Posted on 11/02/2008 9:16:57 AM PST by wagglebee
When voters in Washington state head to the polls on Tuesday, they will consider Initiative 1000, which would make the state the second in the nation to legalize the grisly practice of assisted suicide. Washington residents should reject assisted suicide to a solution to helping elderly, terminally ill and other patients.
In the minds of most Americans, assisted suicide brings to mind Doctor Kevorkian, the iconoclastic crusader who appeared more interested in publicity than putting the interests of patients first.
While a Jack Kevorkian may not come to Washington to flout the current laws, making the practice legal doesn't help patients.
For many, assisted suicide involves the same principles as the abortion debate -- where death becomes a handy solution when government or society seeks quick fix solution to a problem.
Just as abortion doesn't solve the problems of providing medial care, education assistance, financial aid or comfort and support for pregnant women who believe they have no other option when faced with an unplanned pregnancy, assisted suicide is no legitimate option for patients.
Merely legalizing assisted suicide doesn't provide patients with better medical care or health insurance, it doesn't alleviate the pain and suffering that illnesses can bring for patients who don't want to take their life, and it doesn't yield cures, provide better hospice support or strengthen the doctor-patient relationship.
It certainly doesn't alleviate the concerns of a throw-away society that increasingly views the elderly, the disabled, and the infirm as burdens to society rather than blessings.
The old saying that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it applies to the debate over I-1000. All Washington voters need to do to determine if the supposed safeguards in the ballot proposal will actually work is look at the problems associated with the state of Oregon.
Just weeks ago, researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University released the results of a study showing one-fourth of the people killed in assisted suicides in Oregon were depressed but received lethal cocktails anyway.
Of the patients involved, 26 percent were independently diagnosed with depression. they weren't treated -- giving credence to the notion that assisted suicide is a cure looking for a problem.
Who knows how much pressure was applied on those patients by family members, doctors, medical personnel, or how much pressure they put on themselves to take their own life rather than seek medical and mental health assistance. The "easy" solution of taking one's life seems like a good idea to those who are worried about being a burden to family or patients who are concerned about how to pay medical bills. Assisted suicide only adds to that pressure.
Assisted suicide puts the doctor-patient relationship in an improper light -- and it's no wonder that state medical associations across the nation have opposed it in other states where voters considered the idea.
The role of doctors and medical staff as healers is a longstanding one. Patients already face concerns in the form of medical personnel who already take it upon themselves to euthanize or hasten the death of patients without opening the door to legitimatize their actions by allowing assisted suicide.
The slippery slope of assisted suicide to euthanasia is no longer a question as European nations who were supposed to close the door to doctors actively killing patients have opened it wide.
Also, the case of Barbara Wagner is becoming less and less far-fetched.
Washington voters need to know how she was denied treatment and told that insurance would pay for an assisted suicide but not medication that could help her. As more and more economic pressures are placed on the medical system, the pressure to take patients' lives as opposed to the cost and effort of medicating them will only increase. Again, assisted suicide exacerbates that problem.
Ultimately, it's no surprise that doctors groups, disability rights groups, religious organizations, and pro-life organizations have banded together in other states to stop assisted suicide. They all have valid points to make about the problems associated with the practice and states ranging from Michigan and Maine to Hawaii and California have rejected assisted suicide because they understand the pitfalls.
Washington voters, please don't make the same mistake. Reject the out-of-state money telling you to vote for I-1000 and help your fellow Americans who worry that your vote will force assisted suicide on the rest of us if the pro-suicide movement snowballs.
Vote no on I-1000.
"Assisted suicide" has NEVER been anything other than euthanasia renamed.
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The thing that gets me is that it’s perfectly possible to kill yourself without the assistance of a dcotor. People have been doing it for a LONG time.
To me it’s selfish. If a person is in pain, dying anyway within six months why not let them end their suffering? The hospitals are raking in tons of money keeping that person alive. If an individual wants to end their suffering they should be allowed to do so. Where do others get off telling them they have to continue in their pain? Oregon has had this law for years and it works.
It is a persons individual right to control what they want. If we’re allowed to have an abortion by law then why not a law here in Washington to end our suffering?
This is my own opinion.
/r/Jane
I hope that WA voters do the right thing. Oregonians didn’t. OR actually used to be conservative, I’m told. It’s like CA - the urban areas, especially Portland, are massively leftist, and the rest of the state is conservative. Plus tons of liberal Californians have messed it up. More here than in WA but they’ve got native liberals too.
Agreed. It is not the governments job.
