More than a third of patients, according to the Times, cite fear of burdening their families as a reason for their request.
In other words, I now have a moral obligation to die.
Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
Posted on 06/02/2004 9:59:33 AM PDT by nickcarraway
LifeNews.com Note: Maggie Gallagher is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Oregon is the only state in the union that facilitates suicide. The New York Times' Science section touts the virtues of the assisted suicide law, which since 1997 has facilitated at least 171 suicides.
The number of people affected by the law is, of course, much larger, whether it is old people comforted by the idea that they can kill themselves, or families forced into intimate discussions of when might be a good time for Grandma to kill herself.
If your father is old and sick in Oregon, the subject of suicide becomes part of the family discussion. Your cousin will raise it as you try together to glimpse the future. Your mom may share her feelings about it with you as she works through the implications of her newfound legal right. If you refuse to treat suicide as a normal possibility, you may be stigmatized as lacking in compassion or respect for her rights. If suicide is a legal choice, then it is a moral option. Thinking through moral options together, that's what families do, right?
Worse, legal approval of suicide amounts to a declaration to the old, sick and vulnerable that others consider their lives worthless. Dr. Kenneth Stephens, chairman of the department of radiation oncology at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland (who heads Physicians for Compassionate Care), related how his own wife reacted when, as she struggled with cancer, her doctor offered her an overdose of drugs: "He wants me to kill myself," she told her husband.
"It just devastated her that her doctor, her trusted doctor, subtly suggested that," Stephens told The New York Times.
In one case on record, an HMO prescribed an elderly woman lethal drugs in spite of one psychiatrist's observation that it was her daughter, more than the mother, who wanted it. More than a third of patients, according to the Times, cite fear of burdening their families as a reason for their request.
How common are cases like this? To keep horror out of the headlines, information about assisted suicide in Oregon is tightly controlled, as Wesley Smith pointed out in The Weekly Standard.
The official death certificates are lies, required by law to list the underlying illness as the cause of death, not the actual suicide. Patients are supposed to be mentally competent and within six months of death, but at a recent meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, a psychiatrist disclosed that a patient was prescribed the poison pill despite being diagnosed as having "depressive disorder," "intermittent delirium" and even after "being declared mentally incompetent by a court," according to Smith.
This patient fortunately called Physicians for Compassionate Care instead of swallowing the poison. He died more than a year later, properly treated for depression, with good pain control, surrounded by people who reassured him his life was valuable. With the time he had left, he reconciled with his estranged daughter.
Which is the better, freer, more compassionate society? No law can give or take away the choice to commit suicide. Guns, poisons, noxious fumes, trains -- there is simply no way to stop suicide in people healthy enough to swallow. (Oregon's law requires the patient to self-administer his own poison.)
What Oregon's suicide laws actually do is convey social approval to individuals contemplating self-destruction, and to their friends and relatives. What advocates of "death with dignity" want is to overcome our cultivated horror at the idea of suicide by giving the decision to self-destruct a quasi-medical veneer.
Euthanasia Tells Elderly, Disabled: "Your Life is Worthless"
Add the unborn to that list...
And illegalized euthenasia tells the elderly and disabled that they aren't allowed to make their own decisions about their lives because of some ancient concept of "noble suffering."
More than a third of patients, according to the Times, cite fear of burdening their families as a reason for their request.
In other words, I now have a moral obligation to die.
Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
Pro-life bump!
You have a moral obligation not to put undue burdens on others.
http://www.internationaltaskforce.org/
A good prolife anti-euthansia organization. They have legal forms you can order regarding these issues.
And illegalized euthenasia tells the elderly and disabled that they aren't allowed to make their own decisions about their lives because of some ancient concept of "noble suffering."
We ARE capable of making our own decisions. What scares me is my doctor, or, God forbid, the government deciding when my life has no further value. I don't need a law that says I may take my own life, any more than Ernest Hemingway did. The taking of another's life must be illegal lest it become too casually indulged. Most ideas, even some good ideas, get twisted when there's an attempt to institutionalize them.
Well, no, suicide by sick old people is rightly suspected of being euthanasia. It builds on the myth of personal autonomy , pretending that people have a "choice" when powerful forces in society are pressing them to go in one direction. A thousand voices tell them: You are now worthless. Time for you to go.
My brother in law owns a nursing home and he tells me the younger generation constantly tell him to put their parents in hospice to end the suffering. He talks them out of it, but he is amazed by the way society was going. He said it was never like this in the past.
If there is no respect for the begnning of life why would society respect the end of life.
A close relative of mine was in hospice for a month. She had terminal cancer. She was in a coma and could not eat or drink on her own. Her wishes were not to artificially keep her alive, i.e, no feeding tube. It took her 8 days to die this way. If the nurse could have given her a lethal injection, and this was in her living will, I would have let that happen.
Nursing homes lie to families about Medicare and Medical (etc.) I know from personal experience. They make their own rules.
I am talking about rehab. The nursing home he runs has a lot of discharges because they rehab a lot of the residents. When they have no chance of living they are put in hospice, but he has people whose parents are in good shape and these guys want them to get shoddy service so the die quicker. Its really sick.
"It took her 8 days to die this way. If the nurse could have given her a lethal injection, and this was in her living will, I would have let that happen."
Strange that family pets are allowed to die with more dignity than people.
Several years ago, my grandmother was placed in hospice. That week, we gathered around her. The nurses were wonderful, constantly monitoring her condition and keeping us advised. One of the nurses commented that my grandmother was truly fortunate to have such a loving family. The other rooms were occupied by people dieing alone. Their relatives would call periodically to find out if their family member had passed and when they could pick up his/her belongings. How truly disheartening!
Says who? I do not remember our Creator saying this and He is the only one with any moral authority.
~
Indeed, the Bible says we ought to voluntarily pick up the burden of care for others, especially our parents.
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