Allow voluntary euthanasia for those who have are immobile or have to depend at all times on others to help them.
This means that their life has reached a stage where the quality of life is no more and they needed help 24/7 just to exist.
They need not be in great pain or be at the end stage of an incurable disease.
I believe many folks feel like vulnerable people may be rushed into or cajoled into agreeing to end their own lives.
I feel that each individual should be able to determine when they want to end their life, whether it's to to old age infirmities or a horrible debilitating illness at a young age. But the politics and policies of our time are driven by the fundamentalist beliefs that life begins at conception and only God should end a life, no matter how horrible and painful that life might be.
I wonder how many of the righteous who preach against hospice and assited suicide have ever had the family pet put to sleep humanely by a vet but 98 year old granny gets a feeding tube and no morphine.
Assisted suicide is allowed in places such as Oregon. Maybe other states will allow it in the future. I personally find the idea distasteful for one reason -- it involves someone that will assist. I do wish that people had the means to end their own lives if they choose without involving another person. I know I couldn't assist anyone in killing themselves, so I wouldn't want to subject anyone else to that trauma.
I guess that is what Dr. Deaths are for. Kind of gives me the shivers thinking of doing that for a living, though.
Compassion and Choices.. (I think)
you'd have to google them.
This topic seems to constantly come up on this message board. Haven't we talked it to death already. No pun intended.
Pills? But what is a lethal dose/combination? You'd think that info would be easy to find on the internet but I have searched and it it surprisingly difficult. Wouldn't want to be like those poor souls who botch the job and end up in worse shape than before and unable to try again.
Hanging? nah Drowning? god no Death by vehicular accident? Same problem as trying drugs, you may survive, and you may endanger others. Well, there is always gassing yourself with the car exhaust, providing you are still physically able to get yourself to the car and find a way to hook it all up.
Or we could just do what Oregon has done, offer a compassionate means to die painlessly for those who ask for it. I vote for that one.
I strongly believe in the hospice system. We fully and legally accept that a judgement has been made that death is imminent. We abide by the patients living will. I do hospice volunteer work. But it is very difficult to watch the dying process even with compassionate care and comfort. Why should the dying and their families be drug through this process of death watch.
And keep in mind, any life ending directives would have been authoized by the patient, not the government, death panels, or greedy relatives. You have strong religious convictions about life and death? Fine. Don't fill out a living will. Have your life drug out to the very end until "God" takes you. But keep your beliefs to yourself and don't attempt to dictate to the rest of us how we should live or die.
As - I've forgotten her name and I don't want to confuse her with someone else, but you know the one, the lady on the thread about hospice shuffling her mother (and everybody else's mother to hear her tell it) off this mortal coil uninvited - anyway, her. As she points out with rather more justification, ends are currently hastened; and let's not be naïve about it, we know they are. That's a side effect of effective palliative care; it is justifiable in terms of patient interest; and as things stand any question of intent is scrutinised and end of life care teams are held to account.
Introduce meaningful legislation that allows assisted suicide to take place in anything but the most rarefied circumstances, and what will happen is that that critical scrutiny will be bypassed and instead there will be a rubber stamp process. Inconvenient old ladies will get hurried along and no one will be answerable. Give it time, and it will become normal. In a century, our descendants will look back and shake their heads at our insistence on forcing tired old people to finish the course.
The point about the patient authorising the directives would be reassuring, if only the systems that are supposed to ensure that people doing this are acting freely and with informed consent were anything like as effective as they ought to be. Same currently applies to wills and POAs. Are these documents always signed by a person making a free and considered choice? In a pig's eye they are. But the law assumes so.
Relatives don't have to be monstrously greedy to want to be rid of their dying loved ones. They could just be bored, or squeamish, or have a pressing appointment elsewhere. Seriously they might: you know how it is, the child lives on the other side of the world and really thought it would be all over by now and has to start weighing up whether they'll need to change their return flight and how much is that going to cost... They could be like my sister, and be broken-hearted at the thought that their intelligent and fastidious mother would - in mother's own words - "never want to get like that." We are not good at waiting. And especially not when we're uncomfortable.
The difficulty lies in getting to the real-time wishes of the dying person. What they felt about wanting a clean and dignified end some time before they faced it may not be what they feel about it now, when it's happening. I don't think it can be done, or at least not well enough for the certainty you need to have before you make the decision to kill another person.
It's one thing for people to step outside guidelines and then have to make a very good case for why they did it. It's another to relax the guidelines so that they don't have to prove a thing. That's what I'm afraid of.
You listed many things that can go wrong, be misused, fraudulent acts, speeding Granny's death cause she's a burden etc. You apparently feel that wills and poas are not to be trusted. Is there fraud? Contention and lawsuits? Hell yes, but it's the legal foundation we have worked with for hundreds of years.
You make wills and end of life directives when you are of sound mind with the intent of your wishes being carried out when you are no longer of sound mind. I would venture a guess that your paperwork is in order. I respect your opinions and your many comments on this forum.
Being the sensible person you are, you have raised questions about the pitfalls of ending life. But I'll venture another guess: I'd bet if you were at my death bed, knowing my stated wishes and you were my legal designee, I think you would instruct hospice to pull the feeding tube and give me the largest dose of morphine allowed by law. And if you come across some nutty relative of mine yelling that I could have a few more days of gods intended life, please call security.
So if you can't do the job yourself and do it right, don't try. By the way, this man was in his twenties. When it comes to deciding quality of life, then there is the whole "oh, I am so depressed, life isn't worth living anymore" type of thinking. Hell I am super depressed these days missing my Mom. I think I have the right to off myself.
I don't know. Like I said yesterday, this topic is so tedious.
There are also reports of elderly citizens in some EU countries that are euthanized, and it is accepted as normal.
I don't know if I could accept this, because it is a half a millimeter away from euthanizing those who are not PC, or speak out against the government can (now) be prosecuted as domestic terrorists. And with all the digital storage of every one of our phone calls, texts, emails, and donations, all of these are being stored in huge data banks, in Utah and elsewhere. The government is doing this. I'm not making this up. Some day they might just decide all Catholics or all Mormons or all Irish or all Italians are threats, and must be euthanized to protect the "rights" of the PC crowd.