What We Are Becoming: Children Proposed for Right to Assisted Suicide in Scotland
The Dutch seriously proposed permitting 12-year-olds to opt for euthanasia, and that was beaten back for the moment. Now, a new Scottish proposal to legalize assisted suicide would give the "right to die" to children. From the story:
Children aged 12 or even younger could be given the right to assisted suicide under a radical new Scottish bill proposed by veteran MSP Margo MacDonald.And, of course, the killing wouldn't be limited to people who are dying since that is merely a political ploy to establish the principle of permitting assisted suicide/euthanasia in more resistant countries, like the USA:
The independent politician, who has Parkinson's disease, wants to bring legislation before the Scottish Parliament next year which would legalise assisted suicide.
Launching a consultation on her proposed End of Life Choices (Scotland) Bill yesterday, Mrs MacDonald suggested that the age limit for people wanting assistance to die should mirror that for children who are allowed under family law to "choose a life" by deciding which parent to live with when couples split up. In Scotland, youngsters whose parents are divorcing are generally consulted by the courts over who they wish to stay with from the age of 12 to 16, after which they are legally deemed to be adults.
Assisted suicide would also be possible for patients who unexpectedly became incapacitated to an "intolerable" degree, or who simply find their life "intolerable" - although the latter case would require the doctor to seek a second opinion from another health professional.Culture of death? What culture of death? It's all in your imagination, Wesley.
Labels: Assisted Suicide. Children. Scotland. Culture of Death.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:33 AM
19 Comments
19 Comments:
This is terrifying. I have a young teenager who struggles with depression even with medication... I'm sure, despite all our best efforts, there are times when she might indeed describe her life as "intolerable."
Why kids? They want to lower the age of sexual consent for kids to twelve and now assisted suicide again? Geez. These kids are going through the biggest physiological and emotional changes in their lives and they want to target kids? This is when they are most vulnerable and they have not yet learned to cope with all of these bodily and emotional changes. They are also severely lacking in wisdom and maturity at this age.
This lust for death is pathological. This law would set them up for explotiation to death just like it would set them up for exploitation to sexual predators if the age of sexual consent were lowered.
WHAT?
Oh, my Lord.
How does "choosing a life" (i.e. with which divorcing/ed parent to live) lead logically to, and how is it analogous to, choosing death?
The Scots are great engineers, just as the Swiss have a great talent for mechanics and precision. How can great engineers, or those who are capable of creating intricate timepieces, fail this badly to think logically?
Just wondering -- Where are Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, and the Scandinavian countries weighing in on this death culture issue?
How miserable ARE people in Washington, Oregon, Montana (not to mention other places in the U.S. where the death culture is taking hold), Switzerland, the Grand Duke's nation, and now Scotland? The city where I am, which nurtured the death culture in its bosom in the person of the "famed" doctor who I understand encouraged Kevorkian to get started and who, along with the culture in the hospital that harbors him and the social service network here, plus certain members of the legal and judicial community, have made a cottage industry of "end-of-life," this city with its many "facilities" and intensive "hospice culture," long has been known for its gray climate, until recent years its smug dourness, and more recently for its dubious distinction of murder capital of this continent; a couple of years ago, someone I met in Arizona, upon hearing my answer to where I was from, responded, "My condolences." My point is, how is the "death culture" "doing" in places where there is more sunshine? Including "sunny California" (well, all bets may be off there, thanks to the effect of the tendency to earthquakes -- and come to think of it, this city where I am is built on a fault line, "sunny Florida" (which is full of elderly potential victims), and nations where there is a lot of sunlight?
Which reminds me of how annoying (and revealing) it is that natural depression in the absence of sunlight has been given a name ("SAD"/"seasonal affective disorder") and termed a "disorder." It's a disorder to feel better when sunshine is not absent? Well, of course, just as it's a disorder, apparently, to prefer to live rather than die, and "normal" to want to commit suicide.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross seems to have been part of the beginning of the focus on death -- not that she was wrong not to be appalled by the way she saw the dying being treated, but the appropriate response to that was hardly, in view of what has gone on since, to make a whole "culture" out of "death and dying," and no, I haven't read her work, and just don't find her subject matter interesting. (Life, I find interesting; death, I don't; how perverse of me...) But my point is that from what I've read about her, she was raised by her parents, against her own will, to be a doctor, and was miserable growing up in Switzerland, where, she said, people were judged as worthy only according to how hard they worked. Somehow, she got from that to making the treatment of the dying her specialty, and from there somehow dying has become an industry considered "positive." It's headache-inducing, but very possibly very significant.
