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Welcome to the Hotel Euthanasia
With the words, “In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death. I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn’t deny that right to others,” Governor Brown of California signed into law provisions that will allow terminally ill patients to kill themselves with the assistance of a physician.
There is so much wrong here it is hard to know where to begin.
Most importantly, the arguments in favor of physician-assisted killing use rights language to place a heavy thumb on the scale balancing personal interests with community and social good in favor of the needs of a handful of individuals. In doing this real harm is done to society and thousands of vulnerable citizens are put in harm’s way.
One need only to look briefly at the recent videotapes from Planned Parenthood to realize, regardless of one’s position on abortion, that a high level of coarseness about the value of human life can become endemic when the struggle with moral implications of terminating a potential life have ceased. The same callousness, over time, will now be ushered in at the end of life with the enactment of a law that allows this type of killing.
The CDC reports that in 2008, one in 10 elders had reported emotional, physical, or sexual mistreatment, or potential neglect, in that year. In a society that does such a poor job of protecting its vulnerable, it is naive to think that even the protections embedded in the California law will be sufficient to prevent coercion and misuse of assisted death. The idea that the elderly, the poor, the disabled, and the socially isolated will have their agency protected to freely choose not to suicide is fantasy – California dreaming on a grand scale.
The emotions experienced when a terminal diagnosis is made are complex, variable, and confusing. Fear often becomes a predominant emotion, and this, by definition, makes the terminally ill vulnerable, easily exploited, and subject to pressure from family or other interested parties – including the state. If one believes for a second that the medical profession can be trusted to be effective watchdogs over all of this, I suggest revisiting the Planned Parenthood videos.
Contemporary palliative medicine and hospice care can, with very rare exceptions, manage pain and suffering associated with impending death. Fears can be relieved and dignity of the dying supported, with compassionate interventions by doctors, nurses (especially nurses), social workers, psychologists and spiritual counsellors.
What is needed is assistance to the dying that protects their dignity and mitigates their fears in the form of more and better palliative and hospice care – not assisted dying in the form of active killing.
Published in General, Healthcare, Law, Science & Technology
The state is so badly in debt that anything which minimizes the cost to the state of maintaining life is now within reach. I believe the description of Barrycare included the death panels which limited the amount of care that could be given to an individual whose health is in significant trouble.
We’ve seen the problem with both the British and Canadian single payer health care plans. The individual cannot get in to be seen in a timely fashion. The individual who has been seen cannot get into a specialist or a surgery or get specific medical treatments quickly enough to cure themselves, and we all know where that ends.
The state needs people who pay taxes, not people who drain the treasury.
This is a medical standard now?
Dear Lord.
This is pure evil.
I wish I could push the pause button on life just long enough to free up our nation’s good doctors to get involved in politics for a week. For the good of all of us.
I wish people would keep in mind that there are ample legal means available already for people to remain in control of their health care. Do not let the activists scare you.
This new push for euthanasia is just political fun for a group of bored wealthy activists.
I would also like to point out, because it bears repeating often, that as Wesley J. Smith, one of my favorite columnists, has said, people, especially young people, should appoint health care proxies, rather than grant unlimited tissue and organ donation on their driver’s license.
Brain death is hard to determine these days, and there is a lot of pressure in the ERs across the country to say that brain death has occurred so as to be able to take organs while they are most useful to others. This is scary stuff, especially if you have young people in your family. A twenty-year-old in a car accident can look like a lot of usable organs to some unscrupulous people. Sad to say but true.
Make sure you and your kids have a proxy who is trustworthy to make these decisions for you, and especially your kids.
Begging the question means assuming the premise. Reporting on support for euthanasia as if that makes it moral looks like assuming the morality of killing people based on the premise that what people support makes it right. Is that really what you think?
Thanks, Marci, I’d never thought about this. Am going to check with my kids.
Dear
F – 18
Suppose you have Mr. X. No savings, no insurance, no family Willing to support him. Hospice isn’t available (he is homeless). He has cancer that gives him a life expectancy of 6 months. What are his options?
Little Sisters of the Poor provide hospice to the indigent. Government run healthcare is persecuting them….
