The New Definition of Love: Help Your Parents Commit Suicide
A San Francisco man named John West has alerted the media--in a book--that he helped his parents commit suicide. From the story: For attorney and author John West, his parents were lifelong sources of comfort, wisdom and pride. But West has been keeping a 10-year-old secret about his parents from everyone, including his two sisters, which he is revealing for the first time in a memoir called "The Last Goodnights." West helped his terminally ill parents commit suicide, a crime in the state of California, where the deaths took place. In revealing his actions, West acknowledges he could face prosecution
Ten years later? Unlikely. In fact, the statute of limitations has passed.
And here's some compassion:
Of course he was interviewed on Good Morning America! Most politically correct outlaws are feted by the biggest of big time media.Though his parents had been active for most of West's life, their health deteriorated dramatically in the 1990s.
In 1998, Jolly West was diagnosed with cancer and given six months to live. Kathryn West, meanwhile, learned she had Alzheimer's disease.
Jolly West was the first to approach his son about "the plan" -- he wanted to end his life.
John West agreed to assemble a deadly cocktail of pills that he helped his father, who was 74, take on the evening of Jan. 2, 1999. By morning, Jolly West was dead, his death attributed by everyone except John West to cancer.Months later, his mother, who was 75, asked him to help carry out a plan of her own. With a heavy heart, he agreed, telling no one of his role in his parents' deaths, not even his two sisters. John West said that his mother was depressed at the time and on anti-depressant medication but that she was mentally capable of making the decision. "As she put it to me, 'I have a right to be depressed. I just lost my husband of 50-some years. I'm...my mind is turning into mush. What's not to be depressed about?'" John West said.
Perhaps West can be charged with practicing medicine without a license.
Labels: Assisted Suicide. Media Boosts. "The Last Goodnights"
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:21 AM
15 Comments
15 Comments:
Also featured on NPR's Diane Rehms show, audio here http://wamu.org/programs/dr/
He made claims that 'everybody is doing it'. He came across as very smooth and rehearsed. Active in 'Compassion and Choices'.
"Everybody is doing it." Oh, my Lord. Good parents don't let their kids get away with that excuse, now, do they. Everybody was doing it at Jim Jones' camp in Guyana in 1979 (right year?) and "everybody is doing it" re all kinds of things when they shouldn't and with disastrous result all the time, as has happened in historical events as well. When it's smooth and rehearsed, in my experience, it's bad gungee to start with. On top of everything else, how do we even know that either or both of his parents even ASKED him to do what he did. It's just his word that says they did, and the nor anyone else is alive to say otherwise. Sort of like Terry Schiavo's errant husband saying what she told him with (if I remember right) no one else even saying likewise. "I could go to jail" is cover for a possible agenda and a manipulative tactic, and even if the statute has run on his having done what he was asked to do, it hasn't on murder, and if assisted suicide wasn't legal when he did it, am I missing something here, SHS? Wouldn't it still be murder? With no statute of limitations?
Oh, boy, I just listened to it a few hours ago. I overkneaded my bread in anger as I listened to this man with very few emotional tone changes in his voice describe how he thought at one pont that the pills Dad had already taken wouldn't "do the trick," but he was falling asleep so Son decided to apply pain to wake him up enough to take some more. He did this, after considering a few moments, by pressing on the leg where Dad's recent surgery had been.
But what really pissed me off was not that, nor was it Rehm's fawning (she had the same voice and questioning techniques she uses for a fiction writer she adores, not the one she uses for a person with a controversial subject. It wasn't just a knee jerk-reaction against a person like this...I am always prepared to understand the compassion that leads some people to help in their loved ones' death.
But.. what really got me was this smug SOB talking about how *all* doctors do this, or at least know about it, and keep it a secret... nuts to those who emailed or phoned to disagree with him.
AND in response to those critics, he used scare words like "close-minded" and "conservative" to suggest that the only reason a doctor would NOT be involved in assisted suicide was a lack of proper open-mindedness. Or, or yeah, a lack of caring about their patients.
Ooooh.... AND his self-proclaimed mission is to carry on his parents' (both well-known psychiatrists, they were) respect for "the advancement of medical knowledge."
