More than 90 percent of people support the legalization of euthanasia in Taiwan, the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association said on Thursday, citing the results of a survey.
Six percent of respondents said they were unsure whether they supported the legalization of euthanasia and only 1 percent disagreed, association volunteer Yang Chih-chun (楊智鈞) said.
The association said it conducted an online survey from Aug. 23 to Oct. 4 on people’s opinions toward the legalization of euthanasia and related issues, collecting 2,009 valid samples.
With regards to which groups of people should have access to euthanasia, Yang said more than 80 percent of respondents said it could be offered to people with end-stage diseases, severe disability or incurable physiological pain and to people in a vegetative state who had drawn up a will beforehand or whose family members approve.
Answers to open-ended questions also showed that many people would consider euthanasia due to reasons such as physical disability or disease, Yang added.
Respondents generally believed that euthanasia represents a natural form of death, that it could help lessen the physical and psychological pain of patients with severe conditions, and that it could reduce the pressure that medical care puts on relatives and society, Yang said.
If euthanasia were to enter public debate or be discussed in the Legislative Yuan, regulations would need to be set after heavy discussions and careful consideration of the circumstances, the association said.
Last month, 84-year-old former sports anchor Fu Da-jen (傅達仁), who has been diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer, stirred discussion when he announced that he had become a member of Dignitas, a Swiss not-for-profit organization that assists with suicide.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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