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I don't disagree with you here..It is indeed YOUR life, and YOU can end it however and when YOU want to.
You have ignored the bulk of the post you quoted.
What if I am not physically capable of ending my own life? What if I am paralyzed by a stroke or from an accident like Christopher Reeve?
Does that mean I no longer have rights? That I can be put into a small room in an institution for the rest of my life against my will? Kept alive when I would rather die?
Treated like a caged animal? Fed on a schedule, bathed on a schedule, waste removed on a schedule.....every aspect of my life controlled by others? It's time to get up, it's time to go to sleep, it's time to change your diaper, it's time to get a bath, it's time to eat. You eat whatever they decide to feed you that day.....like it or not. Spending every minute of your life at the mercy of an intitution's schedule. "Big treat today, Annie. The Billy Joe Bob Singers are here today, gonna roll you on out to the common room to listen to some music! Won't that be nice Annie?" Never mind the fact that I HATE country music. Whooptie do.....wasn't that fun?!
Being kept like an animal at the zoo.....with no choice.....tell me that isn't abuse.
Living the life of a criminal in a prison.....the only difference.....the decor. Cheerful little bedspreads, pretty curtains on the windows, colorful paintings on the walls.....but a prison none the less.
Why I shouldn't I be able to choose a nice, little injection that would end a life that I perceive as torture?
You, on the other hand, are free to choose to live the rest of your life like that......YOUR choice.....not mine or anyone elses.
New here. I am in full support of allowing people to end their lives with dignity and without pain. An Australian doctor named Philip Nietschke (sp?) wrote the (in)famous Peaceful Pill Handbook which mentioned a particular class of drugs (barbiturates) often used for animal euthanasia that would work for people as well. Just like there is a pill on the market that causes a safe and medically sound abortion (mifepristone, aka RU-486), there is a pill that causes a safe and medically sound suicide. One major problem with allowing this, as usual, is that certain societies (such as the so-called Land of the Free *tm*) still base their civil judgments and laws on religious arguments and ambiguous philosophical definitions of a "soul" and "sanctity of life." To paraphrase a (somewhat irritating) 1960s pop song, their contention is "only God can give a life; only God can end it again."
But abortion is now the law of the land in the United States and several other countries; despite religious conservatives' continued attacks on women's ability to access these services, they cannot legally prohibit or punish someone for having an abortion. Suicide, however, is a different matter entirely, but hopefully someday it too will be one of the last remaining taboos to fall before people can be fully regarded as citizens of a free society. What we used to call back-alley abortions -- the gruesome self-attacks women seeking to terminate a pregnancy using things like coat hangers, drinking bleach, throwing themselves down a flight of stairs, etc. -- have now extended to what I call back-alley suicides, ending one's own life using similarly dangerous (and often unreliable) methods. I am sure that deaths of pregnant women did result from these actions, and there probably will never be any fully sufficient data on how many self-imposed deaths written up as suicide or accidental were really self-imposed abortions that caused an end to the woman's life. Yet even though we have in many cases abandoned the conservative mentality that would prompt a woman to resort to such dangerous tactics (which, like suicide from gunshot, wrist-slashing, drinking chemicals, etc., may NOT have caused death but permanent injury and a WORSE quality of life), the double standard still exists with regards to autonomy over one's body for one thing vs. another.
Someone else brought up abortion on this thread and was told it was off-topic. I disagree. I don't think you can differentiate the same underlying principles that have allowed abortion to become law of the land from those which would allow for safe and legal suicide, much less the underlying principles of the opposing arguments. However, it is not only religion that poses a barrier to suicide being legal, but "the bottom line" and the reign on purse strings that the powerful Medical Industry (tm) holds with regards to influence in our society. Their biggest fear is being rendered obsolete and therefore their profits drying up, especially with something they cannot control. If, after all, a mass of people all decided to consume hemlock -- a naturally occurring herb known as the "suicide plant" that cannot be patented (because it is naturally occurring) the same way even Nembutal can, or cyanide culled from bitter almonds (both of which are illegal in the United States and probably other places too), and thus trademarked and sold by pharma reps, then how would they generate trillions of dollars from people who decided to stop taking their Avandia, their Nexium, or especially their Prozac, Ritalin, Celexa and Paxil? I'll bet the company that makes Adderall, whoever it is, is probably not too happy about abortion either -- after all, that's a million "potential children" they won't get to bribe quid-pro-quo psychobabblers to convince mom and dad could benefit from "treatment" for AD(H)D!
I have always felt this way about the laws against marijuana too. But that is for another topic, another day. All of it, though, comes under the general heading of my body, my choice, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness not necessarily including life. I believe anyone, regardless of their condition or whether or not they even have one, should be allowed a safe method of suicide -- either Nembutal or growing their own hemlock or bitter almonds (cyanide) -- otherwise you end up with what people resort to now, the coat-hanger felo-de-se.
Give me liberty, give me death -- and no... wire... hangers!
Sounds reasonable, although I rather hate the idea of having to seek anybody's permission to end my life. It's mine, and it's my decision, my life is my property. However, in the real world, we have to do this by some book of rules and regs.
The thing is claudhopper, you don't. It IS your body, your life, your property, and your decision, and in "the real world" we take care of ourselves and our own, with no need for a book OR rules, that only comes when people insist they need a doctor involved.
What if I am not physically capable of ending my own life? What if I am paralyzed by a stroke or from an accident like Christopher Reeve?
Does that mean I no longer have rights? That I can be put into a small room in an institution for the rest of my life against my will? Kept alive when I would rather die?
