Bryan, I'm interested in your opinion.

[barry2952]

GWB has started to erode another of our rights. In Oregon the people voted to allow assisted suicide. Now GWB wants to take away what most of the residents of Oregon view as a dignified end to their lives.

I remember all he conservatives running off into the woods screaming about the floodgate of suicides the law would cause. It total, the number of suicides has reached the epidemic proportions of 170 people in all the years this law has been in place.

Bryan, you told me that your personal experiences with death have left you somewhat compassionate on this subject. How do you feel about a person's right to end their existance in a manner that they wish?

My only experience with suicide was my wife's uncle. He had a vascular problem that gave him intense, constant, pain. He got out of bed at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning and went into his closet and dug out his service revolver. He stuck it in his mouth and blew his brains out while his wife was asleep in the next room. Isn't there a better way to end your life?

I think that GWB should leave this one alone. What happened to the Compassionate Conservative?

 

[mach8]

Here in California it's normally some "liberal" judge that cans what is voted for. If they can't beat you at the polls they go buy a judge.

 

[Randeaux]

This is a subject that is very close to me.(and somewhat painful)
In 1985, my Mother was entering the terminal stage of her ailment, she was almost 39. I was about to turn 13 when this was going on. In November,1984 she had recieved a kidney transplant which had been rejected by early January of '85. By that time, between the dialysis treatments and literal pharmacy of medications she was on, the hypokaliemia episodes(BTW @ that time were beginning to happen on a more than once a week basis.), the collapse of her circulatory system from all of the "medical abuse" her body had endured,she had had enough. She had opted to start the end process to her treatments. From what I've been told, she stopped her treatments about her 39th birthday at the end of May,1985. She had made this decision against all medical advice given to her. SHE DID. Now, a little info about my Mother's religous beliefs, She was raised in the Penticostal faith. She was a very devoted Pentecost. She had very strict beliefs concerning her body and it's relationship with God. She was fiercly anti-abortion (in her healthier days.) and if she was alive and in good health today, she would more than likely have been "pro-life" in all possible aspects, including the euthanasia issue.
In fact she was so involved with issues concerning her body and religion, she refused to have one of her fingers amputated about a month before she died.
(That was her last conscious decision ever in her life.) She wanted to have her entire body when God took her. So, to make this long,horrible incident short,she decided,while she could make the decision,to be snowed for the rest of her life.To be "snowed" is to be given enough medication to take the pain and even consciousness away until nature takes its course. She still hung around for a month and a half. I was the last person to see her alive.
She was a bald,incoherent,babbling mess from her medications. She didn't even seem to be aware I was there. Her right arm was rotted to the elbow from the the cut on her middle finger that she recieved 50 days earlier. All she could mumble was prayers to God to take her from this world. The last thing I heard her say was "When you take me, cover Randy with your blood and guide him." She coded-out at 5:15 am August 10th,1985. I was at her side.
To say you are against euthanasia, is wrong. You are not in that situation, you don't know what you would do if you were in that situation until it comes around.To tell others what they can/can't do with their lives is playing God.
We do not have even a clue as to what we, ourselves, little yet what someone in that situation is going through. Be it someone like my Mother, or Terri Schiavo in Florida,or anyone in an irreversible coma or terminal condition.
We have no right at all to tell anyone how to make decisions concerning their lives.
Years later, I had found out her motive for this tragic action,She knew the end was coming anyways,yet she sacrificed herself so that myself and my family would not have to suffer the year or so she would have had left anyways.

* This post was the hardest of anything I had to put words to, but this post is the most soul-cleansing of anything I had to put words to also. For almost 20 years, I could not talk about these days I had just described.I felt I had to respond to this thread in honor of my Mother:


Brenda Berniece Rodriguez
26 May 1946-
10 August 1985
I know she is shining down on me from heaven. (NO APOLOGIES)

*I'm not telling anyone how to make their decision on this subject, just showing one person's point of view.

