Time to bring the Roman Catholic Church to an end. It's nothing but a gutter religion as O'Malley & Company force their bankrumpt morality on non Catholics when some of their own priest can't keep their pants zippered when around children.

Shouldn't we be able to make medical decisions without government interference?  Shouldn't we be able to buy a pill as easily as we can buy an assault weapon?

"The Catholic church is waging an all-out battle against what it calls a “grotesque threat to the elderly and sick.” "  /  /  /  If only they'd put that effort into battling pedophillia they might have some credibility left beyond their core of true believers, but, as with abortion, if you oppose assisted suicide, then, by all means, do not have one.  For others it should be an option, and for those who are suffering, and whose physicians agree, it is a rational and humane option.  / / / Vote yes on 2, and hope you and you loved ones will never need to use it.

Interesting to know their points of view, but as in all things, voters will vote their own wishes and conscience. 

As a conservative, I want the option to leave this life if or when it is futile to try any longer to keep me alive, especially if I'm in unmanageable pain, mentally incompetent or my family will suffer as a result. 

I want that choice for the pretty much the same reasons I believe in a woman's right to chose.  This is MY body and it is the one thing, and perhaps the last thing, I should have total control over.

Given a choice, quality of life or quantity of life which would you choose?

Both sides of the argument have points. Perhaps I've become too jaded toward the "health system." My first thought on reading about the medical establishment's opposition was "Of course. Dead men pay no more bills."  You can't go around killing the goose (terminal illness) that lays the golden egg.

As one who knows suffering all too intimately, who has seen it up front and personal for many many years I support assisted suicide in CERTAIN cases to be determined by the person, a living Will, and between  their doctor and themselves BEFORE they are incapacitated to make that decision.  Like any contract it is not entered into lightly but seriously and with great thought.

It is easy to come out decidedly against it if one has gotten through life among the lucky favored few, or if a hierarchicy sees profit in suffering BUT if one has borne witness to the depths of human pain and if we relieve our animal friends of that suffering but human beings made to grit one's teeth and endure it than to me that is anything but moral.

Again, I stand for the separation of church and state.  Again I state my position:  If you do not want an abortion by all means do NOT have one; if you do not want to marry a person of your own sex then by ALL means do not marry them; if you think relieving a person of tremendous pain and suffering is immoral then by all means do NOT do it BUT keep your religion for you and leave these moral decisions to those who must bear them.  We are a species of free choice because we have the ability to make that choice.

No one is God. Let God, if you believe there is one, speak for himself but let humans make their own poliitcal choice about how much pain one can endure in life!

It is the ability of modern medicine to artificially prolong life that has created the problem this proposal addresses. Most of the cases that I am aware of involve people who wouldn't have survived long enough to face this decision as recently as fifty years ago. Allowing terminally ill people to choose their moment if they wish goes some way to restoring balance.

Old religions never die. They are like old soldiers they just fade away.

The problem isn't so much the last 6 months of life.  It's something much more frightening.  It's the thought that I might wind up spending a year or more in a nursing home in close to a vegetative sight while the companies that own these facilities rake in a lot of money.  Anyone who has seen a nursing home knows that they do little more than warehouse very sick elderly people at my own expense, or at the expense of government.   In truth, these public resources should be spent on health care for kids and preventive care programs.

I don't want others to have to change my diaper several times a day and I certainly don't want to deplete my savings for perverted belief that this will somehow add to the dignity of my life or carry forth the will of God.   I've seen too much of this nonsense with elderly relatives and 2 elderly neighbors who asked me to be their medical proxy during their final months of life.  In all but one case, I was certain these folks wanted to check out long before they actually expired.  Why do we all breathe a sigh of relief when an elderly relative or friend finally passes away after such a long and protracted illness in a nursing home, or even at home.  Because underneath it all, we know that this is a fruitless and cruel.  How any responsible religious person can say this is God's will is beyond me.  

Give me an early departure pill if the time ever comes when I'm about to head to the nursing home.    

