Posted on 05/12/2005 8:37:04 AM PDT by conservativebabe
A better way than a gun?
Had he lived in Oregon, the terminally ill man who shot himself in the head at Oak Glen Home in Coal Valley last month wouldn't have needed the gun.
There would have been no need for someone to put himself or herself at risk of criminal charges by slipping him the weapon.
There would have been no possibility that other residents would be harmed by the bullet after it exited his head.
There would have been no trauma for the nursing home staff.
Instead, he could simply have asked that he be prescribed a fatal dose of some medication -- pentobarbital and secobarbital are the drugs of choice in Oregon, the only state that permits physician-assisted suicide.
Had he lived in Oregon, he would have met the criteria set in the state's Death with Dignity Act: He was more than 18 years old, capable of making and communicating health-care decisions, and diagnosed with a terminal illness that would have led to death within six months.
He could have slipped away peacefully, loved ones at his side, rather than desperately, furtively and violently firing a bullet into his own head.
But society's refusal to recognize that dying is sometimes a rational decision robbed him of that option. It also robs a great many other people of a better choice than a gun. Of the 30,000-plus people who kill themselves each year in the United States, more than 6,000 are older than 65 and a good many of those suffer from a terminal illness.
Why not give a choice to those who prefer to save themselves and their families the pain and heartache of those last six months?
No good reason, Oregon voters have decided -- twice. The Death with Dignity Act was first passed in a referendum by a 51-49 percent vote. An effort to rescind the law was mounted and another referendum was held. The second time around, the percentage in favor of the act was 60-40. Between 1998, when the law went into effect, and the end of 2004, 208 people availed themselves of the assisted suicide option.
The law is of course deeply controversial. When it went into effect, John Ashcroft, than a United States senator from Missouri, urged Attorney General Janet Reno to intervene. She declined, saying there were no grounds for federal interference.
Mr. Ashcroft, named attorney general by newly elected President George Bush in 2001, reversed Ms. Reno, claiming that doctors who provide fatal doses of drugs are in violation of federal drug control laws.
Oregon went to court to defend its statute, and won at the federal appellate court level. The federal government appealed the decision and the Supreme Court has agreed to accept the case.
As too often happens in matters of great moral impact, the issue is being fought out on narrow technical grounds, in this case whether the attorney general has correctly interpreted the federal Controlled Substances Act..
Oral arguments are scheduled for this fall, with a ruling expected to come early next year.
Here's hoping that the Oregon law survives the challenge. Here's hoping, too, that other states visit, or re-visit, the question of assisted suicide. We should give terminally ill people who rationally decide there are worse things than dying some better option than a gun.
It truly scares me to think where this movement is going.
Or where it already has gone...Terry Schaivo.
From "The Dispatch?" Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
hmm...but if all liberals up an commit suicide for us.....
oh wait, they only want things to be applied to Conservatives...I'm always forgetting that...
"But society's refusal to recognize that dying is sometimes a rational decision robbed him of that option."
This line is the kicker of the whole peice in my opinion. Suggesting that the rest of society is irrational to not allow people to just off themselves at will.
Truly sick. I almost couldn't believe what I was reading.
There is a huge gulf between what one person chooses to do with his own life, and what one chooses to do with another's life. To confuse euthanasia with assisted suicide is to miss the gulf.
See, if you just give in a little to the liberals, they'll take that comprimise and leave you alone...
(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
Euthanasia debate in Europe focuses on children
By MATTHEW SCHOFIELD
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Four times in recent months, Dutch doctors have pumped lethal doses of drugs into newborns they believe are terminally ill, setting off a new phase in a growing European debate over when, if ever, it's acceptable to hasten death for the critically ill.
Few details of the four newborns' deaths have been made public. Official investigations have found that the doctors made appropriate and professional decisions under an experimental policy allowing child euthanasia that's known as the Groningen University Hospital protocol.
But the children's deaths, and the possibility that the protocol will become standard practice throughout the Netherlands, have sparked heated discussion about whether the idea of assisting adults who seek to die should ever be applied to children and others who are incapable of making, or understanding, such a request.
"Applying euthanasia to children is another step down the slope in this debate," said Henk Jochemsen, the director of Holland's Lindeboom Institute, which studies medical ethics. "Not everybody agrees, obviously, but when we broaden the application from those who actively and repeatedly seek to end their lives to those for whom someone else determines death is a better option, we are treading in dangerous territory."
The Dutch debate is being closely watched throughout the continent. Belgium has laws similar to those in the Netherlands, and a bill permitting child euthanasia is before its Parliament. No date has been set for debate.
Great Britain is considering legalizing assisted suicide for the terminally ill, amid reports that doctors already may be helping thousands of patients to die each year.
"Assisted dying is a fact," said Hazel Biggs, the director of medical law at the University of Kent, who's about to publish a report estimating the number of assisted deaths in Britain at 18,000 annually. "We have to regulate it, to ensure that vulnerable people are being protected."
Under the Groningen protocol, if doctors at the hospital think a child is suffering unbearably from a terminal condition, they have the authority to end the child's life. The protocol is likely to be used primarily for newborns, but it covers any child up to age 12.
The hospital, beyond confirming the protocol in general terms, refused to discuss its details.
