Posted on 03/04/2009 1:11:11 PM PST by wagglebee
In his new book, The Last Goodnights: Assisting My Parents with Their Suicides, lawyer and author John West publicly tells a story that most people would have kept silent. He does it so that one day others may be able to kill openly and without fear. That’s not how West puts it, of course, but I’m afraid that’s what it boils down to.
West’s parents were prestigious psychiatrists. As West wrote, “Neither was at all religious, but both had deep insight into the human condition. . . . And they knew what they wanted.”
What they wanted was to die “on [their] own terms.” When West’s father was diagnosed with cancer, he asked his son for help in taking his own life. In West’s mother’s case, “advancing cognitive decline” led her to fear that she would “turn into a bowl of Jell-O in her head.” A couple of weeks after West assisted his father’s suicide, his mother made the same request.
It’s hard to listen to West talk about his parents’ deaths, as he recently did on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show. As he describes it, when talking about their impending deaths, his parents kept resorting to euphemisms like “do the trick” and “achieve the goal.”
No euphemism, however, can do away with the stark reality of death and what West had to do to kill them. For instance, he had to wake his father, who was groggy from pain pills given to him by a hospice worker, in order to take the extra pills that would kill him. West admitted that his father might not have finished taking the pills had he, the son, not fed them to him.
In California, these acts were against the law, but as West proclaimed on Rehm’s show, “Everyone in the medical world knows that it happens all the time.” (As it happens, both a doctor and a hospice worker contacted Rehm to disagree.) At any rate, West considered this a case where “it was more important to do the right thing than to follow the letter of the law.”
So, according to West, murder of an innocent is the right thing?
West is publicizing how he helped kill his parents to promote assisted suicide, which he wants to see legalized.
But as West’s story itself shows, our culture and our legal system have already begun to acquiesce to murder, to the point where more and more of these assisted suicide cases are allowed to slip by. Diane Rehm asked West whether he might face any legal repercussions for his actions. His response was that he had heard nothing from the authorities so far.
No good can come of allowing people to kill others—even if they claim they were acting out of the most purely humanitarian motives. The authorities need to uphold the law.
Make no mistake: Legalizing assisted suicide is a big step on a dangerous and slippery slope, especially in a world where human life is growing cheaper by the minute. We’ve already seen that legalizing assisted suicide has led to non-voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands. And we’ve talked recently on BreakPoint about how increasing health-care costs have spurred Britain to deny certain citizens life-prolonging treatment.
I will say it over and over, until I am blue in the face: Every human life, from conception through natural death, is sacred. And to take that life unjustly is simply murder—the kind of thing the state has a sworn duty to stop.
I will NEVER stop repeating the same thing.
Pro-Life Ping
BreakPoint Ping
Freepmail wagglebee or DirtyHarryY2K to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.
FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
I’m with you.
My conclusion for years has been if you permit legalized murder for one purpose soon there will be another purpose accepted. Think old geezer that doesn’t see or function too well, think certain types of handicap, etc. Soon those with a big nose ......
Yep, once Pandora’s box is opened it’s too late, when society decides that people with “XYZ condition” can be killed the stage is set to expand the list.
...or a drain on the health care system...
Eventually people will die on someone else's terms.
My conclusion for years has been if you permit legalized murder
______
So you’re against the death penalty?
Don’t worry, Obama will kill the babies and then the old people over 65 with his health care plan. See what young folks have to look forward to?
No one has asked if their life insurance is going to pay off, especially if the good doctor is the beneficiary. Since one is supposed to not be able to profit from a crime could he still collect?
The real fix for the Social Security deficit.
After watching the agony of imminent death over and over again. I’d rather go in peace than in slow body melting twisting pain hour after hour.
Hmmm. I’m curious what John West’s views are on the death penalty. I’m guessing he’s against it, even though he did the exact same thing to his parents, who were innocent of any crimes.
Yeah, Exactly!
The death penalty IS NOT murder, it has been accepted as punishment for capital crimes for thousands of years.
I would rather be a billionaire than poor, but I am not. If you don't believe in God then why wait? Go now.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.