 

[Katshot]

Yes, medical science has progressed to a point where in many cases, doctors can keep your heart beating, and your lungs breathing. But is that the same thing as being ALIVE?
Over the years, I too have been unfortunate enough to endure several freinds and family members deaths. And all but a few were long, drawn-out dramas that only served to keep the hospitals and doctors busy. They did nothing for the actual patients and their friends and families. Also unfortunate, is the fact that in most cases, these long horrible dramas were played out due to the family members being unable to say good-bye. They were the ones that told the doctors to "do anything you can", in a vein effort to hold on to their loved ones. From the outside looking in, if those families could only see that their efforts only prolonged the suffering of the patient, and increased the stress on their own families.
We have to allow our freinds and family members to die with dignity. Allow them to leave us in the way that THEY feel is right for them.
Fortunately, I have not lost either of my parents yet as Randy has, and my heart goes out to him for what he had to endure. But as I said, I HAVE lost many close friends and other family members, and that HAS given me a new respect for a person's right to die with dignity.

 

[barry2952]

Hey Bryan,

I posted this several days ago asking for your response. Cat got your tongue?

 

[MonsterMark]

As long as it is clearly defined, I don't have a problem with it.

People should not be able to call a friend over and say hey, I've been really depressed. Here's a gun. Put me out of my misery.

Let's call it a "means" test. If you meet the requirements: ie.) expert doctor opinions, psych analysis, etc., then have at it. In many instances, it would be the "compassionate" thing to do.

Otherwise, like abortion, it will just turn out to be another way to de-value life.

In the majority of the cases, the person involved is not even capable of rendering their own decision, so who gets to decide the when,where,why of your life no longer being worthy of existence? Let's have an open national debate, and as a society, we should collectively decide something as important as this. Not have it legislated from the judicial bench, as all the liberals seem to want judges to do, in order to achieve their means.

So discuss it. Draw up specific legislation. Have it ratified by the people. Pull the trigger, so to speak.

 

[SC_Steve]

ummm... why is this even an issue. I mean, how are you going to be prosecuted for killing yourself?

Just do it if you don't want to live... why do you need someone to hold your hand to end your life? That's just morbid

 

[Katshot]

You're missing the point. How about this scenario:
You get a phone call at work, it's the local police telling you that your wife was just involved in a car accident, and she's at the hospital. You rush over there only to be met by the ER doctor telling you that he's sorry, she coded once but they were able to get her back but there's nothing more he can do. Your wife is now brain-dead and hooked to a ventilator.
You and your wife both loved life, and lived it well. Because of this feeling about life, you both were always in agreement that you would never want to be kept alive by a machine. Maybe you were smart and signed a living will, maybe had a DNR signed into your will, maybe none of the above.
What do you do?

Think this doesn't happen? Think that the DNR or living will would take care of the decision for you? Think again.

 

[barry2952]

When my mother was terminal the paramedics routinely ignored DNR's. She lived the last two years in a morphine fog. I would get calls at all hours from her stating that there were people in her room, taking things from her. A very sad way to end your life.

I believe that several of you have missed the point. The point is that the law is already on the books in Oregon and GWB doesn't want to talk about it, he wants to reverse it, just like he'll reverse Roe v Wade if he gets the chance.

Ashcrofts final fling with eroding our rights is based on the fact that Federally controlled drugs are used in the "Assisted suicide" process and in his small mind the only use for drugs is to save lives, not end them.

This may solve the problem. You could use legal, over the counter, sleeping pills and have someone cinch a plastic bag over your head and let you die of "natural causes" without perscription drugs. How absurd.

Bryan, that is the most centrist of anything you've ever uttered. There's hope for you yet.

 

[MonsterMark]

Bryan, that is the most centrist of anything you've ever uttered. There's hope for you yet.

I decided to let you enjoy a weekend for a change without riling you up.

I'm not the mean 'ol hate-mongering right-winger that you think I am. I may surprise you from time to time.

 

[barry2952]

Seriously, you couldn't tell near the end of the election.

 

[mespock]

I decided to let you enjoy a weekend for a change without riling you up.

I'm not the mean 'ol hate-mongering right-winger that you think I am. I may surprise you from time to time.

Yah, I'd have to agree. Bryan is a guy you can get along with even when you are in a bar and he's pushing Bush while you are tugging for Kerry. LOL

He can be very civil from time to time.

Remembe he does drive a Mark VIII. "There's Hope"!

Maybe for Christmas Santa will give him a new heart LOL.

 

[RRocket]

I'm curious about the laws in the US. If someone is in an accident, and is only being sustained by a machine, you can't tell them to turn it off, and let them die peacefully? This is something that we are able to do in Canada. This is illegal in the US?

 

[barry2952]

That proceedure is legal in the US but that is not assisted suicide.

As I understand it, the Oregon law can only be implemented with the oversight of two doctors that both agree that the patient has less than six months to live.