Posted on 09/21/2009 2:50:37 PM PDT by JoeProBono
LAGUNA WOODS, Calif. (AP) -- California authorities say a 90-year-old man will likely be booked on a murder charge after he shot his bedridden wife, allegedly to end her suffering, then tried to kill himself.
Orange County sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino says James Fish was in critical condition Monday after shooting himself in the head, but he's alert and able to speak. Amormino says Fish will be arrested if he survives.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
She may well have told him it’s what she wanted. In a civilized FREE society, they’d be able to have a competent person give them both peaceful lethal injections. Since our meddling government has taken that freedom away from its subjects, we have ugly messes like this.
They’re not sure whether she’s dead?
FOr sure they’re going to waste a lot of taxpayer dollars, giving him medical treatment he doesn’t want, charging him with a crime and holding a trial, and whatever idiotic arrangements they make for his housing after that. He just wants to die, so the government has to stop him and burn through six figures in taxpayer dollars to keep him from getting what he wants, to deter other people from trying to get what they want.
I am glad you said it that way. I wonder if you know how right you are. My Mother is 70 and suffering from a Parkinson Syndrome where her mind is alert but her body is loosing it's ability to move in a coordinated manner. In some senses she is loosing all mobility. She will probably get to the point where her conscience mind is trapped in a body that can not move except for maybe her eyes. She has asked each of us to kill her at one time or another. Asked? No begged with tears in her eyes. I have to admit I have considered it on many occasions.
As usual, those who are too dogmatic or flippant about questions like this are totally unaware of the painful realities. You put it well.
There are solid reasons some things have to be illegal, and equally valid reasons why people do them anyway.
I personally pray my Mother will die before she is entombed in her lifeless body and we have to consider the unthinkable on a daily basis.
What’s news about this? People of all ages have killed spouses to end suffering.
Sad story all around, I suppose.
There are virtually no cases where pain can truly not be managed. But there is such irrational terror of “addiction” (and the government) that people are chronically under-medicated.
With our baby-killing government salivating over the opportunity to start killing more of us, now is not the time to be talking about killing people as a “freedom.”
Are you forgetting about Heaven?
So, you are, in reality, asking God to hurry up. Doesn't your Mom do the same thing? This takes a ton of faith, it seems to me.
I’ll bank in reality, thank you.
So, you are, in reality, asking God to hurry up. Doesn't your Mom do the same thing? This takes a ton of faith, it seems to me.
I'm asking God not to make her suffer like that. Call it what you will, yes it takes faith.
Some people don’t WANT to live, even if physical pain can be “managed”. They don’t want to lie in bed useless, having strangers changing their diapers, and just waiting to die. They want to go ahead and die. In a free country, one’s life should belong to oneself, to do with as one pleases. The government has no business using its powers of coercion to force people to continue living when they don’t want to.
We don’t belong to ourselves.
The premise that we belong to ourselves is the false premise that’s leading you to support suicide and murder.
In a FREE country, you’re supposed to have the freedom to decide for yourself if your life belongs to yourself or to some God you believe in. I supposed you should also be free to believe that your life belongs to the government, but the government shouldn’t be forcing or pressuring you to believe that, any more than it should be pressuring you into believing in a particular religion or into believing atheism. People choose to die for a lot of reasons, including in some cases because it’s in accordance with their religious beliefs.
You make a string of gratuitous assertions about “freedom.”
One of the limitations that all libertarians, as far as I know, accept is that freedom does not extend to acts that are harmful to others.
Suicide and euthanasia are harmful to the person who dies—which is sufficient reason to outlaw them. But legalizing these acts is harmful to human society. There is ample historical evidence that this is true.
Yes: people who are not allowed to kill themselves are less “free” than those who are. But people who kill themselves are dead. Being dead is a greater harm to oneself and to society than the absence of the liberty to kill oneself.
When the State legalizes suicide and euthanasia in order to relieve “suffering,” the State is endorsing the religious dogma that people who kill themselves don’t go to Hell. This is an impermissible State endorsement of a religious dogma.
I have told my kids to shoot me if I end up in a home laying in my own feces....Who would want to live in that state?
Okay, whose suffering was he ending?
For you that may be so, but that does not mean everyone feels that way......
I think he is asking for mercy for his mother....I sure understand where he is coming from..Life for life sake is sometimes too much a burden for those that have to endure it...(I am speaking of his mother)
It’s also an intolerable burden for the son. Maybe worse.
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