Dying with dignity vs religious dogma

The most recent quarterly Dying With Dignity newsletter is online here. Dying With Dignity is an organisation dedicated to assited dying for those who wish so. In it there's a very direct article from an author Hani Montan, about the conflict there is between many religious people and the idea of a planned and dignified death. This is pretty obvious in some circles, but he puts it in a very well written and forceful way:

It is the expectation, in a secular society where religion and state are separate, that the universal imposition of religious ideals is not acceptable. Some theologians pontificate about helping people to live more fully with the dying process, but they do not explain how this can happen when the patient is twitching in agony, soiling themselves, rolling in pain, slowly drowning in the fluid of their decaying lungs etc. 

Why do they limit relief during the dying stage to palliative sedation, rather than assisted death? There are no moral distinctions between switching-off a ventilator, prescribing morphine to relieve suffering that hastens death, and providing a pill that will kill a patient. These are merely similar ways of achieving the same end. 

People instinctively don’t want to die, and they usually avoid death because they value life. They want to die only when life becomes unbearable and death becomes a better option than staying alive. 

The terminally ill and victims of severe accidents and traumas should never be forced to stay alive. Legally safeguarded assisted death would counterbalance the ever more exotic medical techniques for prolonging life, with little regard for its quality. more