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 dont 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 patients 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.
Does my life belong to me, or the State?
Does my life belong to me, or the State?
How long before “Right to Die” becomes “Duty to Die.”
It cheapens life every bit as much as abortion does.
self ping to reply later.....tough decision I have to face soon.
Is it my job to wipe your ass when you can’t?
Preachers should preach against assisted suicide more often. I am against assisted suicide. I do not consider pulling the plug on a person who is brain dead as indicated by an EEG as assisted suicide.
that's not the same as euthanasia.
for myself, if I'm terminal, I want drugs...if I'm a quad, no tube feedings, please just let me go....if I'm in horrible pain please give me something....
people are delusional if they don't think this doesn't happen already...
usually, its the FAMILY pushing to end the life of their loved ones...
I can't tell you how many times I've been asked "how come its taking so long"....no joke...
but its okay....its human nature...people want completion...
“Is it my job to wipe your ass when you cant?”
Well I figure this, caring for sick, old and disabled people should create jobs and boost the economy. Ask any nurse on FR it takes a special kind of person to do that job. Being a nurse is not just about taking BP or handing out aspirin. It’s about being there when people are really sick and in need.
False arguement.
The question is "Do I have the right to push the moral burden of ending my life off on another person?"
And the answer is NO!
If you want to kill yourself then do so.
Why are you bringing another person into your decision?
The answer is that they want approval and they want to push the moral burden onto someone else.
If you left a bottle of pain pills beside them they would not overdose.
They crave the drama and they long to have their death be painful for someone BESIDES themselves.
The longer they can string it out and the more high drama they can mix into it the more they like it.
Mostly these are people that are supremely unpleasant and demanding in life. Getting sick does not improve their nature.
Just because they “say” they are Evangelical doesn’t make it so. Many of these people may be caregivers for their parents who do not want to go through the heartwrenching experience or maybe don’t care (I hope that’s not the case). . but we are neither the Giver of life or the Taker of life.
I figured they were talking about cases like “Dr” Kervorkian. Most of his victims weren’t even terminal.
There were a couple I was sure were pressured into it by the people around them.
I have a progressive auto-immune disease that is slowly taking my strength away. I AM NOT going to make my wife destroy her physical and mental health as well as her finances trying to take care of me. I am going out on my own timeframe. I am an “Evangelical “ but I totally resent these ‘we know better than you ‘ types trying to govern how I exit this world. We ALL die, so let us do it on our terms, not the government.
, according to a new poll, Christianity Today reports."
Although there may be cause for concern, poll results seem a little insignificant after the months of election poll manipulation that we just went through.
Euthanasia is a dangerous slippery slope.
In the decade after Belgium legalized doctor-assisted death, the number of patients using it to end their lives rose nearly eight-fold, according to records of the national euthanasia control committee.
Most patients choosing this way to die between 2003 and 2013 were younger than 80 and had cancer. But the largest increases in euthanasia cases over that period was among people older than 80, those without cancer and those not expected to die in the near future, researchers report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Belgium legalized euthanasia in 2002, and the new regulations allow a doctor to end a patient’s life if the patient requests it, has full mental capacity and has constant, unbearable physical or mental suffering, the researchers write.
The first child has died under a new law in Belgium allowing doctors to euthanize children.
In 2014, Belgium voted to extend euthanasia to children with disabilities, in a move pro-life advocates worldwide had been fearing would come and expand an already much-abused euthanasia law even further. The law allows minors to seek euthanasia under certain conditions and the measure also would extend the right to request euthanasia to adults with dementia. No age limit would be set, but the children who are euthanized would have to possess the capacity of discernment.
Euthanasia has been legal in Belgium since 2002 but has, since its enactment, been prohibited for patients under 18. While euthanasia is legal in a handful of countries in Europe, Belgium is the first country in the world to lift all age restrictions on the practice.
Remember this case:
The news from Barbara Wagner’s doctor was bad, but the rejection letter from her insurance company was crushing.
The 64-year-old Oregon woman, whose lung cancer had been in remission, learned the disease had returned and would likely kill her. Her last hope was a $4,000-a-month drug that her doctor prescribed for her, but the insurance company refused to pay.
What the Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5517492
Sickening.
Law and Government are supposed to protect your "Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness," and Life comes first both logically and chronologically, since without Life there is no more liberty and no more "pursuit." Thus legal euthanasia perversely undermines the very reason for Law. Similarly, the Medical profession is supposed to protect the patient's health: and nobody is healthier dead.
So go right on ahead and kill yourself (I am speaking sarcastically: please don't to any such thing) --- but above all, don't corrupt me, or your family, or your heirs, or your doctor, or your lawyers, or your lawmakers and government, the major institutions of society, in doing so.
You believe in autonomy? Then be decent and do it autonomously. Ultimately, nobody can stop you making that choice.
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