Treated like a caged animal? Fed on a schedule, bathed on a schedule, waste removed on a schedule.....every aspect of my life controlled by others? It's time to get up, it's time to go to sleep, it's time to change your diaper, it's time to get a bath, it's time to eat. You eat whatever they decide to feed you that day.....like it or not. Spending every minute of your life at the mercy of an intitution's schedule. "Big treat today, Annie. The Billy Joe Bob Singers are here today, gonna roll you on out to the common room to listen to some music! Won't that be nice Annie?" Never mind the fact that I HATE country music. Whooptie do.....wasn't that fun?!
Being kept like an animal at the zoo.....with no choice.....tell me that isn't abuse.
Living the life of a criminal in a prison.....the only difference.....the decor. Cheerful little bedspreads, pretty curtains on the windows, colorful paintings on the walls.....but a prison none the less.
Why I shouldn't I be able to choose a nice, little injection that would end a life that I perceive as torture?
You, on the other hand, are free to choose to live the rest of your life like that......YOUR choice.....not mine or anyone elses.
Go ahead Annie53..choose, just do it yourself (make it YOUR choice, not mine or anyone elses)...as for the rest of your post all I can say is no relative of mine will ever end up in a place like that...what's abuse is that the family has forsaken these elders, or they wouldn't be there to begin with.
Go ahead Annie53..choose, just do it yourself (make it YOUR choice, not mine or anyone elses)...as for the rest of your post all I can say is no relative of mine will ever end up in a place like that...what's abuse is that the family has forsaken these elders, or they wouldn't be there to begin with.
(Edited for content):
Quote:
What if I told you insane was working fifty hours a week in some office for fifty years at the end of which they tell you to pass off; ending up in some retirement village hoping to die before suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time? Wouldn't you consider that to be insane?
Go ahead Annie53..choose, just do it yourself (make it YOUR choice, not mine or anyone elses)...as for the rest of your post all I can say is no relative of mine will ever end up in a place like that...what's abuse is that the family has forsaken these elders, or they wouldn't be there to begin with.
How naive, clueless and cruel of you. I was one of those family members.
My father suffered a skull fracture in WWII, started having seizures in his late forties, in his mid seventies his mental faculties started to decline rapidly.
First I hired someone to care for him in his home.
When I could no longer find anyone to do that, I placed him in a private home run by a woman who was in her early seventies herself. By this time he no longer knew who I was. She took very good care of him. She was wonderful and became a close personal friend of mine. Years later I helped care for her as she died from cancer.
Then my father became violent.....he punched out that dear lady one day......she could no longer safely care for him.
Time for a nursing home. Guess what.....the nice homes refused to take him because he had become extremely violent. I was forced to put him in a home that would take him.....even then I had to lie about his behavior.
It would take three people to deal with him, change his diaper.....he punched, he kicked, he bit anyone who tried to touch him. {He still had his teeth.} Sooooo....they tied him into a gerri chair during the day and restrained him in his bed at night. He could no longer speak.....just grunted and screamed. They also had to keep him heavily sedated just to deal with him.
This once proud man was now less than an animal. If it was up to me, I would have had him euthanized.....damn right I would have, without one ounce of guilt.....given him back his dignity.....but my hands were tied. It haunts me to this day that I could do nothing to relieve his suffering.
What was I supposed to do? Quit my job to try to care for him myself? How exactly could I, a 115 pound woman, handle him myself when it took three people to deal with him in the nursing home....even after he was drugged up?
If I had quit my job to try to care for him......just who was going to support me? Hmmmm? Who was going to pay for my home, food, utilities, health insurance? Gee.....do ya think my employer would have held my job for me for a few years while I tended to my father?
Finally, his brain could no longer regulate his salt levels, he was going to die unless a shunt was put in to drain fluid from his brain. I declined.....let him die.....please let him die. I asked the doctors to put him on a morphine drip, even though he appeared to be in a coma.....they didn't even argue.....they just did it.....I am thankful for that at least. It took two weeks for him to die.
Sanctimonious, holier than thou people like you make me sick. How dare you judge others by your own circumstance......get the hell out of your little bubble and look at what circumstances others may find themselves in.
People need to butt out and mind their own business. I know with every ounce of my being that my father would have preferred death to what he had become....but I wasn't allowed to do that for him without ending up in prison myself. Ummm, yeah, what a compassionate country we live in.
BTW.....people need to take brain injuries very seriously, look at what is happening to football players and boxers. At least my father wasn't put into that living hell by playing a silly game.
One other thing, my Dad had an identical twin brother, who lived ten years longer than he did and was sharp as a tack until the day he died at the age of 91. He never suffered a brain injury.
Oh.....and one more thing.....shame on my father for not having the wherewithal to end his own suffering.
There are people in positions of power that truly believe humans are the scourge of the earth, and the fewer of them, the better. Therefore, we must be vigilent to make sure there are checks n balances to not go overboard with this right to assisted suicide. Perhaps that is what purehuman is concerned about, which is a legitimate concern.
That is why this should remain within the perview of each individual state and their constituency.
Such a cold response! She just bled out all over you, and you don't care. Unbelievable.
Call it what you want claudhopper, we all bleed, and you're totally wrong when you say I don't care you have no idea....vigilence will not save everyone, and there will be incidences of "going overboard" as you put it, it's called collateral damage, which I cannot condone when we're talking human lives.
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you have no idea....vigilence will not save everyone, and there will be incidences of "going overboard" as you put it, it's called collateral damage, which I cannot condone when we're talking human lives.
