If you want to refer to a child for the sake of sparing them pain as “mercy”, then it would be more merciful to just snap her neck than to let her die from neglect. And yet, I suspect most of the posters here would be unwilling to take such an action.
I acknowledge that there are people in greater pain than I. I would rather experience the pain that they experience than never experience anything ever again.
None that I know of.
Yes. The Vicodin my dentist prescribes me to deal with the pain I suffer due to decades of dental neglect doesn’t work as well as it used to. Some day it won’t work at all, and I’ll have other pains besides, and I’ll have to be put on something stronger, and that won’t work either, and eventually a time will come when I’ll have no choice but to suffer the pain.
No, actually. One of my dearest friends killed himself a year ago last week. He was a wonderful person, and the world is deeply lessened by his absence. I still can’t think about him without tearing up, without wishing I had been able to do something - anything - to help him relieve the hopelessness that he saw. He was a joker, a prankster, a person who laughed easily and loved the people around him. But Depression is a liar, and told him that there was no hope, and told him that it would never get better, and so he died.
He mentioned me by name in his suicide note, with instructions to those who found him to give back some rather valuable things I’d loaned him. I would gladly have given up those things to have him back, to have him have called me, someone, anyone before he made that fateful decision. He was worth so much more! But he didn’t think he was. Always thoughtful, that was our Jake. Bastard.
I’ve had days where I’ve been close to it, myself, before him. But having lost Jake, knowing what those who are left behind go through, I no longer allow myself that option even when I’m at my lowest.
But - here’s the rub, Smapti. He died because he listened to the lies that his brain told him. He was not physically ill, his body was not shutting down regardless of anything that could be done.
If his pain had been physical instead of emotional - if he had been living in physical agony that he would have known would kill him, instead of living with the lie that is Depression, I would have understood, I would have been happy that he was able to choose the time and manner of his passing. Just as those who love me will, I believe, be happy that when/if this stupid cancer becomes clearly victorious, I will have the ability and the right to make that final decision for myself.
I like to think that I’m hardened and cynical and lacking empathy sometimes, but I’m a piker compared to you (Smapti).
No way in hell would I ever force a person, let alone a child, live with that kind of suffering for some imagined moral stance.
I believe I could euthanize a loved one, personally, at some point should I decide there’s no further hope. The only questions would be where is the line and if I believe the person would rather be dead than suffering.
I hope desperately that someone would be willing to do the same for me should it become necessary. Life ends. Period. For everyone.
The parents surprised me in this case – I’ll admit that I typically think of super-devout Christians as being the sort who want to extend life at all costs, regardless of the amount of suffering it causes. Having read the linked stories, they didn’t come to this decision lightly. The child may be too young to fully understand death the way an adult would, but it’s apparent that she understands suffering all too well. Good on the family for going public with their story…I do hope they don’t face any legal troubles as a result (though it seems that the little girl’s doctors and nurses are understanding).
So you have never sat at the bedside of someone who is dying (not in the abstract, but imminently) and yet you are confident that their suffering should be prolonged as long as possible? Your pain is (mostly) controlled, but you sneer at those who are beyond effective pain management, and consider their desire for the pain to just end is “cowardice”?
I have lost loved ones to suicide, and it is brutal beyond words. But so is watching someone slowly die while they beg for peace. I am sorry that your mother tried to end her life.
As I said, i am conflicted about the case of this little girl. The family does have hope, though - they are apparently believers in an afterlife.
The right of the terminally ill to refuse treatment predates assisted suicide. The right of parents to make medical decisions for their child predates assisted suicide. Therefore, there cannot be a “slippery slope” from assisted suicide to what’s happening in this case.
You might make an argument them the right of the terminally ill to refuse treatment is a slippery slope to assisted suicide and Right to Die (which are not the same thing, but we’ve been over that already). People who have the right to refuse treatment are indeed taking it a step further and saying, “If I have the right to refuse treatment and I’m going to die soon, then I should have the right to end my life on my own terms before I starve and dehydrate to death, painfully.”
But if there is a slope, you’ve got it pointed the wrong way 'round.
In most cases, no, because most of the time, a child who needs a blood transfusion is not suffering a terminal illness. If they are, then yes, the parent has the right to refuse it. Legal intervention in JW cases (and other religious objections to medical treatment) is done when the medical treatment has a decent chance of meaningfully prolonging or saving a life. That is not the case in this instance.
I’m very sorry about your mother. But you’re letting your own personal issues cloud your beliefs. You need to address that on your own. Have you received counseling?
I don’t know how you live with *yourself *either.
The treatment itself could risk her as well. If you read the article, it’s very iffy. It’s very painful, and not very likely she’ll survive it. Her family and her doctors considered the options, and decided this was the best one. Who are YOU to override their decision?
(And no, I’m not a parent. Just someone who doesn’t presume to know what’s good for everyone else)
I HAVE seen a loved one die of cancer. It’s not pretty. I also saw my grandmother slowly decline. It was horrible and it was a relief to know she was no longer in pain. A long, painful death isn’t pretty to watch, Smapti, and if you ever saw that, you’d know it. So don’t presume to speak for everyone. You’re acting from emotion, not logic.