Morality? Morality is sooo constraining, doncha know? Life is so much simpler (at least for those on top) when one is not handicapped by this primitive morality thing. Nah. Go for what feels good, for what is expedient, right now.
Mind, that ends up in what Locke defined as a state of nature, which ultimately leads to the dissolution of the bands of government.
There is an upside. Once reduced to this state of anarchy, the people are at liberty to constitute to themselves a new legislative power. Hopefully one which will not dismiss morality so cavalierly. (If they do, wash, rinse, repeat . . . )
Seawriter
perhaps you missed the bolded above.
Nope. Didn’t miss it. Do you really think that support for euthanasia makes it moral?
where have i said that?
Implied in your
I hope I have misunderstood you. When you said this
did I incorrectly assume that you think people’s satisfaction–support for–the law means it is moral–as in not being abused and not being itself a form of abuse?
I don’t equate popular support for whats moral.
Could you elaborate on what you meant?
Socialist- large government agendas require commodifying humans so they can be ‘dealt with’ in an equal and ‘functional way.
Morality is for the small people who can’t see the bigger picture, all lives are a ‘function’, or cog if you like, in the BIG overwatch programs run by the BIG people, people who really ‘understand’ the social implications of how to manage people properly, kinda like the bang up job the EU is doing right now.
Couch everything in the BIG agenda as a ‘right’ and I can find someone to support it (cue the sycophant media)… except if it conflicts with the BIG agenda, like right to bear arms, then its a bad right.
So what’s managing people to die, hey think of the BIG picture? The president should be endorsing this real soon.
Could you elaborate on what you meant?
Do you think if the Dutch considered that the assisted suicide laws had morphed into “duty to die” laws that 90 percent of society would support it?
When the gay marriage advocates were promoting the idea in Massachusetts, their most effective and most emotional appeal was to say that gay partners were not allowed to be at their partner’s bedside in the hospitals. This was the most ridiculous assertion I have ever heard. There was no hospital in Massachusetts that has ever (a) barred a visitor if the patient wanted to see that person or (b) barred a gay person, if that person was designated as the patient’s proxy or next of kin, from assuming responsibility for a patient. Furthermore, it was laughable because hospitals desperately need “significant others” involved in patient care. They are discharging people who are in need of a tremendous amount of care, and the discharge staff relies on the cogent family members and friends of the patients to keep the system moving. The discharge staff is looking only for someone with a pulse.
Similar emotional tactics will be used, I fear, to get euthanasia passed around the country. People are, of course, afraid of losing control over their medical care. But they never do. The law is clear that patients have the right to refuse care. And every day, sadly, in every hospital in America, people are declining life-saving and life-prolonging treatment and going home or to hospice.
We do not need this aggressive option to remain in control of our medical care. The euthanasia laws that are in the legislative pipelines are about killing off the disabled.
Probably. As long as they thought they would get some benefit from this, and had no ethical or moral underpinning to stop them. The Netherlands is a post-Christian society, which has moved beyond Christian morality.
Seawriter
Unfortunately people get very fuzzy headed when certain words are included in a phrase, words like “rights” or “equality”, and forget that these words don’t in themselves make an argument, they must import content from somewhere else. This allows them to glide over the most important ethical considerations with hardly a thought. So yes, that statistic does not surprise me, and it does not convince me that in any way the Dutch people have thought through the grisly march of death that is making its way through their culture.
In theory, the right to die on your own term makes sense. However, it is impossible to allow it legally without creating a coercive atmosphere which encourages people to die who otherwise wouldn’t want to. It would be easier to create a warp drive than to find a way around that simple conundrum.
I don’t think that is true. Is it moral to forbid me to seek to end my suffering in a pain free manner by simply getting pills from my doctor. If I chose to take that path what morality allows society to say to me as an individual, “Because we believe that killing yourself is immoral, we will prevent you from making a rational choice that involves no one but you and your physician and instead we will subject you to physical pain and suffering in order to satisfy our definition of morality.” Heck, that sounds like inflicting torture to me. Not very moral.
The arguments above against “assisted suicide” are arguments for narrow tailoring of laws to prevent its abuse, not for forbidding the practice.