To take it further, if I thought of what would be a "death culture," I'd think first of the Muslim world, including in terms of its antigonism toward the West from millenia back, and what we're dealing with in the West is coinciding in time with our interaction with that world. I've never been particularly interested in non-Western culture, or in religion, anthropology, "multiculturalism," etc. in general; I appreciate and respect that in which other cultures excel in which mine does not, and appreciate the opportunity to learn from those cultures whenever it arises, but that's the extent of it; I am asking, now: What is going on with the "death culture" in other countries and parts of the world? What traditions of theirs, if any, have partaken of or even fomented it, and might have contributed to what we're dealing with now in the west? Where is it entrenched, non-existent, advancing, receding, and if answers to that question exist, the next question is why, wherever it is any of those things?
In order to fight the death culture, it's important to know where the sources are and what caused it. There is explanation and provenance for everything, and there must be for this insane phenomenon as well. It's such an insane phemonemon, however, that one wonders whether it could even be the result of psychokinetic warfare, which the Russians have studied for years, and of course the Germans had the tradition, leading up to WWII, of mystical study and resources that carefully have been kept secret, and have been said to be connected with international power (including criminal) networks. I know, it may sound far-fetched, but if some foreign entity wanted to destroy Western civilization and all it values and stands for, wouldn't drugging it up with everything the Swiss pharmaceutical industry could devise, and exercising mind control and "moving energy" (there are indeed people who have that ability), be an effective way of doing it? That may or may not be something that could only happen in a comic book or science fiction, but SOMETHING is going on, and practical analysis of it is necessary in order to devise a way of defeating it.
Of course, simple stupidity, not to mention evil as well, is enough in itself to have created the death culture, just as it is reason enough to accept it, and the death culture is joy-killing in a way that allows it to advance as people subcribe to it, lemming-like. But such prevalent stupidity and/or evil could not have built the civilization it is now destroying. What has caused it?
SHS: If it were only in your imagination, we'd be as happy as you would be for that to be true, as would a whole bunch of other people.
Why do these broads always have the same expression, the same dyed blonde hair, and the same short haircut?
Maybe Swiss pharmaceutical products weren't causing enough kids to commit suicide. Why would such a product be put on the market in the first place, and why wasn't it pulled after the first kid died? Oh, because it was benefitting "the many" and only killing "the few." Now, Scotland wants to help them kill children.
When I was shattered after being the victim of an environmental accident, a young doctor new in town suggested I take Paxil; I refused, not liking or trusting pharmaceuticals, especially of that kind, period, having worked as an editor briefly (it didn't take long to see what they were all about, and I wanted no part of it) for a pharmaceutical company, plus not wanting to put any more chemicals in my system when I'd already been exposed to toxic ones, plus suspecting, instinctively, that this "wonder drug" might have an adverse effect and do me harm, whereas I was going through the trauma process on my own as nature intended. The doctor kept insisting I take it, and I kept refusing. Some weeks later, I saw an article in the business section of the New York Times about kids in England who'd been prescribed it committing suicide; I showed it to the doctor, who scoffed that he didn't read the business page, he read the medical journals; this interchange repeated at every appointment as I went through the process of blood tests, etc., and it is an example of how arrogant, ignorant, and determined to medicate people, including kids, doctors can be. I'd changed doctors by the time what I'd been telling him had been reported in the business section of the New York Times showed up in the medical journals not much later. Then the line from the pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment that found its way into the media became that gee, maybe this stuff makes kids commit suicide, but it's safe for adults, and the stuff remained on the market. Three years later, in my home town, a fellow who'd just started taking it per his doctor's prescription flipped out and stabbed his wife and one of his children to death, and stabbed his other child nearly to death. A number of similar cases had occurred elsewhere, and the "Paxil defense" had proven successful in some of them, but this guy went to jail. The last I heard the stuff still hadn't been pulled off the market, and kids were still being prescribed it. Anyway, Switzerland's pharmaceutical companies obviously care more about profits than they do about children, about whom Scotland doesn't seem to care, either. WHAT is going ON? First kids were medicated if they acted in a way, as Michael Savage has pointed out, that would have been considered normal in the days of Tom Sawyer; now, if they're too much trouble, they have legal "permission" to "choose to die."
