically and thereby protected from the scourges of conquesting, male dominated theologies and empires that infected our 'civilized world'.

Under any label such as, for example, dictatorship, fascism, socialism, theocracy, etc. the common totalitarian infection thread and common functional principle is that of dominion of elder emotionally and sexually sick males with a penchant for self-aggrandizing attire and demeanor and forced worship by 'lower forms'. So it happens to be within the human family as well. The building block of a fascist society isn't the abusive, power drunk chief of state, but individual character structure corrupted as soon as possible by 'rightness' of male authoritarianism embodied first in theology and subsequently in political structures spawned by it.

If individuals aren't equitably respected, nurtured and protected in status within family, how can one expect those same families to intrinsically understand and maintain more advanced, external socio-political strata fancifully labeled as civilized 'free societies'? Social organization is hierarchic advancement defined by and confined by it's constituent parts; by it's elemental damaged character structures and secondary compounds of them called family. From that point tertiary organization of 'community' and all subsequent levels of organization continue, infected by the same flaw; the same pathogenic, self-fulfilling central male ownership and absolute authority paradigm.

Until or, more likely, unless humanity fosters fierce egalitarianism, love and cooperative nurturing respect and protection of the young, instead of exploitative dominion over females and children, I believe we're doomed to cyclical resurgence of dormant fascism securely locked within our character structure. Like malaria, herpes and other maladies that erupt at bodily level in weakened states; dormant totalitarian properties break out at the social hierarchic level whenever maintenance of an artificial, albeit well intentioned, system falls into predictable decay. Lasting satisfaction of instinctive, core human yearnings to be loved, protected and respected can't be achieved in a by-passing and ignoring the fact that they are literally 'strangled in the cradle' by pathogenic anti-life dominion.

There is no simple answer to the roots of why we aren't respected as individuals by our laws when laws are authored and enacted by some who consider themselves 'betters' and view some others as mere wards. Sadly, our damaged structures' cooperation within that frame of reference is what ultimately imperils not only our liberty, but our kind's continued existence.

If self-ownership and self determination ever fully exist, right of self-termination won't even occur as a question.