A new Angus Reid poll shows that 42 percent of American adults favor legalizing euthanasia, but that statistic may not be true.
Fifty-two percent believe legalizing euthanasia would leave vulnerable people without sufficient protection, but Rita Marker, director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide (ITF), is not surprised by the results because most people do not fully understand the term.
Rita Marker (International Tasf Force on Euthanasia and Assited Suicide)"Assisted-suicide advocates and those who favor euthanasia by lethal injection don't want to really refer to assisted suicide, and they certainly don't want to refer to a lethal injection," Marker explains. "Instead, they use words like...'euthanasia,' or 'death with dignity' or their newest one, 'aid in dying.'"
So the ITF director believes that when people are polled, they have varied ideas about what euthanasia is -- and she adds that euthanasia advocates have been successful in recent years in muddying up the language.
"Our job, as people who recognize the dangers of assisted suicide, is to continue to educate people so that they realize that what is now being promoted is either being able to say a doctor has the power to prescribe an intentional deadly overdose of drugs, or a doctor has the power to actually administer a lethal injection to a patient," she contends.
Marker does not believe support for assisted suicide is increasing because the poll also reflects that people have compassion for those who might be victimized by it, and she concludes that assisted suicide is actually a danger to everyone.
Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow
Publish Date: February 23, 2010
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