I haven't read more than this article. But based on that...
His mother was depressed because her husband had just died. At the hand of her son (unbeknownst to her). And she claims the death of her husband as the right to be depressed. So her son murders her as well, presumably keeping the secret that he had done the same thing to his father.
So he murders his father. Doesn't tell his mother. She gets depressed that her husband has died. So he kills his mother also.
Yikes.
Salt Racer: As a matter of legality, he hasn't admitted to murder, but assisting suicide. Morality is a different matter.
WJS: That is true. So here is what happened as he has admitted.
"So he assists the suicide of his father. Doesn't tell his mother. She gets depressed that her husband has died. So he assists her suicide also."
It all seems so "convenient" to me.
No argument from me. Plus, he is being celebrated for it, even though he is profiting (one assumes) from a book.
The SOB murdered his parents. End of story. I'm sorry, I don't care about semantics! I love my 71-year-old father who had cancer, and I'd die before letting him suicide, if it came to that. Mom and I have been beating at the doctors' doors to make sure he gets the mental health treatment he needs, and he *isn't*! But by God Almighty I would rather scratch both my eyes out than have him decide he's got a life not worth living! And I hate everyone who says bull crap about how I'm entitled to whatever, but not everbody's got the same beliefs as me. That's *crap.* It's a cop-out so they don't have to feel obligated to take care of the people who changed their diapers, fed them, put them through school, etc. And for those who say, "Well, *I* don't want to be a burden on my children," *I* say, balls up and *be* a burden! Think of the "burden" that your kids were to you! How about the first time you caught them drinking or smoking? How about their first car wrecks? You were their for your kids through thick and thin, so why the bloody hell do you obliged to let them off the hook so they don't have to be there for you?
Ray Brabury called it, in the beginning of Farenheit 451 - we're a disposable tissue society.
TE: More than semantics. There is a difference in law and I want my site to be clear for reasons you can understand.
But your underlying point is a good one. I don't know if you recall the post I wrote about the BBC presenter who supports assisted suicide because SHE doesn't want to be burdened BY her folks. Here's the link: http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog/2006/08/euthanasia-activist-dont-burden-me.html
Grumble. Yes, Wesley. I know, I should present the law as it really is. I'm sorry.
Oh! Yeah yeah yeah, I remember that chick! She peeved me off *so* bad... There's nothing quite like seeing someone resentful of his or her parents' age to make you want to smack someone.
Look, I'd disagree with someone who felt like euthanizing his dad if his dad had been an abusive person who beat the crap out of the kids on a daily basis, but I'd *understand* it. I'd sympathize, and want to help the victim channel his emotions into something positive, but I wouldn't ever say, "Gee, you're a bad person for wanting your abusive father to die." It happens. It's painful to have to live with abuse, and anger is a natural reaction.
But so many times I read about these people whining about having to take care of their parents and their folks were NOT abusive! The children are grown up and write wonderful stories about how Mom and Dad used to be the greatest people in the world, always taking care of the kids, always giving love and devotion... so we're repaying Mom and Dad by helping them to suicide before they become a financial drain on us.
Sickens me. I could *understand* an abused child's stance. I can't understand the stance of adult children who had good relationships and talk about how much they loved their parents.
I don't quite understand legally: If assisted suicide is not recognized as legal in a given state, why is a person's assisting the suicide not legally murder in that state? Is it because the method involved the person's taking something himself, supposedly voluntarily (though the business of hurting his sleepy father to wake him up to take more pills does rather skate on the thin edge on that one)? So if the method were a lethal injection, even if supposedly at the wish of the person, then one could refer to the act as murder? (Kevorkian was convicted of some degree of murder in Michigan even though it was supposedly at Youk's own wish.)
Lydia: The legislatures create the laws. The thinking probably is that the assisting person does not do the actual killing.
Right. I think what you're saying is that in that state there is a specific positive law against assisted suicide and that it is separate from the murder law; so a person who does what this guy did would not be eligible for a murder charge. I'm just guessing (and hoping) that this would not apply if he did do the actual killing.
How is the person not doing the actual killing? It's a death that wouldn't happen without the "assister"'s participation. Who IS doing the actual killing?
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home