Posted on 09/29/2012 8:44:00 PM PDT by little jeremiah
LIBERTY, Mo. – Prosecutors are charging a Missouri woman with forging her father's signature on a document doctors relied on to take him off of life support.
Legal experts say there's little precedent in the case, which essentially accuses her of "death by forgery."
Retired accountant William Van Note and his companion were shot by a home intruder in October 2010. Sharon Dickson was killed and Van Note was critically wounded by a gunshot to the head.
He died four days later, after 44-year-old Susan Elizabeth Van Note told doctors her father would prefer to die rather than be kept alive by medical intervention.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
This is about a living man who was killed, not about removing life support from a dead body.
If your mother was dead when you had life support removed, you have nothing to feel so guilty about. If she was brain damaged and not brain dead (there is a difference), then you would have a good reason to make such a comparison, but no right to blame Little Jeremiah.
If someone pressured you into doing something you’re now having doubts about, you aren’t alone. That happens more often than most people realize. It can have devastating consequences.
I hope you can sort out your feelings over this without any more verbal assaults on innocent bystanders.
This is an argument I haven't seen prosecutors use, but they should. Actually, everyone involved in deliberately depriving the victim of life should be charged with murder.
Recall the case of Haleigh Poutre. Her adopted mother (biological aunt) and step father beat her into a coma. DSS wanted to finish the job and have her killed, but only the step-father would be charged with the murder (the adopted mother was dead by this time). At last report, Haleigh was getting rehabilitation. If DSS had killed her, the people involved should have been charged with murder, along with the step-father for his contribution to the murder.
The courts and the medical community need to recognize that removing necessary life support from a patient who benefits from it, resulting in the patient's death, is the actual cause of death. I know it seems obvious that whatever causes death is the cause of death, but the courts don't see it that way. Once a patient is deemed useless, they're fair game. Whatever caused their condition is considered the sole cause of death, even if they survive the initial injury.
If the courts recognize that removal of life support causes death, that will be a step in the right direction.
The comment that made you feel guilty/defensive for taking your mom off life support:
“How many others have thus murdered their relatives? Hopefully she will be judged guilty and this will set a precedent.”
The key words in the above comment is “THUS murdered...” That means murdered like this - with a forged document.
That statement was directed at this article and it’s circumstances and had nothing to do with your circumstances with your mom.
I hope you are not feeling defensive about what your decision with you mom. You are going to be hearing a lot of people arguing for life as obama’s death list for the handicapped and eldery activates. I hope you can separate your time and circumstances from all the uproar that is coming, Nifster.
They were going to marry, thus cutting the daughter from at least half of his estate. He was not in the “flush of youth” shall we say.
you don’t get it do you....a moral absolute is just that
I do not feel guilty. I did exactly what she asked me to do before she devolved into the state she did. I am not the one who posted a comment to give a heads up on moral absolutes
Apparently some folks don’t know what a moral absolute is
Actually I do not feel any guilt or shame. I am a proud daughter who was glad to fulfill her mother’s last requests. So go do your psychological analysis somewhere else
One does not put the title in their post of Moral Absolutes unless one feels that this has violated it. A moral absolute is just that. My comment was appropriate and had nothing to do with this case but the idiocy of just such a statement.
I HONORED my mother by doing what she wanted.....
What "state?" I thought you said she was braindead. True brain death is when there is absolutely no brain function, and the patient has died. Did you mean brain damaged?
LJ gets it. Murder is absolutely morally wrong. There are no exceptions to that. Not for Miss Van Note. Not for anyone.
I was going to say who was the killer and thinking it could be her.
Well, good for you. So you can stop whinning about your private actions with your mom on a public forum like an mental case then.
It is morally wrong to deprive anyone of life. It’s really simple.
I do not know the circumstances of your mother’s death; that is between you, her and God. But I do know that it is very odd of you to jump into this discussion which is a clear cut “right and wrong” and pound on me for...??? what I do not know.
Exactly. What an odious waste of skin. How could a daughter or son with a pinch of humanity want to kill their father for money? It sickens me.
How is this not a moral absolute. What is morally acceptable about forging your parent’s signature to get him/her killed?
It’s normal to remove life support from a dead body. There is no guilt associated with that. The problem comes when someone makes a quality of life judgement against another person, and that person loses their life as a result. That puts them in the position of having to either deny what they did or convince everyone else that what they did was right. There is one other choice, to admit they did something wrong. That can be too painful to consider. I can’t imagine the turmoil of having a hand in the death of another person.
