Fear Mongering For Assisted Suicide in Scotland
Assisted suicide is not really about a "safety valve" against intractable suffering--that is just an assertion intended to soften the political ground, a cynical tactic intended to panic the public into supporting killing as an acceptable answer to human suffering. Scotland is the latest target of the international euthanasia movement, and true to form, the fear mongering is well under way. From the story:
A DETERMINED group of pensioners have taken their right-to-die fight to the Scottish Parliament. Militant Retired have lodged a petition at Holyrood calling for a referendum on assisted death. The group's founder George Anderson said: "If I got to a stage where I was very ill, I would want the right to die to end my suffering. It's all about having a dignified death, rather than seeing people forced to exile themselves in Europe for treatment."By "treatment," he means assisted suicide. Reminds me of the euphemistic term "healing treatment" used by German eugenicists for the infanticide/euthanasia holocaust that took place there between 1939-1945.
But I digress. Here's the fear mongering:
And it was his experiences of caring for terminally ill patients that led to his decision to fight for choice over assisted death. "I cared for the terminally ill, both young and old, and was left feeling there must be a better way of facing our last days. People die dreadful deaths in hospital, hooked up to machines. At times, it's about changing nappies and keeping their heart beating. And for what?"What a cruel thing to say. People do not have to be "hooked up." It's as if hospice doesn't exist. And what a message that incontinence makes one's life somehow less worth protecting. Awful. Just awful.
Do you think the reporter would at least bother to call hospice or someone with a different perspective that might present at least a counter balancing view and help people know that dying doesn't make one undignified? Apparently that's too much work. Or, perhaps it is really that there is only one side the media care to hear from any more, and it is the one--as in this story--that pushes the culture of death.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 1:11 PM
15 Comments
15 Comments:
I don't know if this is profound or trivial or what, but I see in comments like that one about "nappies" a kind of weird forward-looking cruelty to oneself: "Yuck. If I were in that situation the whole meaning of my life would be having my diapers changed and keeping my heart beating." It's the kind of thing one _might_ excuse a teenager for saying. Once. But the teenager would then need a stern talking to. The unthinking cruelty of the very young to their future selves ("God, how I'd hate to be _old_") is something that happens but not something to be left unanswered. But when older people do it, it's absolutely chilling. It's like they already hate themselves, somehow, as though they are completely alienated from their future selves.
I think we need to look beyond what we consider other people's insensitivity, and keep our eye on the real issue here: whether a lot of interfering do-gooders should be interjecting themselves into a decision that is really one's own to make. Regardless of how one feels about assisted suicide (NOT euthanasia, mind you), we have yet to see a really convincing argument against it. Indeed, the opponents' strongest argument seems to be "if you can ask your doctor to help you to end your own life, then someone may force me to end mine" --- which is simply absurd. Unfortunately the opponents of assisted suicide have also managed to cloud the issues with religious nonsense, regardless of how much they claim their motives are purely secular. I personally have no quarrel with God; only with some of His followers. They’ll also trot out the tired old “slippery slope in Holland” argument, although if what happened in the Netherlands were that influential in America we’d be all be wearing wooden shoes and doing legal drugs on Main Street.
No one who hasn't been old yet can know what it's like, yet many of those who haven't, and don't, and can't, go on with these judgements and statements as if it weren't obvious that it's impossible for them to have any idea what they're even talking about. If that's not stupidity, illogic, arrogance, and insanity, nothing is. And people listen to them. People who walk among us, are allowed to drive, vote, hold positions of responsibility, reproduce...The whole syndrome truly is terrifying.
When I meet a geriatric who wants assisted suicide for themselves, right here, right now, or to be euthanized, I'll let SHS know.
With respect to the old-age issue, no one who hasn't been there yet knows how it's going to be. Yet those who haven't, and don't, have the arrogance to make these judgements and statements. If that isn't illogic and insanity, nothing is.
Well, "lanthe", here I am. I'm 70 years old AND in favor of assisted suicide.
Abortion and euthanasia are murder. Under the pretext of "privacy" and "choice" they have turned our primary advocates in life, our parents, children, government and physicians into the judge and jury of who lives, who deserves care and ultimately who will deserve to be "treated" to death. Again, keeping in mind, that abortion and euthanasia are murder, we have placed the most vulnerable human persons, the preborn, the disabled, and the elderly outside the boundaries of constitutional protection. Ultimately, unless we the people have the audacity to fight for the constitutional protection of these human beings, our constitutional government becomes a dead letter and we are all at risk.
Keep in mind, as well, that "favoring" assisted suicide, is to favor our government and our medical profession to be complicit in the legalization of murder.
Thanks and God bless you!
HistoryWriter: I said right here, right now, not at some hypothetical future time.
Cathy: Bravo! I'm not as focused on abortion (which I don't favor) as an issue per se as I am in the rights of those already born, but you've just pointed out the real significance of the anti-abortion movement, which has been publicized and regarded as an issue important to right-to-lifers, Roman Catholics, and "the religious Right," but really is part of a larger one that affects not merely embryos and foetuses.
Lydia: The same has occurred to me; you stated it eloquently. There seems to be something in people that makes them want geriatrics to die, and for thinking humans to do that is both inhumane and unnecessary, nor is it logical; they'll die, what's the hurry? They even project it onto themselves as you noted, and when they haven't been there yet and have no way to know how it will feel to be there; no matter how unpleasant it may seem that it will be, the fact is that they don't know yet; if people can't grasp things this simple and logical, is it any wonder that the world is in the state it's in? They can't, apparently, and it is, obviously.
lanthe, why are hypotheticals (e.g. "the government might kill me someday") OK for you, but not for me (e.g., "I may want to avail myself of assisted suicide someday")? And why do you persist in putting assisted suicide and euthanasia together like ham and eggs? They are two completely different issues. One is voluntary, the other involuntary, as you are well aware.
I've seen "euthanasia" occur in the same setting where the assisted-suicide mentality prevails, that's why. I'm well aware of how involuntary "euthanasia" is, and how impossible to prevent it it is when dealing with the "living will," "assisted suicide" mentality. If it were not, the danger would not exist, but what it doesn't work out that way. There is, unfortunately, a vast difference between the hypothetical, logical, theoretical, etc. and how things actually play out in reality. What's logical doesn't prevail when humans who are not as logical and ethical as some expect them to be are in the mix and in positions of control.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mr.Anderson gets it. I have taken care of the terminally ill on two occasions, and both of them have been v.close relations. There is no glory in suffering, it is horrendous misery for the one who suffers and a cheap deluded thrill for those who prolong the suffering of others - as did Agnes Boiaxhu, whose hospices were actually death chambers. And while Agnes denied the few wretches delivered at her doorstep even a clean sheet, and a painkiller, she herself made use of the best care money could buy all for free.
Where there is suffering, and where there are the vulnerable, there are sadists. I'm not a fan of the hospice movement, to start with, but this isn't about Boiaxhu, who is an example of those who are drawn to death, and who was wrong just as doctors and hospitals often are; it's about the sanctity of life and the rights of those who wish to live, which sanctioning assisted suicide, and "end of life" culture, has caused to be violated all too often.
"A determined group of pensioners"-- What impression is that designed to create?
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home