"It is for very sad cases," said a hospital spokesman, who declined to be identified. "After years of discussions, we made our own protocol to cover the small number of infants born with such severe disabilities that doctors can see they have extreme pain and no hope for life. Our estimate is that it will not be used but 10 to 15 times a year."
A parent's role is limited under the protocol. While experts and critics familiar with the policy said a parent's wishes to let a child live or die naturally most likely would be considered, they note that the decision must be professional, so rests with doctors.
The protocol was written by hospital doctors and officials, with help from Dutch prosecutors. It's being studied by lawmakers as potential law.
Under the protocol, assisted infant deaths are investigated, but so far all of them have been determined to have been in the patients' best interests.
Euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands since 1994. Under the law, any critically ill patient older than 12 can request an assisted death, including adults in the early stages of dementia.
The law doesn't allow involuntary euthanasia nor does it apply to children younger than 12, who aren't considered aware enough to make a life-or-death choice.
Dutch doctors have some intentional role in 3.4 percent of all deaths, according to statistics published in the medical journal The Lancet. About 0.6 percent are patients who didn't ask to be euthanized, the journal said.
Dutch courts often treat those cases leniently if an investigation determines that the doctor acted out of concern for the patient's well-being.
Opponents of expanding euthanasia to the young cite a recent Dutch court ruling against punishment for a doctor who injected fatal drugs into an elderly woman after she told him she didn't want to die.
The court determined that he'd made "an error of judgment," but had acted "honorably and according to conscience."
News reports say that since that decision some elderly hospital patients are carrying written appeals not to be euthanized. A German company has proposed a nursing home just across the border from the Netherlands that would be promoted to aging Dutch residents as a safe haven in a country where euthanasia is illegal and likely to remain so.
What happens to vulnerable people is a particularly sharp issue in a continent where birthrates have declined, populations have aged and five nations have more old than young. Euthanasia opponents fear that as costs increase for long-term intensive care and health-care budgets become more strained, financial reasons could creep into euthanasia debates.
"The danger, of course, is ensuring a debate on the right to die does not become one on a duty to die," said Urban Wiesing, the chair for ethics in medicine at Germany's prestigious Eberhard Karls Tuebingen University.
The issue is a particularly delicate one in Germany, where euthanasia was used by the Nazis as cover for wide-scale murders of the disabled, among others. Germany is one of the few countries where there's no serious push to legalize assisted suicide.
European advocates of expanding euthanasia laws say they're acting in the best humanitarian tradition to halt intolerable suffering. Belgian Sens. Jeannine Leduc and Paul Wille noted that motive in their proposed law: "Their suffering is as great, the situation they face is as intolerable and inhumane."
But others worry that after children, who will be next?
It is not as huge a gulf as you imagine. It is just a few small steps to go from assisted suicide to moving the euthanasia decision to family members and "caregivers" to moving the euthanasia decision to bureaucrats.
The court determined that he'd made "an error of judgment," but had acted "honorably and according to conscience."
So the patient expressly stated she DIDN'T WANT TO DIE, and the doctor who "assisted her suicide" anyway will not be punished because even though he made "an error of judgment" he acted "honorably and accourding to conscience". That huge gulf is looking more like a small puddle that doesn't even require much of a stretch to step over.
It scares me a lot more that anybody thinks any government entity should be allowed to force people to continue living and suffering when they don't want to. The government does not own citizens' lives.
What you just said scares me.
euthanasia v. assisted suicide
Gramps, you are a bore and we don't like changing your diapers. Here is a loaded shotgun. Do us a favor and end our inconvenience of having you around.
Big difference?
A few points come to mind when thinking about suicide.
1. It is not a legal act, though seldom,if ever are people prosecuted for it. Either because they don't live to face earthly consequences, or, they survive and enter a treatment program because it seems even the legal system is sympathetic to a persons pain, or are terminal anyway and left to die naturally.
2. I have always viewed suicide as a very selfish act. People think not of what it does to those left behind, only of their own suffering.
3. It is also for people of faith, an arguably immoral, sinful act. If a person is terminal, and unfortunately suffering, it is the cross they must bare and they will be released from their suffering naturally. Hence, they take it out of their own hands, and put it on someone else. Though there are willing individuals who take on the task, doesn't make it any more moral, IMO.
Once we begin giving people a societal blessing to commit suicide, to me is the start of basically licensing people to make those judgments whether sound or not.
"It scares me a lot more that anybody thinks any government entity should be allowed to force people to continue living and suffering when they don't want to. The government does not own citizens' lives"
BRAVO - well said. No one should be forced to live in pain and suffering to appease those that want to insert their personal morality into law. Give people the same dignity we give to our pets.
What's the big deal? If you want to kill yourself, just do it. There's not much the government can do to stop you (unless you tell them in advance). Plus, it's hard to prosecute the dead. But don't tell me that some innocent person has the right to be killed by the hand of another. There is no constitutional right to your own executioner. If you are not willing to take your own life, you should have to live.
You are so right here, and this is the argument to make to the non-religious. A good example can be found in people who commit suicide-by-train; the sight of it alone haunts train crews for the rest of their lives, makes them feel guilty even though there was nothing that they could do. Not to mention the hours of delays for thousands of people during rush hour.
"There is no constitutional right to your own executioner. If you are not willing to take your own life, you should have to live"
In the Oregon law the person is given medication, which they must be able to TAKE BY THEMSELVES
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