Personal stories are always powerful. One of the issues in the debate about euthanasia is that the dead do not return to tell us whether or not their decision turned out to be a good idea!

There are some people, however, who have stated that had they had the opportunity to commit assisted suicide/ euthanasia they would have done so but how glad they are that there was no euthanasia available because they are alive today!

Here is the story of a quadriplegic man who has changed his view from pro-euthanasia to “No” to euthanasia.

Quadriplegic says no to euthanasia

An old man in a wheel chair made a powerful case on national television again legalizing euthanasia.

It may have come as a surprise to ABC1’s I Q&A host Tony Jones on 19 September. He agreed to allow wheel-chair bound John Moxon to ask the Q&A panel a question on euthanasia, probably expecting an impassioned plea for this option. But instead, Mr Moxon argued against euthanasia. He said: “Legislation currently before the SA parliament will enable a doctor to kill somebody, on the judgment of the doctor alone that the person’s life is not worth living.

“I ask myself, how would I feel if I had a stroke and some doctor said, Oh, well, he’s already a quadriplegic, let’s just kill him because his life wouldn’t be worth living?”

One member of the panel said she wanted to be able to pull the plug when she gets old and incapacitated.

“That’s exactly what I said four years before I broke my neck. When it happened, that wasn’t my view at all!” Mr Moxon said.

Below is an extract from Family Voice’s recent magazine “Voxpoint” November 2011 (http://www.fava.org.au/)