I just noticed the part that reported that the Dutch tried this first. Maybe the kids weren't saying that when they grew up they wanted to work in a marijuana cafe or some other quintessentially Amsterdamian institution. As a matter of fact, the Dutch just decided to close some of that stuff down, which may have been on the heels of the failure of this notion to receive ratification. I'd like to think, and for it to be true, that outrage over that proposal actually led to Holland taking stock and cleaning itself up in other respects as well. That would be a very good sign. But its possibility is probably just a figment of my paranoid imagination, like any other product of positive thinking.
Next time a 12-year-old (or younger) kid screams that life is "intolerable" after being grounded, having phone time restricted, or not being allowed to go to the mall, we know what "relief" is available. In fact, show me anyone who isn't even disabled and hasn't found life "intolerable" at some point, or even frequently. Kids that age don't tend to think up suicide on their own, and are dependent on guidance from adults and vulnerable to suggestion by adults. It being legal is going to mess up every kid in Scotland in the head, and cause some to do it who never would have thought of it or wanted to on their own. Those who are disabled and expected to remain permanently disabled or deemed unable to recover without years of expensive treatment, would cost an awful lot of money in their many years of future life; think of all the money and "resources" that can by saved by gettin' 'em while they're still young.
This hurts me personally. When I was a child, I was visciously harassed at school, church, and extracurricular activities to the point that I attended in fear for my safety and we considered moving out of the state.
Very often, adults would respond by not doing anything to stop the abuse or by responding in ways that punished me instead of the abusers, such as keeping me inside at recess.
In short, I was treated as if I were the problem in those situations, and my parents were urged to withdraw me from public school, as if the answer was to get rid of me, not correct my tormentors. It digusts me to think that at some future date, some poor child will actually be confronted with a world where adults responsible for their wellfare view child-elected euthanasia as a plausible option. I.e, instead of being told to give up on going to regular school (like me) these children will be told to give up on life, period. And, of course, children, being malleable in respect to their environment, absorb what they are taught, so if they are raised in a society that views euthanasia as a viable solution to problems, they will not have the capacity to recognize permission for such a choice as abandonement and abuse on the part of others. Tragic.
Somehow, the Mayan 2012 prediction is beginning to make sense.
She's (Margo, is it, with the dyed short blond hair and the expression that run to type?) a "veteran" -- well, then she must be on the right track...
Adult at 16, dead by 20, better this than working in the coal mines or shooting heroin in the streets, right? After all, this is PROGRESS. Someone CARES about these kids. They deserve to CHOOSE to die whenever they WANT, with DIGNITY. Like a 12-year-old even knows what dignity is. Whatever it even means, in this context.
It's like a damned horror movie. Only much, much worse, and real.
Anyone notice how much more popular Halloween seems to be becoming lately?
And how is it going to affect the way kids here and in other countries feel about life, and about themselves, now that it's legal ANYWHERE? In fact, how has it affected, and how is it going to affect, them and their attitudes toward life now that it's legal even for adults to do it, right here in the United States, or anywhere else?
Imagine the third-grade lessons, the civics lessons, the classroom discussions, which before this madness took hold would have been about Iowa producing corn, Oregon being where the redwood forests are, Switzerland being where they make chocolate and watches, Scotland being where they grow sheep....
This is a nightmare.
Lanthe -
Wow.
::clap::
I can't respond to all of what you've written, but I do want to bring up the comments you made about Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. I do have an interest in death and dying because I suffer from bad death anxiety. Meaning, I don't want to die, but I'm so scared of death sometimes I suffer from a desire to die just to get it over with. Thankfully, I have it pretty well under control.
But anyway, I have an interest in Kubler-Ross because she did strive to make the dying act a much more positive situation for those engaged in it. I really don't believe that she had as much to do with the culture of death as she did with the culture of re-accepting death as a natural part of life.
People these days are very afraid of death because we're seriously divorced from it. Back in the olden days, a farm would raise up its own food and farm kids learned early on how to slaughter a pig. Farmers had to resist their kids' attempts to make pets out of the cow that would eventually be dinner for a year. Even chickens (evil animals!) are cute as chicks and are the subjects of sentimental poetry, but they, too, fell to the knife. So people got used to death being a part of natural life.
Likewise, as I've mentioned before, long before there were funeral homes, if a person died, it was at home, surrounded by the family, and the body was laid out in the family parlor for a time before the funeral. No embalming fluid, nothing to prevent corruption. People got used to being there with the dying until the last minute, and they got used to the aftermath.
