Posted on 01/13/2014 2:17:35 PM PST by xzins
State law provides a fundamental right to a terminally ill, competent patient to choose a physician’s aid in getting prescription medications that will allow a peaceful death, a state judge ruled Monday in a seminal case.
Second Judicial District Judge Nan Nash said Drs. Katherine Morris and Aroop Mangalik, both oncologists at the University of New Mexico Hospital, could not be prosecuted under the state’s Assisted Suicide Statute, which is defined as the act of “deliberately aiding another in the taking of his own life.”
The practice recognizes that the patient is dying from his or her underlying disease and allows the patient to have medication, usually sedatives, that may be taken at a time of the patient’s choosing to achieve a peaceful death. Patients who most often choose the option are those dying of cancer.
Nash found that the right exists under the New Mexico Constitution, which prohibits the state from depriving a person of life, liberty or property without due process.
“This court cannot envision a right more fundamental, more private or more integral to the liberty, safety and happiness of a New Mexican than the right of a competent, terminally ill patient to choose aid in dying,” Nash wrote in the opinion. “If decisions made the shadow of one’s imminent death regarding how they and their loved ones will face that death are not fundamental and at the core of these constitutional guarantees, then what decisions are?”
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
“public policy.”
Liberal term there. Just what does the public have to do with a dying patient? Since when was it your business?
I’m a retired Army chaplain, and a pastor with decades of experience. I’ve seen all you’ve said I haven’t. And more.
Suicide is against the law! And they will prosecute....somebody!
We don’t give up, VSA. We don’t quit. We bequeath a legacy of fighters....to the last breath, the last round.
Bless you, FRiend.
I respect that. But still, even after her treatment was discontinued, she still had four weeks of 24-hour hospice care, including nurses to give her painkillers and support staff to clean her and change her sheets every day, and bring her food until she finally stopped eating. Of course she had family around the clock, but if she had not had the insurance to cover hospice care, then what?
I was originally determined to bring her back to my place to take care of her until her passing after she was discharged from the hospital, but I soon came to see, especially at her doctors' urging, how utterly beyond my capabilities her care requirements would have been in my apartment. Not to mention that I was not in a position to forgo my work responsibilities working indefinitely.
I'm not saying people should give up life frivolously. But if there comes a time where you are without resources and a burden to all around you (assuming you have people around you, that is, because not everyone has someone who loves them as much as I loved my girlfriend), I don't see how it can be wrong to end it yourself. Maybe God would judge someone who made that decision, but I sure wouldn't.
As if public policy doesn’t exist, both formal and informal.
I'm old enough that my grandfather's final weeks were at home. That's the way we did it, then.
Once I reach “that” point, hook me up to a morphine drip and let me control the flow..........
Define "individual rights"
Pain relief, yes. Active taking of life, no.
We set the standard for the value of life. Therefore, we support no taking. Others, then, can’t use our lax attitudes to allow evil to hasten the taking of life.
Endowed by our Creator
If its MY choice and all I'm asking for is a peaceful and painless way to end my life, how is it homicide?
killing human being = homicide
You’re really wanting to ask “how is it unjustified homicide or murder or something like that?”
This is just crazy.
A couple or so weeks ago I wrote a song about “If your mother and father forsake you/The Lord will take you up” and I felt moved to put in the second verse, “Though loudly rings death’s hideous bell” ... and I wondered how would that apply, other than metaphorically? (I go with metaphors a lot, so I went ahead and wrote it that way.) What would “death’s hideous bell” be?
Now I know. The temptation to do yourself in.
Folks, the answer is by every means to get people aware not merely (or even chiefly) of a God that “commands you to behave” — but a God who “cares enough to want to keep and preserve you, beginning right where you are.”
The self-made “God” that you can try to use as a guilt and shame trip on others you don’t like and a pride trip on your own wisdom, is long gone; with the rot of society, went that god’s chorus. You could “try” the hellfire method, but unless you are truly sincere as a Christian, you are likely to look like a bible thumping, self proud tyrant. But if you are sincere, other methods will work even better, because you are going to have supernatural backing. Psych-tricks are not needed.
My wife died at 29. Liver cancer. No drink, no drugs. Just dealt a bad set of genes. I share your experience and your pain.
Until people actually go through it, they will never understand it. That’s all I can really say. And you know exactly what I mean.
Sorry for your loss Maceman
God is pro life. I doubt that He agrees at all.
Just “another way” to thin out the herd.
“One of these days you’ll have an experience that allows you to overcome those childish altruistic beliefs. You’ve never seen a dying cancer patient in agony much less yourself in that situation.”
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