Kill the Bill, Not the Ill: No on A.B. 374
"Kill the bill, not the ill!" was the demonstration chant a few years ago against a bill to legalize assisted suicide in California. Now, like a virus that won't go away, assisted suicide advocates are once again trying to transform assisted suicide into a "medical treatment" in California.
I have a piece about this in today's San Francisco Chronicle. I cover a lot of areas, ranging from the ideology of assisted suicide to the Swiss Supreme Court legalizing assisted suicide for the mentally ill, to what is known and not known about Oregon. Here is an excerpt from the opening section:
To see why I reach that conclusion, read the rest of the piece. "Kill the bill, not the ill: No on A.B. 374!"If history is any guide, assisted-suicide proponents and the media will cast the debate in strictly religious terms -- as the Catholic Church versus rational modernists. But the coalition opposing AB374 is a broad and diverse political alliance that vividly reflects California's unique multiculturalism.
Leading the charge against the latest assisted-suicide bill ) are disability rights advocates -- the nation's most effective anti-euthanasia campaigners -- who are overwhelmingly secular in perspective, liberal in politics and pro-choice on abortion. They will be working closely with civil rights activists. (The League of United Latin American Citizens, the country's largest Latino civil rights organization, is on record as firmly opposing assisted suicide.)
These groups will be joined by medical, nursing and hospice professionals -- with organizations such as the California Medical Association and the American Medical Association adamantly opposed to transforming assisted suicide into a medical treatment.
Add advocates for the poor, such as Oakland's Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals, mix in religious conservatives, and it becomes clear that assisted-suicide opponents have forged a potent, strange political bedfellow alliance that bridges the usual liberal versus conservative, secular versus religious, and pro-choice versus anti-abortion disputes that divide the country.
Why would people who fundamentally disagree about other issues ally against assisted suicide? One of the most important reasons is that assisted suicide ultimately devalues those it supposedly protects from so-called "bad deaths." Indeed, legalizing and popularly legitimizing assisted-suicide opens the door to an epochal shift in the way society perceives dying, disabled and other suffering people.
Labels: A.B. 374. Assisted Suicide
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:14 AM
11 Comments
11 Comments:
A pro-euthanasia reader is not amused: (Abridged due to rant content.) "Anyone who stops a person in terrible pain from having the right to choose when to end their life is guilty of the same crimes as the Nazis
- controlling human suffering. I am canceling my subscription to the
Chron based on your ruthless and shameless shilling for religious
zealots who want to tell us when to live and when to die. The fact that Latinos groups representing many persons who happen to be
Catholic has also tipped me into supporting a 100% deportation of all persons in the US illegally. I was sympathetic to these persons before reading your story."
Me: See? Assisted suicide has nothing to do with terminal illness.
Personally, I'd rather kill the disabled rather than go through cancer treatment.
Mass murder - it's more fun than a hospice. But wait, there's more! It's also more fun than chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, a feeding tube and a respirator!
Tony:
I have no idea if that was supposed to be sarcastic or not.
If so, your tone, while appropriately stark, isn't leveled with enough irony and needs to be added to in order to make your point. If not, then the use of "mass murder" in your second line clouds your issue because most people of all religious and ethnic backgrounds don't believe that murder is acceptable - atheists Penn and Teller are anti-death penalty becuase it's unethical.
I give you a C- for your rhetoric; you really need to clear up your position by either adding more detail or by changing the tone. Right now your motive is unclear and that brings down the quality of your writing.
Tony:
"Personally, I'd rather kill the disabled rather than go through cancer treatment."
My grandmother (who died of lung cancer) and my father (who had colon cancer) both endured radiation, chemo, and surgery with little pain. My grandmother's pain was managed by her daughter, my aunt (an RN who specializes in hospice) and she died peacefully, without being in torment.
My father's cancer was caught early and he is now cancer-free. We're working on him recovering from the lymphoma that occured after the fact, but he enjoys life, is in little or no pain, and is being helped by his family (me and my mother) so that he can go out and about - he's been antiquing and shopping at the mall lately, stuff he used to do all the time before he was diagnosed with cancer.
I've still got my dad in my life. He's enjoying being alive. He can't walk - big deal. He's got an awesome wheelchair and recently bought me an antique clock for my desk.
We're happy he's alive. He's happy to be alive.
"Tony Jones said...
Personally, I'd rather kill the disabled rather than go through cancer treatment."
....you can take that statement and shove it.
One final note:
I don't give a rat's ass if you're going through chemo and not enjoying it - we didn't enjoy Dad's chemo either. That's no excuse to want to take yourself out of the world or ANYBODY ELSE when there are people who probably love you and want you around, just like we want my father around.
How can people be so illogical as to think that the only two options are having all treatments on the one hand or bumping off sick people on the other? How do you spell "false dichotomy"? Patients can refuse chemo. I don't know any pro-lifers who say patients always have to accept chemo. That's by no means the same thing as killing people.
Well, if they're going to take away my right to a peaceful death, then I should have the right to take away some of their rights too. It's only fair, and palliative care is hardly a panacea. The same goes for nursing homes. There's a good reason why many elderly people commit suicide, even if they do have a loving family.
And yes, I can refuse chemo, but I can't refuse palliative care, at least not in this country.
So you'd rather die miserably without food and water? I mean, properly done, palliative care should just be keeping you comfortable when you are dying. Would you rather _not_ be washed, _not_ have food and water, _not_ have any pain control? The truth is, everybody has to die some time. Why anyone should be outraged at not being allowed to "refuse" basic care, not being allowed to die like a dog without minimal care, is beyond me. But I suspect the real agenda here is just wanting to die _faster_. God forbid they should give you nutrition and hydration and you might _live_ for several years rather than dying in two weeks without it.
Tony Jones: Your ignorance is frankly , appalling. Palliative care is pain control and other forms of medical and social support. Of course it can be turned down. Why, one would want to I don't know, but it can be refused like any medical treatment.
So, in the end, it is all about you, regardless of who else gets hurt?
Palliative care cannot be refused in Australia. It is treated separately from feeding tubes and respirators in the legislative system. Just because they may not force it on me when I say "no" doesn't mean that they don't have the authority to do it anyway. Why should they be allowed to use terminal sedation to alleviate my existential and non-physical suffering against my will?
Lydia, would you keep a quadraplegic in a coma for 40 years until they die naturally. And you wonder why people say that you lack compassion.
I never said anything about making the decision for others. Please stop twisting my words. Unfortunately, in most of the US, the only option available for assisted dying is self-starvation combined with a refusal of treatment. Self-starvation is usually combined with terminal sedation to prevent the patient from feeling pain, but both patient and doctor intend for the patient to die. It is a legal version of assisted suicide.
People like you wanted Welby to suffer for years in Italy.
My slogan, laced with black humour, meant that if I was ill with cancer or MND, I would find it more fulfilling (not to mention entertaining) to kill as many anti-choicers as possible. That would not only inspire other people in similar situations to do the same, but it would also cause many people to cancel their memberships in anti-choice organisations out of fear.
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