Churches, yes. Family, yes. Doctors, yes.
But not the governments.
“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live”
Oscar Wilde
Here in Washington ads with Martin Sheen have been running in opposition to Prop 1000. Sheen seems to have split from the ‘killing for convenience’ crowd. I voted against it anyway-with Mr. Sheen’s recommendation. It’s been a strange year.
If you haven’t already done so, you should inform yourself about what has happened in Europe via the “slippery slope”.
The keeping people alive thing is easily remedied. Let relatives know, and have something in writing, there are papers to sign - I know, I used to be a hospice volunteer - that you don’t want emergency extreme measures. Then you will be allowed to go when God/nature wants you to go.
I don’t want extreme live saving measures, but I sure as heck will never take poison or other methods to kill my mortal body. And doctors should never ever be in the business of killing. That field is for executioners.
And if you’re pro-abortion, and pro-assisted suicide, do you hold any conservative viewpoints at all?
Plus, anyone who wants to can commit suicide very easily. Guns, sleeping pills or other pills that can kill, car exhaust, etc - so many means. There are whole books put out by the Hemlock Society - how to suicide books.
No need to involve doctors who are supposed to preserve and save life.
That’s odd, I would have thought Sheen would support it.
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You are asking doctors to become both healers and executioners.
First, do no harm. That is what doctors ought to live by. They used to.
If someone wants to off themselves, they can plan ahead, make a trip to the hardware store, and get a box of rat poison.
That’ll do the job, no “assistance” necessary.
How dare you? The government owns you and you have no right to run your own life. They (and others) know better than you what’s best for you!
Glad that was a bit of sarcasm .. you’re right though ....
Many people are disabled. I suppose they can crawl up the steps and such, right? Sorry, but I must disagree as I believe that anything an able-bodied person can do, a disabled person should have the right to get assistance doing.
Secondly, many people fail to realize how debilitating their conditions are, and try to hang onto life as long as possible. They are often unable to take necessary steps when they finally decide to do so. As it stands now, the only recourse is to off onesself earlier than desired, as the assistance isn’t there later.
Third, physicians are quite aware that not all can be healed. They cut off limbs that can’t be healed, for example...does that make them “not healers” in your mind? It is compassionate for physicians to respect their patients’ wishes, not to refuse them.
It won’t work if you’re all tied up with tubes and stuff in a hospital. My aunt had a hospice person with her ... it was OK but ....
The thing is I don’t want someone else, a stranger, to tell me that I can’t die the way I want when I’m in pain and have only a short time to live ... they want to prolong my suffering??? What gives them >that< right????
The government is too involved in our lives ... one blogger here said that the tree of Liberty needs watering again ....
First, I don’t care what they do in Europe. Too many people here look to Europe for guidance, even our Supreme Court.
I am not for abortion. Nobody asks the child if they want to die, it’s just done.
Why is it we can demand the death of a child in less than eight months and protect a murderer for decades?
If I am in pain. If I have six months or less to live and I want to end my suffering, why can’t I be able to do that? The doctors are not administering the drug, I choose to open the bottle and take those pills. They prescribe it but it is up to me to do the act. I can either choose to do it or not. The doctor doesn’t hold my mouth open and force me to swallow.
/r/Jane
I agree with you, and already voted for 1000, and McCain Palin of course
“To me it’s selfish. If a person is in pain, dying anyway within six months why not let them end their suffering? The hospitals are raking in tons of money keeping that person alive. If an individual wants to end their suffering they should be allowed to do so. Where do others get off telling them they have to continue in their pain? Oregon has had this law for years and it works.
It is a persons individual right to control what they want. If we’re allowed to have an abortion by law then why not a law here in Washington to end our suffering?”
Odd that you give such advice and then post information based on ignorance.
..or perhaps willful distortion of facts.
...or disregard for persons who arent' able-bodied.
Guns make a mess. Would you not rather have a situation where a person can go much more peacefully?
Sleeping pills are banned by the DEA...I know, as a friend of mine tried to obtain Seconal and it was intercepted. Requiring a substitute, she died a writhingly horrid death by cyanide instead of redcorating her walls with brains (by use of the .357 Magnum by her side). (I'm sure you're glad that no physician could have legally helped her to go peacefully with her daughter and grandson at her side.)
Car exhaust is not very easy these days, either. Try Suicide and Attempted Suicide by Geo Stone to get some factual information on how ineffective many methods are.
Oh, and that slippery slope argument? I thought that we'd be having a HUGH epidemic of suicides in Oregon by now--at least that's what we were told!
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