How do we feel about legal assisted suicide

AZ Jim

AZ Jim

R.I.P. With Us In Spirit Only
Location
SURPRISE, ARIZONA
I happen to think it's a persons right to, when confronted with a hopelessly terminal illness take their own life. My decision is not complicated by religious dogma.


News from The Associated Press

hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_RIGHT_TO_DIE_CALIFORNIA
By JUDY LIN
Mar 25, 4:19 PM EDT


Posthumous Brittany Maynard video supports aid-in-dying bill
By JUDY LIN
Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- In a video recorded 19 days before Brittany Maynard took life-ending drugs, she tells California lawmakers that no one should have to leave home to legally kill themselves under the care of a doctor.
"Unfortunately, California law prevented me from getting the end-of-life option I deserved," she said in the recording released Wednesday, hours ahead of the first state Senate committee hearing on the issue.
The 29-year-old San Francisco Bay Area woman had terminal brain cancer and moved with her family to Oregon before killing herself last year.
Her death drew widespread attention and recharged legislative efforts in California and elsewhere to make it legal for terminally ill patients to kill themselves with drugs.
"No one should have to leave their home and community for peace of mind, to escape suffering, and to plan for a gentle death," Maynard said In the video.
The bill being considered in California is expected to face a strong challenge led by medical and religious groups. Opponents see huge consequences for allowing doctors to prescribe fatal drugs.
Among the opponents are other terminally ill patients such as Kara Tippetts, a 38-year-old Colorado mother of four, who wrote an open letter to Maynard in October urging her not to end her life.
Tippetts wrote that suffering can be "the place where true beauty can be known." She died this month of breast cancer.
Advocates for aid-in-dying laws say legislators in at least 17 states have introduced similar measures this year. However, proposals in at least four states have already stalled for the year and many have not yet received a hearing.
Past proposals have foundered in statehouses amid emotionally charged debates and strong opposition.
Some medical groups say prescribing life-ending medication violates a doctor's oath to do no harm, while some advocates for people with disabilities fear some sick patients would feel pressured to end their lives to avoid being a financial burden.
In the video recorded by the right-to-die advocacy group Compassion & Choices before legislation was introduced in California, Maynard said she explored palliative care as an alternative to life-ending drugs but found that option terrifying.
"I may be minimally conscious, still suffering and unable to move or speak," she said.
Palliative care refers to specialized medical treatment to manage stress and pain from serious illnesses.
Maynard's husband, Dan Diaz, who introduced the video at the hearing, said he respects those who disagree with him and his wife, but aid-in-dying should be an option for all Californians.
"Even the staunchest of opponents might say, `Well, I may not use it, but I would certainly want the option,'" Diaz said as he choked back tears.
The practice is legal in five states, including Oregon, where Maynard moved before she took her life Nov. 1. The other states are Montana, New Mexico, Vermont and Washington.
California advocates have said they would consider taking the issue to voters if it fails in the Legislature.
Before her death, Maynard made her case public with online videos that were viewed tens of millions of times.
Maynard's mother, Deborah Ziegler, also appeared in Sacramento in support of SB128.
The proposal by Sens. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, and Lois Wolk, D-Davis, would allow terminally ill patients to kill themselves in California with drugs and dosages recommended by a doctor.


 

I agree that it should be legal if a person has no quality of life, they should be allowed to choose their time of death.
 
Ameriscot said:
I agree that it should be legal if a person has no quality of life, they should be allowed to choose their time of death.
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To not allow it, is cruel due to the less rapid and effective methods many choose in desperation. And what of those poor souls who fail in the effort and suffer more than before.
 

Yes it is cruel not to allow it. As far as I know if I needed to I would have to go to Switzerland. People have to take their loved ones there and it's a struggle for them.
 
I have actively supported death with dignity advocacy groups for more than 25 years. I have a copy of Derek Humphry's book Final Exit (with recent updates) on my bookshelf. Ironically my wife who also supported the idea of assisted suicide can no longer be a candidate because she is no longer able to make anything approaching a rational judgement about herself. Assisted suicide is very problematical for many older seniors because even minor senility precludes the strict criterion for informed judgement that Oregon and other states that permit assisted suicide rightly demand.
 
I am completely Pro Assisted dying, I just feel it's the most appalling disregard of choice for a human being to be disallowed to end their own suffering with the help of someone else if they are living in insufferable pain and in the darkest months or years of their lives

However assisted dying and assisted suicide are 2 different things in law...

