The right to die

I don't know but given some countries have had different forms of assisted dying for quite a while I imagine they would have wanted to do their best to ensure that they were not creating other problems. I am sure, humans being humans, there are isolated cases of abuse, but is there any evidence that coercion has become a major problem.  It would surely be known if t had.

That depends on how you define both coercion and problem .
Its doubtful that Aunt Maud bring encouraged to take the pill by her benefactors would either be seen as coercion or even mentioned by Aunt Maud.
I think the idea that coercion would ‘ surely be known if it had’ is somewhat naive .

Even more difficult as we all had bad childhoods. My Dad was a bully and my mum in and out of mental hospital. I left home aged 17. So its difficult making myself care, but from day one of escaping my Mum and Dad I was determined not to be them. My wife gets this and steps in for my mum when I don't want to, but we do our best. 

it's absurd to assume people will feel pressured to make a sacrifice in order to remove a burden from their family. / sarc.

This unfortunately is very typical of the frozen, one dimensional fantasy worlds your arguments often live in.

The pressure is clearly even logically implicit in the legal availability of the option. That's how silly this is to deny.

The question is not whether a pressure would exist, but whether changing the law would be a good moral trade-off regardless. My opinion is that it would not.

Prior to training to be a nurse my brother worked for a short time in an isolated rural geriatric hospital. He had a room in the hospital so he spent most of his time there. After he'd been there for about three weeks one of the staff took him for a drink in the local pub ... and told him that during the ten years he'd worked there he'd killed over 400 patients. When he was on night duty if a patient began making too much noise and was disturbing the others he'd place pillows behind their head so as to restrict their breathing. His advice to my brother was "Don't forget to remove the pillows".

Until 1993 families were under no legal obligation to feed debilitated elderly relatives who were living with them.

Suits me.

Inventing my religious views, missing out half my post to change its meaning. 

Happens each time I respond to you, I never learn. 

Of course this is a difficult moral issue with difficulties whichever way we go.  

The argument you and Bentley are using is that there would undoubtedly be large scale coercion encouraging elderly people to take their lives from beneficiary greed.  There seems to be no evidence whatsoever from other countries that have adopted the right to die to support the concept that this would be a serious issue.  I suspect though that this is not your real objection to the concept.

There are no easy answers here. Anyone who has made the agonising decision to end the life of a much loved pet now in distress will know how difficult that is. It must be considered likely that it would be even harder to be involved in the choice of death for a much loved relative. Yet we accept for animals that sometimes their physical condition means that the life they are now living is no longer better than the alternative.  It is hard to understand why, if we can show that maturity and compassion towards animals, we are unable to show similar maturity and compassion with human beings.  

Yes there would need to be controls and safeguards - and in this respect rather than reinventing the wheel we would be well advised to study and learn the lessons from the experience of countries that have done this but while this is indeed a difficult moral area, the benefits of helping people in need seem to me to be overwhelming.