My dad was left a large dose of morphine, which my step-sister kept in the fridge. He took a little at a time. However, the entire bottle would have killed him. The hospice nurse came everyday, so the large amount was unnecessary. We all knew why it was there. In fact, I talked about it so that we were not fooling ourselves.
If your religion precludes you from doing this, even faced with debilitating pain, then God be with you, but don't codify your believes and prevent the rest of us from using the option.
Kevorkian is doing a needed service and he has placed himself on the line for it.
The Michigan jury found Kevorkian guilty of second-degree homicide. It was proven that he had directly killed a person because Thomas Youk was not physically able to kill himself. The judge sentenced Kevorkian to serve a 10-25 year prison sentence and told him: “You were on bond to another judge when you committed this offense, you were not licensed to practice medicine when you committed this offense and you hadn’t been licensed for eight years. And you had the audacity to go on national television, show the world what you did and dare the legal system to stop you. Well, sir, consider yourself stopped.”
Kevorkian would have it where those who do not really want to die (as in those sad cases in the Netherlands) are pressured into bumping themselves off anyway.
Pain can get out of control but it can still be fought. An intentional fatal dose of morphine is never the solution.
My father struggled with pulmonary fibrosis for 17 years before he finally died. He was on hospice. He had enough medicine to knock down 10 horses, to include high quantities of morphine and oxycontin (when my mom disposed of the meds after he died, she commented that the street value of the drugs could have her living in luxury for the rest of her life...and provide me a very substantial inheritance). His quality of life, particularly the last five years, was crap. He went through h3ll and put my mom through h3ll.
My dad was not a religious man. In fact, for the last forty years of his life, he had a deep and burning hatred and resentment of all things religious. His greatest disappointment was when I became religious. We worked out an agreement, though, the last several years of his life. He would not rant against my religion if I agreed not to proselytize him. I held to that agreement until the day he died (although I did pray for him without his knowledge).
I cannot picture that his physician prescribed him his pain medication for any reason other than to provide palliative care. His physician, I am certain, recognized that had my dad wanted, he could have overdosed, but that would not have been the motivation for writing the prescriptions. (Physicians typically prescribe a 30-day supply of maintenance drugs, even if the patient could have gotten more frequent refills)
But I could never have imagined discussing the subject of suicide with my father. "Gee, Dad, if you took this bottle at once, you'd be out of pain forever." I can't even imagine bringing the subject up in the context of discouraging it, as I wouldn't want to "plant the idea."
My dad was a lot of things, not all of them good. But one thing he wasn't was a quitter or a wimp. The last three years of his life he had a DNR (do not resuscitate) order. And when it was finally time, he gave up the ghost (and they didn't resuscitate). But for all the years he went through what he went through, I don't think that suicide was even an option on the table for him. Not for religious reasons (as I said earlier, he despised all things religious). Not for some extraordinary strength of character (I rule that out for reasons that I will keep private). But he, for all his flaws, recognized that suicide was not the way to go.
You then stated,
If your religion precludes you from doing this, even faced with debilitating pain, then God be with you, but don't codify your believes and prevent the rest of us from using the option.
My dad had no religious beliefs. He had no joy in his life. He had no hope of heaven. He only knew the pain and the degeneration in his life. Suicide simply wasn't an option.
All people with a degenerative condition are not the same. Most do the right thing and fight until they're worn out and then expire. Religious belief or not. Not all people do what your dad did and took the easy way out. Suicide is the ultimate egocentric act of an egocentric person. You might be able to act high-and-mighty with some, but I went through as much, if not more, with my dad than you did with yours...so don't even try it with me.
And don't ascribe a desire to 'assist' patients into offing themselves to physicians who prescribe high doses of potentially lethal meds. Some may do that. Most don't.
If somebody wants to take his own life, then nobody can stop him. Therefore, he has the freedom to do so. But a society that sanctions that behavior has terminally (no pun intended) turned the corner to its own destruction. If you like that behavior, I suggest that you move to the UK or to the Netherlands (where people are free). God help the US if we ever do so.
Kevorkian was convicted of murdering someone who on tape asked not to be killed. He’s a murderer plain and simple.