LONDON ¨C Ever watched a loved one die in a hospital bed, insensate from morphine, hands that made dinner, earned the rent, wiped away tears and raised a child bruised and swollen after one too many stabbings to find a vein?
If not, you probably will, ears straining for the final rattle in the throat and the skipped breath. And you¡¯ll probably wonder: Is this the way life ends, not with a bang, not with rage against the dying of the light, but only the prolonged agony of awaiting the inevitable? And you may also start to think: Maybe the folks at Dignitas in Switzerland are onto something with their assisted-suicide program for the terminally ill?
And maybe Britain has noticed. This week, the House of Lords debated ¡°a bill to enable competent adults who are terminally ill to be provided at their request with specified assistance to end their own life,¡± which is only the second stage in a long parliamentary process before it even gets to the House of Commons to have a chance of becoming law.
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