There are powerful secular reasons for opposing this deeply flawed bill. please visit www.second-thoughts.org for opposition from disability rights organizations based on social justice. Our concern is the proposed law is both unnecessary, and dangerous for elders and people with disabilities and serious illnesses. It's unnecessary because each person already has the right to refuse treatment, food and water, and to have palliative care, even to the point of sedation. It is dangerous because the financial pressures and requirements of managed care lead to inadequate health care and ancillary services, and thus a poor quality of life. The examples of Oregonians Barbara Wagner and Randy Stroup, who were offered assisted suicide rather than chemotherapy, comes to mind. The "safeguards" included in the law, modeled on the Oregon and Washington statutes, have proven ineffective. The diagnosis of terminal illness -- likely to die within six months -- is often wrong, or simply ignored. There is no mental health screening required to detect treatable conditions that might cause suicidal feelings. Nor does the law include monitoring or enforcement provisions to prevent abuse by family members or doctors. Finally, we believe that a law that singles out some people (such as old, ill and disabled people) for assisted suicide instead of suicide prevention is not in step with Massachusetts' progressive tradition as a leader against discrimination.

What Cardinal O'Malley doesn't realize is that my life belongs to me--not to him or to any church. O'Malley can make any rules he chooses to for Catholics, and Catholics are free to abide by those rules. But what I choose to do with my life is not the Cardinal's business.

Rev. Tim Kutzmark put if perfectly. That $900,000 would be spent by Christian groups to defeat this question is a true sin. That money could have been used to help those in need, something that the Catholic church seems to miss with their palatial living accommodations at the Vatican and other places. Those individuals who are religious and believe in the Church's preachings will already vote against the measure. The fact that the Church is unable to evolve is a big reason why so many have left.

It’s disappointing that in this article, the Boston Globe has reduced the assisted suicide issue to a religious/secular, conservative/liberal dichotomy, when the actual issue is so much richer.  Assisted suicide touches on access to health care and patients’ rights to effective treatment, the civil rights of and discrimination against people with disabilities, public policy regarding suicide prevention as well as abuse of elders and persons, and other timely issues.

 There are many reasons to oppose assisted suicide aside from "moral" or religious grounds.  Firstly, assisted suicide laws are not needed because anyone has the right to make an advanced directive to have medical treatment, food and water withheld should they become incapacitated, and to receive palliative sedation to ease the dying process. Secondly, the poorly-crafted "safeguards" in the law only hide problems, protect doctors from potential liability, and facilitate abuse by insurers, institutions and relatives. As well, assisted suicide laws discriminate against old, ill and disabled people. When non-disabled people say they want to die, they receive suicide prevention services, social and psychological treatment, and may even be locked up to prevent a suicide attempt. But when elders and people with disabilities say they want to kill themselves, they're seen as behaving rationally. Worse yet, while most suicide attempts fail, assisted suicide nearly guarantees that the suicide attempts of disabled people will succeed. This double standard is a concrete example of how disabled people are seen as less valuable, and the common belief that it's better to be dead than disabled.

 It’s inaccurate to imply, as the article did, that those who have close contact with dying people will choose to support assisted suicide.  A 1997 study showed that the more doctors learn about and use the techniques of palliative care, the less they support assisted suicide.  The fact is effective palliative care can prevents nearly all suffering at the end of life; if a person is uncomfortable s/he is not getting good medical care.

 A decision on question 2 should not be based on the say-so of a priest or a doctor, nor on the hollow promises of autonomy and control offered by supporters.  Voters should examine the political and social factors, where profit drives medical decisions, quality of life may be affected by cuts to government programs, and some people are considered better candidates for suicide than others.

If we dedicated the coming year to engaging in conversations, questions, research and action about the links between mercury amalgam dental fillings and a host of chronic diseases and disabling conditions that rob people of their selves, their souls, their spirits, their health and livelihoods and wellbeing and mobility and independence, we would have a lot less need for these kinds of wrenching discussions. I know this from personal experience, over the past year of acute escalating multi-systemic illness, and 20 years of fibromyalgia and associated challenges, that are now gone. I also know this from my mom's recent passing from Alzheimers' in CA, where I learned to my horror that her fillings were degrading, vaporizing, and falling out during the past four years in which her symptoms were escalating. She had a great life, and a good death surrounded by loving family and friends in her residence with hospice, but an awfully hard last four years. The morning of her memorial service, I got my dad to a biologic dentist. For more information, look up Hidden River Cloud Network/One Challenge. This is not just a public policy issue, but a friends and family issue. Choose health.

I really don't care what these various religious sects believe. I don't care if they're for assisted suicide or not. But they can keep their fingers out of my private life. It *is* my life and I want the option. I may never use it, but it's not the business of these churches to tell me that I can or I can't. Why can't they mind their own business? Why do they try to control the lives of everyone -- not just their members -- everyone!

Take a poll of chaplains of all faiths who have attended to patients and family member