UN Proposes Euthanasia as Right to Health

OneNewsNow reported on October 12, 2011:

The United Nations is debating injecting euthanasia into the right to health and is considering a new treaty on the rights of the elderly to end their own lives for the benefit of society.
At recent U.N. meetings on the issue of aging, it was reported that advanced age impacts the ability to exercise recognized rights and that it is a case of patient autonomy to decide to end life. The Holy See representative at the Human Rights Council said his delegation took strong exception to this argument. The idea is also not being well received by others who respect life.
Dr. Donald Thompson of the Christian Medical Association tells OneNewsNow that he objects to euthanasia being described in this way. “The term is sounding more and more like convincing ‘responsible citizens' to do their part to unburden society by ending their own lives,” he said. “The phrasing of euthanasia as 'autonomy' just does not make sense. Individual autonomy does not apply when someone is being pressured to do something.”
He says that under discussions of the treaty so far, the elderly would be pressured by their children, doctor, or society to end their own lives. However, Thompson believes some of the most productive years of individuals' lives are in their sixties and seventies. He raises the question of who decides at what age people become more of a burden than others think they are worth: "Is it the United Nations? Is it one of these many countries that have gone bankrupt because of wasteful spending? Is the next step to recommend euthanasia to anyone with a chronic disease?”
He says it is an incredibly slippery slope that seems to have no end -- and he is alarmed by it. That slippery slope, he argues, began in 1973 when abortion was legalized to kill babies in the womb. At that time, critics who said it would lead to euthanasia were loudly told they were wrong.