B
bones_IV
Guest
"Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s release from a Michigan prison Friday and a planned California vote this week are bringing the issue of physician-assisted suicide back to the forefront, where it belongs. For more than eight years, the government kept Kevorkian, prisoner No. 284797, in a cage because he behaved humanely. In essence, Kevorkian, 79, was a political prisoner, prosecuted for his humanity.
It is simply inhumane for government to prevent terminally ill patients from safely and humanely ending their lives. In fact, it is wrong for government to prevent anyone from safely and humanely ending his or her life. However, when it comes to the terminally ill, it is downright Draconian to force people to continue living in pain if they wish to die. We do not even force that fate on animals.
Kevorkian, who reportedly is dying from hepatitis C he contracted during the Vietnam War, is the perfect example of how powerful and dangerous government in this country has become. In a free society, you can have no crime worth imprisonment if you have no victims. Kevorkian’s patients requested his services; he did not simply kill people randomly. The septuagenarian was obviously no threat to society.
While there has never been a full accounting, by his own admission he helped some 130 people end their lives, beginning with Janet Adkins, 54, of Portland, Ore., on June 4, 1990, and ending with Thomas Youk, 52, of Waterford Township, Mich., on Sept. 17, 1998. These souls were able to die at a time of their choosing and in a humane, painless and dignified manner rather than living in pain waiting for the end to come.
As a Roman Catholic, I am certainly aware that my religion, like most religions, Christian or otherwise, is philosophically opposed to physician-assisted suicide. After all, there is nothing more sacred than life.
While I disagree with the church’s opposition to physician-assisted suicide, I certainly agree with the sanctity of human life. However, and this is an important distinction, the quality of life is certainly more important than quantity of life.
It would be an uncompassionate God, indeed, who would not allow a person to end life when it is no longer worth living.
Still, no one is forcing those opposed to physician-assisted suicide to use that medical treatment. If they choose to live a life of pain and suffering, that is their choice. They have no right in a free society to force that fate on others. When a person is suffering beyond all hope of recovery, it is time to die. Subjecting that person to further suffering is not respecting life; it is, plain and simple, cruel.
The issue really boils down to a simple question: Who owns our bodies? If we are free individuals, then the answer is clear: We own our bodies. However, if we do not have the right to take our own lives, especially when facing a terminal illness or unmanageable pain, then it is obvious that government owns our lives.
Oregon voters passed the Death with Dignity Act in a 1994 ballot measure. It went into effect in 1997 and as of Dec. 31, 2006, 292 people have chosen to end their lives.
For the last decade, the law has allowed Oregon doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to a mentally competent, terminally ill patient who makes written and oral requests, consults two physicians, and endures a mandatory waiting period. No one else, neither relatives nor doctors, can make the decision to end a person’s life. Only the patient can make that decision and the patient is the one who must administer the lethal dose.
The Oregon law is an enlightened approach to permitting those who are suffering a way to end their lives using medical science rather than splattering their brains on the bedroom wall for loved ones to find later.
That is exactly what happened with Percy Bridgman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who, at 79, was entering the final stages of terminal cancer.
His final note said it best: “It is not decent for society to make a man do this to himself.”
Indeed, it is not.
Link
I threw up when I read this one.
It is simply inhumane for government to prevent terminally ill patients from safely and humanely ending their lives. In fact, it is wrong for government to prevent anyone from safely and humanely ending his or her life. However, when it comes to the terminally ill, it is downright Draconian to force people to continue living in pain if they wish to die. We do not even force that fate on animals.
Kevorkian, who reportedly is dying from hepatitis C he contracted during the Vietnam War, is the perfect example of how powerful and dangerous government in this country has become. In a free society, you can have no crime worth imprisonment if you have no victims. Kevorkian’s patients requested his services; he did not simply kill people randomly. The septuagenarian was obviously no threat to society.
While there has never been a full accounting, by his own admission he helped some 130 people end their lives, beginning with Janet Adkins, 54, of Portland, Ore., on June 4, 1990, and ending with Thomas Youk, 52, of Waterford Township, Mich., on Sept. 17, 1998. These souls were able to die at a time of their choosing and in a humane, painless and dignified manner rather than living in pain waiting for the end to come.
As a Roman Catholic, I am certainly aware that my religion, like most religions, Christian or otherwise, is philosophically opposed to physician-assisted suicide. After all, there is nothing more sacred than life.
While I disagree with the church’s opposition to physician-assisted suicide, I certainly agree with the sanctity of human life. However, and this is an important distinction, the quality of life is certainly more important than quantity of life.
It would be an uncompassionate God, indeed, who would not allow a person to end life when it is no longer worth living.
Still, no one is forcing those opposed to physician-assisted suicide to use that medical treatment. If they choose to live a life of pain and suffering, that is their choice. They have no right in a free society to force that fate on others. When a person is suffering beyond all hope of recovery, it is time to die. Subjecting that person to further suffering is not respecting life; it is, plain and simple, cruel.
The issue really boils down to a simple question: Who owns our bodies? If we are free individuals, then the answer is clear: We own our bodies. However, if we do not have the right to take our own lives, especially when facing a terminal illness or unmanageable pain, then it is obvious that government owns our lives.
Oregon voters passed the Death with Dignity Act in a 1994 ballot measure. It went into effect in 1997 and as of Dec. 31, 2006, 292 people have chosen to end their lives.
For the last decade, the law has allowed Oregon doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to a mentally competent, terminally ill patient who makes written and oral requests, consults two physicians, and endures a mandatory waiting period. No one else, neither relatives nor doctors, can make the decision to end a person’s life. Only the patient can make that decision and the patient is the one who must administer the lethal dose.
The Oregon law is an enlightened approach to permitting those who are suffering a way to end their lives using medical science rather than splattering their brains on the bedroom wall for loved ones to find later.
That is exactly what happened with Percy Bridgman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who, at 79, was entering the final stages of terminal cancer.
His final note said it best: “It is not decent for society to make a man do this to himself.”
Indeed, it is not.
Link
I threw up when I read this one.
**