[gdani]

Food and water are basic human rights, not medical interventions that can be withdrawn at whim.

How is setting forth one's specific wishes, in advance, in a legally-binding document, "at a whim"?

Withholding food and water from a patient able to eat from a spoon is homicide.

No - despite your hyperbole, it is not. Not when that person has instructed as much in their living will and/or with their power-of-attorney. People have a legal right, in advance, to refuse such measures.

Feeding someone is not a "life-saving measure." Its simple human decency.

My mother, who could no longer walk, talk, sit upright, feed herself & was constantly soiling herself would have a different definition of "decency".

[GeronL]

you cannot ask others to kill you. Especially doctors should never kill on purpose.

[EasySt]

"My mother, who could no longer walk, talk, sit upright, feed herself & was constantly soiling herself would have a different definition of "decency"."


While mine also could no longer walk, talk, sit upright, or feed herself, and was also constantly soiling herself, and further had specified "no heroic measures or hospitalization" back when she was able, certainly did not think us indecent as we helped her to live as fully as possible and be as engaged as possible in a loving environment right up to her natural end.