Posted on 09/21/2009 2:50:37 PM PDT by JoeProBono
Thank you. No one should want their Mom to die. I keep thinking about how I would feel; terrified if I was mentally alert but trapped in my body. I’m not advocating euthanasia, or assisted suicide, I’m just saying that the issue is not as easy as it seems when we are being dogmatically conservative.
The trouble with that idea is that many people who still have the physical ability to kill themselves, still want to live a while longer. For many, it’s when they’ve really lost the ability to do *anything* for themselves, that they want to die. See the story of the Australian quadriplegic who had to go through a court fight to get the right to starve himslef to death. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2345238/posts That’s disgusting — free people should not just have a right to die if they want to, but a right to die quickly and painlessly, not by slow starvation. The thought of the government and courts bullying this poor quadriplegic man, not only forcing him to fight in court for the right to die at all, but abusing their power by limiting the options he could even argue for (”we might agree to allow you die, but only slowly and painfully — the quick and painless option is off the table, ‘cause we said so”).
Its really sad when someone outlives all their close relatives....Not all families are close thats sad also...
Even if there is a God or Gods, my guess would be the greatest gift he could give would be individual will. And that includes the right to end one’s life.
These delimas of life are not all cut and dry, are they? Such severe disability is difficult to live with.
Because I lived through the “progress” of abortion from “only first trimester” to partial birth abortion, I know that once the State has the power to kill “useless” or unwanted people, they will do it at will and made sure the target wants to die... When someone is vulnerable it is easy to manipulate them into wanting to die (or kill the child growing in their womb.)
Oregon has euthanasia the State is now using for health care savings. The news reported recently the State sent a woman a letter denying cancer treatment but offered to pay for her killing. She did not want to die. She wanted to try the cancer drugs her doctor felt had a chance to save her life. It was a money decision and they have the power to kill her.
You know all this. It seems you have decided. It’s much messier for me.
My 70 year old father waits on her hand and foot. Even when he is sick himself he will not bring anyone else in the house to carry her around. They have been married 50 years. I can’t imagine what it is like for him. So I have more sympathy for this 90 year old man than most. I won’t go so far to say that I agree with him, just that I understand.
There has never been an unlimited supply of money/resources for medical treatment (or anything else). Back before socialism started taking over our country, many people people died of ailments for which treatment was available, but which they couldn’t afford. In the 1800s, many people died for lack of sufficient food or shelter.
TIn these modern times, there is virtually no limit to how much money medical science can spend to extend a person’s life. It’s very very dangerous to suggest that everything that can possible be done to extend a person’s life, must be done, because there is no way that most people can pay for this unlimited care, and the issue of payment then gets turned over to the socialist government, which then confiscates the money from everyone. Why should every taxpayer in Oregon have to shell out to give this woman (and thousands of other patients) every possible treatment to stretch out their lives s bit longer, just because the patient “wants” it? What about the things those taxpayers want to do with their own money? Like have one parent stay home and homeschool their children, or just stay home with a preschooler until s/he starts school, or stay home and care for a live-in elderly parent who’s just frail or confused, instead of sticking the parent in an institutional residence. How have we allowed the medical industry to convince the nation that medical treatment is something that everybody has a right to an unlimited amount of, as long as it might extend their lives even a tiny bit?
We don’t have the right to live at other people’s expense. If “conservatives” don’t stop touting the idea that we do, you can be sure we will have 100% nationalized health care quite soon. Private insurance policies can’t cover unlimited treatments without charging premiums so high that few people will voluntarily pay them (but of course, the left claims to have a “solution” to that problem: they’ll have the government *force* us to buy it). The result will be an even more massive and expensive medical industry than we currently have, with even more billions of dollars being spent on people who never bothered to take care of their own health, and on people who will get very very little extension or improvement of life for a huge chunk or resources spent on them, and an overall decline in freedom.
People keep trying to paint the picture of somebody dying a few months earlier because they were “denied” some massively expensively treatment, as the most horrible thing one can contemplate. It’s not. The most horrible thing I can contemplate is the complete destruction of individual freedom in this once-great nation, and that’s the inevitable result of a policy in which everybody has a “right” to all the medical treatment they can possibly benefit from, and the “right” to stick the nation’s taxpayers with the bill for it (and it hardly matters whether the bill is sent directly by the government, or through “private” insurers that are heavily regulated by the government and whose services we are all forced to purchase). There are many, many more important elements of freedom, and the freedom not to be forced by the government to stay alive when you’re miserable and want to die is one of them.
Bump!
I am partially with you on this one. Others need not judge at all IMHO. That's God's job. Your mother is a peace now.
I appreciate you laying out your position on government killing to save health care dollars. You and me...we are on different planets and never the two shall meet. Ever.
The government shouldn’t be involved in the first place. That’s the root of the problem. If the government isn’t involved in the process, then there’s no possibility of the government “killing” people to save money. And not paying for a treatment doesn’t constitute “killing”, regardless of whether it’s the government not paying, or a private insurer not paying for something the policy doesn’t cover, or a private citizen declining a neigbor’s request to pay for a treatment. The patient you mentioned is dying of cancer, not being murdered.
If you think the government is responsible for keeping individual citizens alive, then you’re a socialist. I’m proud NOT to be a socialist.
Whatever.
“Feelings” would not be much of a basis for life— they often hide reality. And the conclusion is not mine, but contained in God’s own Words.
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