Posted on 12/16/2016 3:58:30 PM PST by Morgana
Two-thirds of Americans surveyed, including four out of 10 evangelicals, believe physician-assisted suicide is morally acceptable, according to a new poll, Christianity Today reports.
“If they are facing a slow, painful death, Americans want options. Many believe that asking for help in dying is a moral option. They don’t believe that suffering until they die of natural causes is the only way out,” said Scott McConnell, Executive Director of LifeWay Research, which conducted the poll.
Among faith groups, whether Catholics and evangelical Protestants who are traditionally pro-life or no specific denomination identified, more than 50 percent in all demographics support physician-assisted suicide, the LifeWay poll found.
Furthermore, 69 percent of Americans would like to see restrictions on doctors participating in assisted suicide removed, according to the poll.
The movie “On Our Own Terms” outlines some reasons patients consider physician-assisted suicide. Many fears revolve around hopelessness, depression, human suffering, concerns about being a financial or emotional drain to loved ones and inaccessibility to healthcare in rural America.
Euphemistically called aid-in-dying by proponents, doctor-prescribed suicide involves a doctor prescribing a lethal dose of drugs to a patient with the intent to kill themselves. In the U.S., laws currently require that the person be an adult and have a diagnosis of six months or fewer to live.
However, the Disabilities Rights Education and Defense Fund reports doctors sometimes over-diagnose “six months to live.” A patient may consider suicide to avoid burdening their family emotionally or financially in what seems to be inevitable death – and the doctor may be wrong.
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Physician assisted suicide, now legal in five states and under consideration in the District of Columbia, runs contrary to traditional perceptions of health care. Under normal circumstances, when someone is sick, they often visit the doctor, perhaps pick up a prescription, and generally heal over the course of time. Medical treatment is available for many conditions, even those that were once death sentences. In fact, many chronic diseases are a result of advancements in medicine, making many once-fatal diseases livable. In each of these cases, traditional health care perceptions are mirrored in the compassionate treatment of disease by physicians with the ultimate objective of continuing life.
Yet this paradigm of medical care is eroding, not only in the eyes of mainstream and evangelical America, but by the medical institution and health care-related groups. One Oregon couple facing cancer was informed by their insurance company that chemotherapy would not be covered, but physician assisted suicide would be, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund reports.
The lethal assisted suicide drugs are being administered to patients with depression and mental illnesses – people who may not be able to give true informed consent because of the complexities of their illness, according to the group. In many cases, these patients may not fully understand the decision they are making, or they may be coersced into making it.
Execution of the law in Oregon, which was the first state to legalize doctor-prescribed suicide, has been murky as well. Though medical professionals are required to maintain detailed medical records, the same standards do not extend to cases of doctor-prescribed suicide. According to the Oregon Health Authority on doctor-prescribed suicide: “The identity of participating physicians is coded, but the identity of individual patients is not recorded in any manner. Approximately one year from the publication of the Annual Report, all source documentation is destroyed.”
According to the Psychiatric Times, reports out of the Netherlands, which also allows assisted suicide, indicate that doctors freely suggest euthanasia to patients as an option. In addition, there are unreported cases of assisted suicide, and documented records of physicians helping patients end their lives without the patients’ actual consent, according to the report. More horrifyingly, up to 25 percent of physicians acknowledge involvement in the procedure without the patient’s “explicit” consent, and up to 33 percent could “conceive” of doing so, the report continued.
Many of these patients would consider it assault and battery to undergo a procedure against their wills, but the line between medical assistance and murder is plain. The purpose of the medical institution under the Hippocratic Oath is ultimately to promote life and cure disease, not hasten or worse yet, be an accomplice to death.
We ALL die, so let us do it on our terms, not the government.
I am sorry to hear of your debilitating condition. It is always comforting for family and friends to know that a person who has a long-term illness believes in the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Christians never say goodbye. Like you said, We ALL do die and really no one is guaranteed a tomorrow or next breath here on earth. You have a testimony to share. Take care. Thanks for your story.
The interviewers asked the wrong questions, asked people in "terminal patient" care wards, got a population (young) to interview...and otherwise produced a TREMENDOUSLY skewed, irrelevant and WRONG "consensus" of ten young people.
That’s the same 40% that voted for Obama, Hillary, etc.
“There were a couple I was sure were pressured into it by the people around them. “
Who would do such an evil thing?
“What the Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50.”
$50.00? That is what it costs me at my vets office to put down a sick cat. I know I had to once, poor thing had Feline AIDS.
My life belongs to me. Not to the state, the church or the courts.
Me. How I end it is none of their business.
You’re a three pack a day smoker, if I recall correctly.
Instead of having to get a divorce, they got fame, the bank account and the life insurance money.
Yes, life insurance pays out in case of suicide as long as you have had the policy between two and five years.
We also have the same divorce rate as non-Christians. We are not "set apart" but do just as the heathens do in our midst.
Just like the OT Hebrews.
Neither.
Your life belongs to God.
Which is the explicit reason why in America we hold that your rights, and the rights of all men, are unalienable.
adjective un·alien·able \ˌən-ˈāl-yə-nə-bəl, -ˈā-lē-ə-\
: impossible to take away or give up
Maybe so....but I've seen hundreds of people....use unnatural ways to keep.."living".
Sometimes it's families..dictating what we do.
Sometimes it's the patient themselves...
And I also don't believe people need to suffer...We can make them comfortable..........
Consistent with that, and which the Catholic Lifeway site should have headlined, the actual study that is referred to found that 70 percent of Catholics (and 53% of all Protestants, 84 percent of Nones and 70 percent those of other religions) agreed with the statement,. “When a person is facing a painful terminal disease, it is morally acceptable to ask for a physician’s aid in taking his or her own life.”
Meanwhile, 38 percent of those with evangelical beliefs say physician-assisted suicide is morally acceptable.
The stats are similar on those who say physicians should be allowed to assist terminally ill patients in ending their lives
I saw a documentary about a European man who chose euthanasia. It showed his death. Utterly Satanic.
God
It's that darned SAMSON story that is so bothersome for many.
I'd bet that if 'life extending' medical 'miracles' had NOT been used on these 'patients'; there'd be NO problem to be solved; Right??
One can claim what the 'purpose' is all day; but the WORDING says...
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:...
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, and used in many medical schools today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath
We are ALL terminal!
These folks are EVERYWHERE!
"Enlightened" despots distinguished themselves from ordinary despots by claiming to rule for their subjects' well-being.
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