How do you feel about assisted suicide?

How do you feel about assisted suicide?


Ex-governor backs assisted suicide

My grandfather died of Parkinson's. Personally, I think assisted suicide should be allowed if you have a terminal illness and are suffering. If we can put our dog asleep or choose not to allow yourself to be supported by life support, we should be able to choose to die if we are suffering and no other options are available.


Below are arguments for and against.
http://www.apa.org/pi/eol/arguments.html

 

I agree with allowing people to do it if they are terminally ill. There's no point in prolonging one's life just to suffer

 

I agree, as tough as it is for me to agree. I lost my mom to cancer, and near the end - well, let me just say I'm not sure she would have wanted to go like that had she had her faculties. It's tough to let go, but if the person dying makes the call in good conscience, without reservation, and there are plenty of safeguards in place, I agree.

 

Personally I have no problem with it, as long as it's decided when the person is able to make the decision and nobody pressures them into it, it's used to murder, etc.

Done correctly I find it to be extremely humane compared to letting someone suffer.

 

I'm for it. And to be honest it would be hard for anyone to put a case against it without relying on religious reasons.
Anybody should be allowed to end their life whenever they want.

 

I disagree. Don't know if you've ever lost anyone to disease, but I lost my father, mother, and stepfather all to horrible disease, with years of suffering beforehand. It wasn't a religious issue for me, and never could be. It was one of struggling to let go of someone loved very much; and the bearer feeling like too much remained to be accomplished.

Some people are just warriors, and feel it's important to go down fighting to the final hour. In my mom's case, in incredible pain, doped on increasing levels of morphine, blind and in last-stage Cheyne-Stoke, not really there, I leaned into her ear and whispered it was alright - that her sons would be O.K. - and she could let go. A faint smile came to her lips - the only conscious thing I had seen come to her, as she was no longer recognizable - and she died within the next couple of hours.

As I said, hard, but I agree. I disagree the reasons for "no" always come down to religion.

 

Reading the counter point to it, I can understand why you'd want to protect people who may be coerced into it or for religious reasons. Other than that, it should be allowed. I'm fairly surprised that Oregon is the only state that allows it.

 

Sorry to hear about your mom Northpoint.

It's strange when people are on their death beds, what they will go through. I was extremely close with my grandma for instance, for some reason when she was dying nobody felt to try to get ahold of me to start. Then when they did they didn't tell me it was as urgent as it was. By the time I got there she was supposed to be dead, she hung on though for me to arrive, say my good byes and then almost immediately died.

It's true I don't care what anyone says, some will fight until the bitter end, especially if they have got something to do yet.

 

I was talking more about the forming of an opinion on a general policy rather than the opinion of someone going through it. I don't think many people would want to see their loved one go, In whatever way, But policy and opinions on policy shouldn't stem from personal experience.

If we were to use that as an argument against it we would be depriving someone of something they want based on someone else not wanting them to have it, And that is not how policy should be decided.

 

Thanks, Grim. I'm really sorry to hear about your grandma, and thank you for sharing your story. My mom died a long time ago now (16 years), but it still is something I haven't really gotten over. Don't imagine you have, either. Don't know if one ever does.

I am kind of floored to say your story kind of sounds like what I went through as well. Pretty cool story, I think.

Over the latter years of my mom's sickness, I was pretty lost. I was always a wanderer, still am, and hadn't been home in years. I literally arrived at the Shakespearean theater in Massachusetts where I was engaged for the season to see a staffmember talking on the phone. She looked up, gapemouthed, to ask me, are you Paul? I said yes, and they gave me the phone. My brother on the other end told me that if I wanted to see my mom, I needed to come home, now. I flew to California.

When I saw her, I was shocked to see this once vibrant woman as frail as she was: rail thin, cyanotic, a lurching breath. I stayed with her for hours, in silence, save her breath. She was, oddly enough, next door to the maternity ward. Life leaving, life beginning. In that silence, a child cried. My mom, still blind and near death as she was, lifted her body up and reached towards the sound, slightly, with her body; then she sank back into the sheets. It was an almost primordial motherly thing to do - to hear a child's cry, and to simply reach out to it.

I have never seen a more beautiful expression of what it is to be a mother, a world I can never know but have learned to honor in a way I honor no other thing; I am glad to say I was with my wife on the delivery bed, over the hours of her pain, with nothing chosen on her part to aid her but her own inner strength and my love. We men have our strengths, our nobility, our virtues. But woman is an amazing companion.

Anyway, sorry for the bandwidth. Guess I'm just quite moved by this discussion. Thanks for sharing, Grim.

 

I agree - the deprivation of something for someone shouldn't be decided by the personal choice of another, merely because another doesn't wish it for themself. I merely say it isn't religion alone that drives someone to forego the conscious death.

I also want to say that policy isn't something born as a thing apart from personal experience. Policy stems from people, is made for people, and cannot be abstracted from the very essence of human life, personal experience. All policy, all society derives from it.

 

some days i'd welcome a bullet to the chest from a doctor.

i believe there's a difference between suicide and letting yourself or someone die. i really don't care what my religion has to say, sometimes you're in a position where immediate death is necessary. some of the sh!t ppl go through is ridiculous.

 

Thanks.

I hope everyone understands my point - I agree with the right; absolutely. I just think, for someone who wants to hang on, the reasons can be legion, in my opinion.

 

You don't need to experience something to know if a policy is right or not.
experience will only serve to cloud judgment and cause people to base their opinion on the specifics of what happened to them.

To get a truly impartial, Unbiased general policy that serves all persons needs equally i believe you categorically can't base it on personal experience. The best policies will be devised by someone entirely impartial.

 

Not sure if you're understanding my point.

Policymakers are human beings. It is impossible to abstract their personal experience from their work. There is no such thing as an "impartial" someone, because we all have personal experiences that frame our thoughts. "Human experience" is nothing more than the aggregation of "personal experience." The only truly "impartial" someone is someone without experience, or a machine. I'd be willing to lay odds that any law known to man - any law, any policy - stems from human experience.

Anyway, Stox, I will have to decline a tete-a-tete on this one. To be honest, I don't feel like an academic exploration with the memories above so closely fresh. Take care.

 

I think everyone, Even you, Knew what i meant when i said "personal experience".

 

Not sure what makes you believe you have any basis here to state "even you." And as a general statement, by the way, I get really tired of trying to remain civil with this kind of tone on the other end. I'd suggest you find a way to debate without leaping to this kind of crap, Stox.

That said, yes, I do know what you mean by personal experience. And I maintain all laws are made out of an aggregation of that personal experience. "Rational" isn't some metaphysical construct apart from the human beings that make up that aggregate, or society.

 

Yes, I wouldn't want to visit a "Dr Death" for normal issues. That would be creepy and unnerving.