The daughter had seen her dad spend a small fortune on his lifestyle with his girlfriend for over a decade. The impending marriage was going to allocate half of what was left to a woman she hated. In my surmise She snuck into the lake home and killed him , perhaps unplanned, but then emptied her girl-gun into the girl friend who wasn’t even a threat at that point. The GF came in upstairs while alarm was set and didn’t know that the BF was dead.
Having a hand in the death of another person has a debilitating effect on one’s sanity.
Health care workers often pressure people into these situations, without giving them all the facts. In a stressful situation, most people are easily influenced. Most people don’t give any thought to this ahead of time, so they aren’t prepared for the high pressure demands and the claim that keeping the patient alive is tantamount to torture while killing them is in their best interest. Of course they don’t use words like “ killing.” They pretty it up with flowery phrases, but it is still killing. And when the person has time to think about it later, it’s too late.
You can’t really blame someone for going bat crazy after an experience like that. They typically suffer a variation on Stockholm Syndrome. They form an emotional bond to the very people who pressured them into it. They will defend those people, while saying the most vile things about their victim. They’ll call their own parents turnips or brain dead, believing that somehow justifies having killed them.
When society passes judgement on someone else for clear cut murder, they internalize it as a judgement on their own guilt. They cannot separate their own behavior from that of the obvious murderer, because regardless of legalities, they see the two acts as morally equivalent. And who are we to say they’re wrong.
Everything you say makes sense. There is a difference between a “live” body and a “dead” body. Obviously machinery can keep certain processes going (for a short while) in a body which is dead (meaning the soul is gone). But if a body is “alive” but needs assistance to remain alive with medical help, it is wrong to remove that help. If a person insists that such help be removed and wants to die, that is another topic.
I have an old friend, I’ve told his story before; who was in a terrible car accident. His wife, from whom he was separated, immediately flew thousands of miles to be by his side. Part of his brain had been severely damaged in a bad car crash. He was on every kind of life support. They wanted her permission to turn it all off. She decided that he should be given a chance (and had to argue and stand her ground); they insisted if he survived (but that he wouldn’t!) he’d be in a coma forever, or if not, he’d be a “vegetable”.
Well, he is now walking, talking, helping around the house, taking care of the garden, and has changed so much that the wife he used to neglect terribly he is now devoted to. He personally told me that he is thankful for the accident because it changed him for the better in his relationship with God and his family. He lost his handsome good looks, much of his strength, and it is harder for him to think and express himself; but he is a wonderful human being who deserved a chance to live instead of being killed because “he would have no quality of life”.
Another old friend was on life support due to different medical problems but his wife insisted that he be properly cared for; he lived to watch his sons grow up, fathered a beautiful daughter, and is a good friend to many, and has some residual health problems.
Some people would have said that both of these men should have had the life support turned off. There was no “chance” for them.
There was a time when the public bought abortion as the removal of a piece of tissue; like a wart and not the killing of a baby. This was the only message allowed on the news and in all public forums; political correctness supressed public “expert” messages, otherwise. Pro lifers were shouted down as knuckle dragging women haters...
Then, after some years, pro-lifers had the technology and the Christian network to break through the American TASS and show the women the babies in their wombs they were killing and also showed them the inhumane method of murders. Still women continued killing.
When liberals start killing off the eldery and handicapped in the name of “mercy” killing and “health care cost savings”, they will do the same false science trick and immoral, selfish people will “buy” it until they can’t lie to themselves any more. Then they live with having committed murder via liberalism’s expert and smart self delusion. In the meantime, millions will be slaughtered. The death marchers never stop.
If liberals are going to use the total power of the state (socialized health care) to rationalize expanding their legal murder of people, make sure they do it against your demand that they do not do it; on their own souls and without your permission and cooperation.
It’s not bad enough that they are blood thirsty, liberals want to take everyone, and espeically Christians, down with them. Let the socialists do the death march of their killing alone. Like abortion, we won’t be able to stop those who “choose” to murder their own family members and unlike abortion, unless you are independently wealthy, you won’t have any real choice to seek alternative treatment for your loved ones once liberals decide they are in a class of people within their collective to be killed.
It is the boomer generation that brought abortion mainstream and it’s the boomers who will be killed by the same mentality in the end. Their own children, the ones who made it through the birth canal, will conspire with the same humanist social ideology, to rationalize their “right” to murder them. The webs we weave...
that is the state... she was being kept alive by breathing machines and all sorts of stuff that she didn’t want and specifically had requested not to have. when the machines were turned off she went home to be with god which is what she wanted.
apparently you have no brain function
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