What an interesting topic and blog. I believe the right to die is part of the right to control our own bodies, and of course we constantly have to fight to keep that right. I and other Oregonians voted to allow terminally ill patients to die, and the law has worked well.

I feel more troubled over the issue of allowing euthanasia for depression that is not responding to treatment, because so many people do get better, even after years and years of struggle. I'm one of them. How do you judge when it's at the intractable point? I'm glad the Belgian system requires jumping through a lot of hoops. I wondered whether the young woman who was featured had tried alternative therapies such as hallucinogenics. I also wondered if she had suffered trauma around age 2 that she had suppressed, but hopefully treatment would have sought out any hidden traumas.

I think it would be hard to be those doctors, to get to know a person that you then must usher into death, and never knowing whether they will change their mind at the last minute.

On the other hand, what came through clearly in the video is that legal assisted suicide allows a much different, better kind of death and preparation for death than unassisted suicide, and you also don't leave it to fate as to whether you'll end up brain-damaged instead of dead. In addition, no one has to find your body. My husband and a friend found our neighbor's body after he hung himself.

I think there is a lot of validity to the idea that knowing you can die--that you have the RIGHT to die--would give respite from the burden of living. My husband and I have both done crisis counseling, and you don't talk someone out of suicide. You instead team up with the part that wants to live while clearly hearing the part that wants to die and allowing that pain to be expressed. I think having other people validate that her suffering was really that bad may have changed things for the young woman in the film.