The Uk has no assisted suicide nor assisted dying law..which is a disgrace in my own personal opinion

There are about 4 or 5 states in the USA who now have an assisted dying law, and the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland has an assisted suicide law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dignitas_(assisted_dying_organisation)

http://time.com/3551560/brittany-maynard-right-to-die-laws/
 
I agree that assisted suicide should be an option for everyone. The current movie "Still Alice" touches on the subject of suicide. IMO, the saddest aspect of the question is what about those people whose enjoyment of life has slipped away (such as the Alice character in the movie) but they no longer have the capacity to make such a decision? I'm not necessarily talking about people on life support.
 
pchrise said:
How does this fit in with pain management, does that change things? and does all types of terminal illness count?
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Sounds like you feel one should employ "pain management" (heavy drugs to keep you out of it), so this drugged up and very sick person should linger until he/she is "called". I do not.
 
Glinda said:
I agree that assisted suicide should be an option for everyone. The current movie "Still Alice" touches on the subject of suicide. IMO, the saddest aspect of the question is what about those people whose enjoyment of life has slipped away (such as the Alice character in the movie) but they no longer have the capacity to make such a decision? I'm not necessarily talking about people on life support.
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What sometimes happens in the case of extreme suffering is an understanding doctor or other health professional will act humanly but entirely illegally to hasten death. In other cases a spouse tormented by seeing his/her partner suffer causes the death in some inelegant and undignified way.
 
AZ Jim said:
Sounds like you feel one should employ "pain management" (heavy drugs to keep you out of it), so this drugged up and very sick person should linger until he/she is "called". I do not.
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Not at all, just saying the system is againts choice on a basic level as it stands now.
 
I would want legal assisted suicide if I was in a painful terminal situation. My Aunt asked for her feeding tube to be removed so she would die. She was 87 years old, bedridden and in pain and in a Nursing Home. It almost killed her Daughter and Son to watch her die. She would have been better off to have a lethal injection.
 
I have no problem with death with dignity. I prefer not to call it suicide because of the stigma attached to suicide.
I think everyone has a right and responsibility to control their own life, and if there comes a point that quality of life is so poor, and death is going to be a long, drawn out affair, they have a right to choose to end their life.
I think there should be some checks and balances-someone with a terminal illness should be allowed assistance to die with dignity rather than suffer a protracted, painful, expensive illness. I don't believe that someone who isn't ill or isn't suffering should be allowed assistance to end their life.
My wife and I have often talked about the subject-if I'm at a point where I'm a burden I will control my destiny. I won't allow myself to languish in a hospital or tucked away in a nursing home. If there is a medical way to do it I'll take it. If not, it's easy enough to make it look accidental.
 
How do I feel, I feel sad someone is in so much pain they want to die. I would want to I'm sure in that much pain. What do I think? I think that if women can decide what goes on in their own body, and abort a child (fetus, whatever you choose to call "it") then folks should be able to commit suicide without getting put in jail.
 
What do I feel?

My feelings are that I hope that no-one in my family ever feels the need to take their own life, just as I hope that no young woman in my family ever has to consider aborting the baby in her womb. That they might have to is to me an appalling thought.

Having said that, I have sat beside a number of my old relatives during their dying days. None of them asked for release, nor to hurry the process. Each clung to life with a tenacious spirit. I wondered why they didn't just let go but I concluded that they were just not ready yet. I'm a little afraid that assisted suicide asked for by a patient might gradually morph into a decision by families or medical staff to euthanize an elderly patient 'for their own good' whether they are ready or not..

For myself, I prefer to die naturally, in my own time, and without a suicide pill, unless I face something akin to being burnt at the stake. In that case I would welcome an early release. Then I would welcome a 'kindly bullet', but only after the wood was well alight.

By dying naturally I mean without pointless medical intervention. At my age, that means without being hooked up to life support or subjected to useless chemotherapy etc. It does not mean that I would reject pain relief and palliative treatments.

Personally I would never ask anyone to kill me because while I would then be out of my misery, the deliverer of the coup de grace might be psychologically scarred for life. I'm not afraid of death but more importantly I'm not afraid of the process that is dying. I hope to face both with courage and fortitude when my time comes.

I fully realise that others feel differently.

