Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

Search

Search

Please click this link to help me keep The Angry Atheist active with an donation.

1. 

   As someone who produced dozens of nativity plays as a teacher and a Sunday School leader, that title ‘A Gay…

2. 

   The defence of a Christian view never seems to be settled by debate: exchange of facts, reference to historical events.…

3. 

   But …… Rwanda is a safe place: Parliament says so.https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/8/contentsSafety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 S 2 Safety…

4. 

   Religion can survive only on the most unquestionable assumptions. The statements made on Sundays on the BBC as if they…

5. 

   Yes, if I’ve got anything remotely like a phobia, as an ex-fundy, its bibles, churches, tracts etc. I like to…

FOR weeks my husband and I have been agonising over whether to make a call that would end a life of a cherished companion. But today I finally seized the phone and called our vet and asked her to euthanise Fifi, above.

We adopted the mini-Pinscher a decade ago after she was found traumatised in a caravan in which the owner had died, and she was destined for a killing station. We also took on a second dog, a Patterdale terrier, who was also found at the same location. He died during the Covid lockdown in Spain.

Fifi, aged around 15, started showing signs of canine dementia a few months ago, but in the past few weeks began driving us crazy with bouts of barking, howling and crying, and it became clear that, for our own sanity, and that of our neighbours, action needed to be taken.

Did I weep when I handed Fifi over to Natalia Diaz Tejon, who runs a mobile veterinary clinic in Benidorm? You bet I did.

But my real sorrow lies in the fact it that we can let out pets die with dignity, but in many countries we are prevented by law to help humans, whose lives are no longer viable, to die in the same manner.

So I was gratified when a progressive, socialist goverment in Spain, passed a law in 2021 to legalise euthanasia, becoming the fourth country in Europe to allow people to end their own life under certain circumstances.

The Spanish law allows adults with “serious and incurable” diseases that cause “unbearable suffering” to choose to end their lives.

Before the law’s passage, helping somebody to die in Spain was potentially punishable by a jail term of up to 10 years.

There was a lot of whinging, as one would expect, from the Catholic Church, but mercifully Spain no longer tolerates religious interference in its political and social affairs, unlike the UK.

On a personal note, when I was still living in the UK, I vigorously campaigned for voluntary euthanasia, as well as for the decriminalisation of drugs.

Image via YouTube. Hear Alson argue against euthansia here.

But despite the fact that two-thirds of the UK public support legalising assisted dying the situation, 14 years on, remains unchanged. And for that we have to thank religious extremists such as Catholic Lord Alton of Liverpool, above.

In 2012 he said:

The introduction of euthanasia will be cloaked in words like dignity, mercy, compassion and autonomy … doctors will be required in future to kill patients; disabled people encouraged to believe they would be better off dead; patient safety compromised; and politicians using the new law as a pretext to withdraw resources from the care of the sick.

The so-called right to die will soon become a duty to die – and to die quickly.

When I posted the imbecile’s words on The Freethinker website before I was sacked as editor a few years ago, one reader commented:

Only someone who has never seen a person die of a terminal illness could say something so breathtakingly cruel. It does not surprise me that someone with that attitude would be a forced-birther.

The “forced-birther” remark was prompted by the fact that David Alton is also fanatically opposed to abortion.

Compassion, bodily autonomy and dignity are concepts completely alien to religious zealots such as Alton, and it is high time that he and his ilk are hounded out of positions of influence.

Please help me keep The Angry Atheist going with a donation.