And I’ll add that I miss these people every day. But my pain at losing them is less important than an end to their suffering. (Fuck cancer)
That’s horrible. I’m sorry you had to go through that. So, you think the people choosing this option are abandoning their loved ones, with no regard to the feelings of those left behind? Like your mother tried to do to you?
I at least understand where you’re coming from now.
My mother survived one suicide attempt…and succeeded at the second.
Yet…I’m wholly in favor of assisted suicide for people with very severe illnesses for which there is no hope of recovery – so long as certain safeguards are in place, to protect against coercion.
The California law has sufficient safeguards to satisfy me. At this point, I feel comfortable with the terms of the law, and how it is being applied.
I’m very uncomfortable with applying it to a four-year-old child. But I’m not going to say no to that application. Not automatically. I’d want to know a lot more about the case. If properly-accredited medical ethicists say it’s okay, I’ll probably agree with them.
Next month, it will be one year since the death of my father from kidney failure. He refused dialysis. If he had not, he might get still be alive today. In constant pain, because dialysis is a profoundly unpleasant experience, and bedridden, because his other health problems pretty much made it impossible to get out of it. When give the choice between maybe an extra year of life, or dying with a minimum of pain and indignity, he chose the easier death. And as much as I miss him every day, I am so inexpressibly glad that he chose to die in the manner he did, rather than tenaciously clinging to a life that could only offer him, and everyone he knew, ever increasing amounts of pain and suffering, and I hope, if I am ever in the same circumstance, that I will have half the courage and integrity demonstrated by my father.
What I fear, however, is that I will prove a grasping, heartless coward such as yourself, desperately clinging to whatever few extra seconds of life I can, without regard to the cost I impose on everyone around me in my desperate, futile, and inexcusably selfish desire to wrong just a little more out of my life, long past the point where those last few days or weeks can be meaningfully spent. Which is, in a way, the thing that I fear most: that I will leave my life as you left it: cowardly, hypocritically, and without concern for any other human being.
Once more with feeling, and then I promise I’ll drop it: Julianna’s case is NOT assisted suicide or “Right to Die”. It is NOT covered under the End of Life Options Act signed into law in California.
What they are choosing is hospice care. They will keep her as comfortable as possible at home until she dies, without trying to cure her incurable condition.
The case really has nothing to do with the topic of this thread.
In light of WhyNot’s post, I’d like to qualify my previous post: I do not consider my father to have committed suicide under any rational definition of the term. I was responding using Smapti’s definition, which is, too say the very least, far from rational.
My blunder, and I apologize. I hadn’t caught that. In that case, Smapti’s point is even more vacated. I’m still uncomfortable about this happening to a four-year-old…but I’m absolutely certain that…I’m not absolutely certain! I do not know what the “right thing to do” is, and there might very well not be any “right thing” at all. As I said, so long as the accredited medical ethicists are satisfied, I am. If a properly licensed hospice facility is taking the case, then I’ve got no beef.
A friend of mine had a father who was very, very sick. The man (the father) chose to stop eating, and went into a hospice to let himself die. This is legal, even without the new CA law.
All I ask from the law is that this remain a legal option. If someone wants to live, it would violate my sense of morals and ethics to coerce them to die. So, if that’s the way you want it, come the horrid day…it should be your right and your choice.
The converse is also important: if someone doesn’t want to live – and they’re making the choice on a rational basis, not out of depression or other impaired mental function – then it’s immoral to compel them to live.
Here I’ve been bitching and moaning about Winter coming. Reading everyone’s comments here have really put things into perspective. I should be happy my loved ones are still with me and healthy.
I did not mean to imply that Julianna Snow’s case was assisted suicide.
I should have made clear that it was meant as a rebuttal to his (again, Smapti) stance that life is always better than death, no matter how horrific that life may be.
Regardless of all else, I still hold that every mentally sound person has a right to choose when to die. No else has to live that person’s life.
And sometimes responsible people have to make that same determination for someone else. Refusing to allow someone else to die because it will cause YOU some emotional pain is cowardly and evil. I miss my mother every day and as much as her death fucked me up emotionally, I would never want her live another day in suffering. She deserved a better death than she got and she damn sure deserved a better life.
Perhaps I am, but I don’t see that anyone is arguing from an emotion-free standpoint here. At the same time you’re accusing me of not thinking logically, you advocate for suicide on the basis that dying of cancer isn’t “pretty to watch”.
I’m not afraid of a painful death. I know that the final years or months of my life are probably going to be painful, and I’m probably going to be bedridden and alone. That doesn’t frighten me nearly as much as the idea that it will eventually end.
I’m not going to say anything that will diminish how you feel about your mom’s suicide attempts. I simply want you to realize that logically, if you can understand other people can have greater pain, you can understand that some people would rather escape from that pain than, unlike what you’ve decided, feel it.
I’m posting, not to participate in the Smapti show, but as an excuse to post my sig.
If you are ever in crisis, if you ever need a voice in the the darkness, please reach out. Someone will catch your hand.
Smapti, I find your declarations that you understand pain like people with bone cancer to be unconvincing in the extreme.
It seems to me that you reject all of this out of hand because to do anything else would seem to exculpate your mother, and that’s something that you can’t bear.
Fair enough, I suppose, but you should acknowledge you inability to be at all objective, and back away from the conversation.