I also realise that my above metaphors are a bit confused but I am talking hypothetically because I'm not on that particular path just yet. When I'm actually there I'm know my feelings a lot more clearly.
 
Having just watched a relative die from cancer and who, of course, had to ride it out till the bitter end, and it WAS an awful end, I am even more in favor of assisted dying (in her case, the "wood was already alight" for quite a while and there was zero hope). She not only lost her life to the cancer, she lost her dignity, her privacy, her great grace and her pride. Had she been able to choose to leave before the last ravages, I'm sure she would have done so.

And as to "suicide" -- I do not believe you could have called suicide in a case like hers -- it was the cancer that killed her, whether she bore it till the end or whether she had had a merciful end to her suffering.

Some may believe there is some sort of beauty or grace or some kind of redemption in great suffering -- I wonder how many of those who believe that have truly watched it happen. In Karin's case, there was no beauty, no grace, nothing but seemingly endless pain and humiliation for her as she screamed and choked and gasped her way to the end. And yes she had good hospice care and pain meds, but they didn't take it all away. (I am not faulting the hospice care -- they did all they were allowed to do.)

We end our pets' suffering humanely -- why can't we apply that same humanity to ourselves?
 
Canada's Supreme Court recently voted to allow assisted suicide under rigid competency guidlnes. I believe the law takes effect In about a year. I am very pleased to know that I will be able to die with dignity when my time comes. It is ridiculous that our animals often enjoy a far more humane and peaceful passing than we humans are permitted to experience. There is nothing ennobling about suffering.
 
Dame Warrigal said:
What do I feel?

My feelings are that I hope that no-one in my family ever feels the need to take their own life, just as I hope that no young woman in my family ever has to consider aborting the baby in her womb. That they might have to is to me an appalling thought.

Having said that, I have sat beside a number of my old relatives during their dying days. None of them asked for release, nor to hurry the process. Each clung to life with a tenacious spirit. I wondered why they didn't just let go but I concluded that they were just not ready yet. I'm a little afraid that assisted suicide asked for by a patient might gradually morph into a decision by families or medical staff to euthanize an elderly patient 'for their own good' whether they are ready or not..

For myself, I prefer to die naturally, in my own time, and without a suicide pill, unless I face something akin to being burnt at the stake. In that case I would welcome an early release. Then I would welcome a 'kindly bullet', but only after the wood was well alight.

By dying naturally I mean without pointless medical intervention. At my age, that means without being hooked up to life support or subjected to useless chemotherapy etc. It does not mean that I would reject pain relief and palliative treatments.

Personally I would never ask anyone to kill me because while I would then be out of my misery, the deliverer of the coup de grace might be psychologically scarred for life. I'm not afraid of death but more importantly I'm not afraid of the process that is dying. I hope to face both with courage and fortitude when my time comes.

I fully realise that others feel differently.

I also realise that my above metaphors are a bit confused but I am talking hypothetically because I'm not on that particular path just yet. When I'm actually there I'm know my feelings a lot more clearly.
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I have no doubt Dame, that if this is ok, then onto the next thing to be ok or politically correct, or it's a New Age, so now this is all ok. It's pretty much that way now, if it feels good do it, if you think it's right it is. I don't believe in a lot of this NEW stuff that isn't new at all. It's been here for at least a couple thousand years.

I agree with all of it though(your post, and understand exactly what you are saying), if someone is in pain, give them meds (morphine etc.). The actual "law" being changed. It used to be abortion to save a woman from dying (save the mother first, although I know there are mothers that would rather die and have their child live). Now abortions are a fix for promiscuity, and oopsee, I forgot my rubber. No worries. When does life begin? That's up to each person's interpretation of the information available. You can attack me for being abortion-phobic, but I had 2 in my 20s, it was the thing to do, I was ignorant as hell, I still get tears when I talk about it. If only I'd known then. I would love to help other girls/women, if they want it. Mine, which seems to be the usual, is not the popular view. Ask me if I care.
 
I can understand yours and Butterflies views, I just don't think I'll be thinking much about dignity when it's time for me to go. I don't even worry about my dignity while being spread-eagle with some doc probing every orifice of my body with his rubber glove.

By the way, I'm firing my doctor, which doesn't mean if I "need" one for what they are good at, like setting broken bones, I won't go to emergency. Again, another unpopular idea.
 

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