It is simply impossible to craft laws that narrow, David, because how can you craft a law that prevents other people from influencing a person to commit suicide? Can you forbid them to talk to anyone else? To counsel with anyone else? And the law is a teacher in many ways. People take their cues from what is legal or not to some degree. If assisted suicide is legal, the moral compunction against talking a person into sucide for any number of reasons is greatly, greatly reduced. And of course, the state has some real interests here too. It is just too easy for other interests to prevail in subtle ways no matter how narrowly the law is crafted. Bob is absolutely right about this.
There is another reason for hospitals to push for brain death. Most every state has a cap on financial liability if malpractice results in death. If malpractice leads to a lifetime of rehab care there is no cap on the financial liability of the hospital.
From the department of heartless economics: I love the passion and compassion on the thread, but who pays the bill for all of that?
We have the technology to extend life for weeks, maybe months, and can spend as much as all medical care on the person’s life combined to that point in doing so.
If someone has planned ahead, purchased insurance, or want to spend their life savings and/or posterity’s inheritance on that care it is their God given Constitutionally memorialized right to do so.
If they are not equipped with the resources, whose resources do we consume in pursuit of all this dignity and precious life? Our current plan is to saddle our unborn children with debt. Is that compassionate?
Brent, I don’t think that what you describe is necessarily the dilemma. Certainly we have to have some wisdom about what is a hopeless case and when medical intervention is going to do some good, but we can have that without euthanasia. We are not obliged to prolong life under any and all circumstances. It is not wrong to refuse extraordinary measures, or even ordinary measures. It is not wrong, for example, to say that you do not want to go to the hospital and to quit taking medications that keep you alive. That’s what hospice is for–they help people make those decisions. But euthanasia goes far beyond this. It opens the doors to request death for any and all reasons. No amount of safeguards can prevent this once it is legal.
I wonder that, too.
I also wonder, should the simple fact that life-extending technology exists imply any duty to use that technology to extend our lives?
For example, why should I have a duty to accept a feeding tube or parenteral nutrition if and when I can no longer swallow on my own?
Now, I might want to accept artificial feeding and hydration – especially on a temporary basis, when recovery is expected to be possible. But to force me into tubing that extends my life beyond its natural limits just because of some “duty to live” strikes me as barbaric.
At the same time, I have heard avoidance of what I consider extraordinary measures like artificial hydration called “euthanasia”, and that has me puzzled.
All states have some sort of document that is honored by the courts to cover end-of-life issues–whether that is a living will or a proxy. Indeed, many people walk around with do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders.
People should look into these because end-of-life care standards have changed.
Years ago, defibrillators and other mechanical life-saving means were considered “heroic” means. Today the definition of “heroic means” in many states has apparently been extended to comfort treatment as well–water, food, and antibiotics. I think that’s a wrong way for the medical field to go, but I can’t stop it. I would if I could because it goes too far.
That said, I would caution people about signing on to a death-by-dehydration plan until they discuss it with their doctor. As I understand it, it is not a pleasant way to go. And it is not necessary.
I think there are those who are pushing the death-by-dehydration route because family members have to watch their loved one suffer, and these people are thinking that if a sufficient number of Americans see this, they will clamor for euthanasia to “put people out of their suffering,” the way we do our beloved pets.
We pass laws against murder, but it still happens. We pass laws on how banking should be done, but banks still defraud their clients from time to time. Should we forbid banking? Should we forbid human contact for fear of murder?
No, we pass laws; narrowly tailored and prosecute those who we catch stepping over the line. Because abuse might happen is no reason to otherwise trample an individuals most basic right, the control over their own freedom, including the freedom to choose to end their own suffering.
If someone is intent on killing themselves, they will, but no one has the “right” to demand that society help them to kill themselves. I do not say this lightly. Like most people, I have been in excruciating physical pain- thankfully never for very long. Anyone who has experienced debilitating pain can understand why suicide is sometimes tempting, but assisted suicide is not a right. Suicide may be a right, but assisted suicide isn’t one.
I have a similar take away and am puzzled as well.