What is your response?

[da_nolo]

What would you say or how would you respond to a letter such as the one presented bellow and/or the letter by Bishop Blaire?

Dear Bishop Stephen Blaire:

I respect your right to pressure the Legislature and citizens to think hard about the morality of the proposed End of Life Option Act (ABX2-15). You offer two faith-based arguments against ABX2-15 — it is against the Hebrew Bible commandment to kill, and the final decision to end life should be in the hands of God.

But I am puzzled by both of these arguments. The Biblical commandment is not “do not kill’ but “do not murder,” which is why some kinds of killing are sanctioned in the Bible, such as war, self-defense and the death penalty. Your appeal to this commandment thus does not answer why ending one’s life under certain circumstances should not be another exception to the commandment.

And the argument that one’s death should ultimately be up to God is betrayed by the fact that human life and death are indeed often in the hands of humans, especially health care providers, who intervene to alter the course of nature.

And it is inconsistent for the Church to morally permit the refusal of treatment to end life in order to relieve suffering (so-called "passive" euthanasia) but not permit a proactive means to end suffering sooner (the end of life option). Why would a good God want to prolong the suffering of one who doesn’t have long to live?

ABX2-15 is modeled after Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, and it is disappointing that you do not discuss the results of that 17-year experiment. Contrary to your assertion, there are layers of safeguards built in to protect people from taking the medication to end their lives against their will, and these controls exist in ABX2-15.

A high percentage of people who complete the process to obtain the medication end up not taking it, which shows that mere access to the option is a comfort. Those ending their lives have generally been well-educated (in 2014, 47 percent had a baccalaureate degree or higher), and the poor and disabled have not been exploited. Consistently, the top three reasons why terminally ill patients in Oregon ask for medication to end their lives have been due, not to the lack of control of physical pain, but to spiritual suffering, namely, the loss of autonomy, decreasing ability to participate in enjoyable activities, and loss of dignity.

Perfect palliative and pain control care cannot remedy this kind of suffering. I encourage readers to analyze for themselves Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act annual reports to help them evaluate the potential consequences of ABX2-15.

When a person has six months or less to live, feels that he or she has irretrievably lost dignity and has thought carefully and openly with health care providers about life’s end, it is paternalistic for the Church to say its judgment is better and more informed than an individual’s during such a personal and momentous time.

Society’s obligation to protect life is not diminished when it allows competent individuals the means to end life under certain circumstances. In fact, if religion is the realm of the spiritual, of what makes life meaningful, the Church should honor an individual’s sense of their dignity and autonomy and support ABX2-15.

— Matz: a professor of philosophy at University of.

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Letter by Bishop Blaire

recordnet.com/article/20150901/OPINION/150909968/0/SEARCH

What are your thoughts?

 

[Tomdstone]

I heard of cases where people are kept alive artificially for long periods of time and there was no hope of their ever recovering. Should it be required to keep them on artificial life support as long as possible, even when they are in excruciating pain and there is little or no hope of recovery?

 

[Dorothy]

I heard of cases where people are kept alive artificially for long periods of time and there was no hope of their ever recovering. Should it be required to keep them on artificial life support as long as possible, even when they are in excruciating pain and there is little or no hope of recovery?

The Catholic Church does not teach that those with no hope of recovering and are near death should be kept on artificial life support.

We do believe that when persons are in severe pain that drugs can alleviate that pain.

When my husband was dying I was very aware that he was having a dialogue with the Lord at that time.
No one should interfere with that. We all had a beginning, and we will have no end. Life and its sufferings can be redemptive, and then comes eternity of happiness with God if we have picked up our cross and followed Him.

 

[pianistclare]

The Catholic Church does not teach that those with no hope of recovering and are near death should be kept on artificial life support.

We do believe that when persons are in severe pain that drugs can alleviate that pain.

When my husband was dying I was very aware that he was having a dialogue with the Lord at that time.
No one should interfere with that. We all had a beginning, and we will have no end. Life and its sufferings can be redemptive, and then comes eternity of happiness with God if we have picked up our cross and followed Him.

Beautifully stated.
May your husband rest in eternal peace.
God bless.

 

[nodito]

There’s a lot that could be said to Matz and I do think a reasoned and persuasive response is well possible. Just off the top of my head, such a letter might include a note that in both Exodus and Deuteronomy the commandment is Thou Shall Not Kill. War and self-defense are justified not as exceptions to this commandment but because the killing of the aggressor is an unintended side effect of our greater need to preserve one’s own life and that of those we are responsible for. Suicide and euthanasia do not meet this criteria, where the end and intention of the action is to bring about the death of an innocent person.

I’d have to look more at Oregon’s legislation to be able to discuss it thoughtfully but I recall reading at one point that their suicide rate had increased drastically since they legalized euthanasia. When a society accepts that some lives are just not worth living, it’s a slippery slope and encourages others who are suffering to see less value in their lives and more bleak future.

 

[Dorothy]

Beautifully stated.
May your husband rest in eternal peace.
God bless.

Thank you. God bless you too!

 

[Robyn_p]

When a person has six months or less to live, feels that he or she has irretrievably lost dignity and has thought carefully and openly with health care providers about life’s end, it is paternalistic for the Church to say its judgment is better and more informed than an individual’s during such a personal and momentous time

This is the crux of the issue right here. Is a person’s worth and dignity innate and impossible to take away, or is it dependent on certain external factors? The problem with legalizing assisted suicide is it makes human dignity something arbitrary and malleable. It tells suffering people that their lives do not have the same worth as a healthy person.

What if a paraplegic ‘‘feels that he or she has irretrievably lost dignity’’ and thinks carefully about his decision? Should his physician be able to prescribe him drugs to end his life? Or what about a teenager suffering from severe depression who feels he has lost all dignity and wants the pain to end? Should we allow doctors to help him kill himself in a quick and painless way?

I would hope Professor Metz would object in these cases and say no, we shouldn’t encourage or enable these people to kill themselves, even though both of them are in extreme agony. Is this paternalistic? How dare he think that his judgment is better and more informed than the individual during such a personal and momentous time. Does he not see how much pain and anguish they are in?

The reason it is not paternalistic in these cases is because we rightly recognize that human beings have dignity and worth regardless of what the person himself might believe or feel. In other words, human life has an intrinsic worth and dignity. And it’s because of that fact that we can tell the paraplegic or the depressed teenager we can’t help them die. Because their life is worth something even if they don’t feel it is.

But what the professor doesn’t seem to realize is, if we say it’s paternalistic to not enable a person with only six months to live to kill himself – even if they feel they have irretrievably lost their dignity – what we are really doing is saying some human lives have more value than others. But as soon as we do that, we open the door to all kinds of evils. You can claim all you want that there are safeguards to prevent abuse, but the fact remains that by legalizing assisted suicide, you have made human dignity dependent on health or feelings or some other external factor. And it’s only a small step to go from ‘‘human life has dignity as long as the person feels like he or she does’’ to ‘‘human life has dignity as long as they are useful’’.

Bottom line is, either the human person has intrinsic worth that nothing can take away from it, or it doesn’t. If we say a person has dignity only if they feel they do, then it makes no sense to not help some people kill themselves but help others. The Church says all human life has an intrinsic dignity and because of that, we should not directly kill someone just because they are dying. Suffering does not make your life worthless. Call it paternalistic if you want, but at least it’s being consistent.