A Nicer and More Gentle Type of Suicide
With physician assisted suicide proving to be pretty much impossible to pass through the California state legislature, suicide assistance advocates are now switching their tactics by putting on a happy face through an “aid in dying” ministry. The bill would allow terminally ill California adults to have an option to attain a lethal prescription if they had a prognosis of less than three months to live.
Representatives of the new End of Life Consultation Service say they will advise the terminally ill on how to better access pain treatment and end-of-life care. Clergy and trained volunteer counselors also will advise the terminally ill against violent suicide, instead helping to identify a path to what they describe as a peaceful death.
A counselor will remain present to comfort a terminally ill person taking their own life, however, if that person wishes, program representatives said.
“Volunteers will neither provide nor administer the means for aid in dying,” said The Rev. John Brooke, a United Church of Christ minister from Cotati. “Clients will obtain and self-administer these means. We will not break or defy the law.”
Putting all the manipulative jargon aside, this bill actually has the potential to be more sinister in it’s nature than physician assisted suicide, as it lends itself to opportunistic targeting of undesireable, terminally ill individuals. Countering the assisted suicide mentality, clinical studies have shown that some suicidal cancer patients who were treated for depression actually resulted in significantly decreased suicidal thoughts or totally alleviated their desire to die. Lastly, I’ve always wondered if people who fight for the right to take their own lives ever invested in something commonly called life insurance? My intention is not to judge the individual person choosing to take their own lives but the vanity and self-love that often goes along with suicide, and maybe it would be nice to leave those left behind a little more than just nice memories of a dignified patient who chose to do things their way.
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If you want assisted suicide–just go to Holland. I once watched a documentary about a man going to Holland for suicide. They showed him getting on the plane–all the way to his dead body on the table. It was very sad. The man was older, a few health problems, but easily boarded a plane and besides using a cane for balance–seemed to do quite well at moving around. He was just tired of living and thought his life would just continue to get worse–so he decided to kill himself before he had to suffer more. He had no religion, no children, and his wife had passed away a few years earlier. He was the god of his own life.
Comment by tara — September 18, 2007 @ 7:54 pm