Your Final Choice: Hastening your death when terminally ill – eight questions to ask yourself By Kenneth Ralph a superb introduction to the topic of voluntary assisted dying and end-of-life choices for people new to thinking about these issues, as well as a great starting point for anyone contemplating making an Advance Care Directive.
Kenneth Ralph runs a private counselling service in Geelong and is trained in philosophy, theology and psychotherapy. In this book he calmly and rationally lays out the arguments for and against voluntary assisted dying in a highly sensitive and readable manner. He draws on a wide range of sources including medical research, psychology, philosophy, theology and legal research as well as a number of case studies from his own experience and elsewhere.
A unique aspect of the book is that the author, Kenneth Ralph, is a person of faith (Christian) who argues cogently for the consistency of religious belief and a belief in assisted dying. Though he declares his own support for medically assisted death from the outset, he gives due consideration to opposing positions.
The bulk of Your Final Choice: Hastening your death when terminally ill – eight questions to ask yourself is geared to helping you build your own case about which of the various hastening options you prefer. Some of the important questions the reader is encouraged to ask themselves include: which are the human qualities which would cause you to not to want to live if you lost them; how does your preference fit with your beliefs about a possible after life; and is there something to be gained by staying with the suffering.
It is available online from Morning Star Publishing. To visit the Morning Star Publishing web shop, click here.