But with the modernization of culture, with the advent of the industrail age, people had to live in smaller homes that didn't allow a parlor. Funeral homes cropped up. People ate pre-packaged food and never saw a chicken die for the dinner plate. Wool and fleece aren't something that one shears off an animal alive anymore. People are removed from death, and people also started to be treated like objects. Machine parts. The factory needs people in it, but the factory isn't a person, it's an object, and the people inside were objectified. Our distance from death made us turn away from it instead of accepting it as something that happens and is a natural part of life.
So Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was at the forefront of a movement to restore dignity to the dying, so that people wouldn't push them away out of fear or disgust. Actually, I feel that if her visions were more universally embraced, we wouldn't have this culture of death, because natural death wouldn't be feared so much.
Honestly, people are afraid of death and dying and they want the freedom to choose to die whenever *they* want to avoid the pain and embarassment of a prolonged death. Some people can actively die for months, sometimes for years. It means becoming helpless and suffering. Back in the day, that suffering was embraced by the whole family. Today, it's shunned. Today, we have the medications available to make the passing easier and more painless, but those resources are becoming expensive. It's so much easier just to give someone a shot and be done with him. We don't have to look death in the eye that way.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross looked death in the eye and accepted it. I strongly recommend reading Dr. Melvin Morse's books on Near Death Experiences - he's *not* a materialist by any stretch, but he doesn't believe in God or an afterlife, either, yet he believes in the reality of NDEs and that death is a natural part of the life cycle. In reading him I came to learn how people got weirded out by death over time, and how we need to get back to embracing natural death as a part of society and life in general. Only by doing so will we stop making the aged, disabled, sick, and different feel that they're worthless and a burden. Only by accepting the natural beauty of the life cycle will we realize that EVERYONE is precious, and that everyone has a right to live, and to be encouraged to live, not die.
The hearts of parents are breaking as ever more life threatening and life changing actions are offered to their children without the parents being able to guide their own children whom they love more than any "activist" can. But then those same activist insist that the parent still have control over aspirin and tattoos. But tattoos can be undone (albeit painfully), there is no redo for death. My heart breaks just thinking about it.
T.E.: I understand what you're saying. But her concept of "death with dignity" is the battle cry of the death culture, and I do believe that she had a lot to do with its getting started and having been able to take hold. She came, by the way, from the same country that is now its headquarters. I'm sure that there was something wrong with what she undertook to fix, but what I've seen of what has "replaced" it, in line with her achievements, in a hospital which prides itself on being home to the "pioneer" of "palliative care," whom the New York State Attorney General sued over PAS, and how that hospital treated a geriatric patient and trampled on her rights and actual wishes, indicates that what we've got now is no better, far less honest, and worse. I note that simultaneous with the things you described that removed death from everyday life, the horrors of animal experimentation in laboratories also were going on removed from public view and everyday life. I suppose SHS would add that the notion of animal rights arose at the same time as Kubler-Ross's work was taking hold and the death culture got going. I don't fear death; it's something we all look in the eye every moment, only we're not always aware of it, any more than we are always aware that every little thing we do has consequences. It's going to happen, and in my view is to be put off for as long as possible; there is plenty of time after it does to contemplate it, and the white light stuff happens no matter how we die. Put me in one of those hospice places with harps, and I'll want to raise enough fuss so that either they get me all possible treatment in hopes that I'll get well and leave, or kick me out onto the street, where I can be free to die a nice, normal death by getting run over by a taxi or something; if I couldn't get my hands on a gun so that I could shoot the harpist and the rest of the "end-of-life" idiots, I'd feel like begging for a glass of hemlock myself. But if they were able to give it to me, Lord knows what could happen to people who didn't want such "help." By making a subject, a field, and a cause out of "end of life," Kubler-Ross and her legacy nurtured, and legitimized, the death culture in its most dangerous and insidious form. Death is nothing to fear; making a production out of it is.
Jessie: I wonder whether if more parents actually did exercise control over tattoos, the "activists" would not be able to have such a stranglehold concerning things which are none of their business, and over people on whose rights they trample, as they do now.
Lanthe -
Ah, I better understand now. Thanks, you're right. Whatever she might have meant to start, it's ended up very wonky, and very, very negative.
Most of my fears of death are purely brain-chemical related; major depression and anxiety/panic disorder run in the family, so I'm learning to deal with it.
...I wouldn't want to see someone die in a hospice with harp players just because harps are over-rated. Give me good solid rock any day. When I go, I want AC/DC's Hells Bells playing, or maybe Queen's Who Wants To Live Forever.
T.E.: I'm sorry about what you have to go through.
Harps ARE over-rated.
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