My mother was cornered. After four years of living with a rare autoimmune disorder that had partially paralyzed and largely blinded her, she was battling a systemic infection. She had been in the hospital for weeks. Antibiotics were causing her heart and lungs to fill with fluid, but stopping the drugs would have allowed the infection to take over. The doctors had nothing more to offer; and the nurses had told us, in a way that was laconic but compassionate, and unmistakable in its meaning, that they didn’t like the way this was going.
My mother was weak, slipping in and out of consciousness. Suddenly she said, very clearly, “I’m ready.” My sister, my husband, and I were in the room; we looked at one another, not sure if we’d understood. And my mother said, without opening her eyes but very firmly, “I want to die.”
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Much like the arguments against a woman's right to choose, those who oppose physician assisted suicide paint scary pictures of it's cavalier or sinister overuse and abuse, when the fact is, each of these decisions is a deeply personal and anguished one, for everyone involved, and never taken lightly. Their are times when it may be the right choice, and each of us deserves the right to make it for themselves.
Half of aborted babies are female. Where's their "choice?"
"Their" choice is awaiting the development of a nervous system that might in any sense of the word, be considered viable, at least in a rational mind. In the absence of that, I'd say it's up to the person most immediately involved, no one else.
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This is a very touching editorial. My family since I was very young was INUNDATED with illness and tragedy. The suffering if one could put a price tag on it would have been in the millions. I am voting yes, on the question of assisted suicide for the terminally ill. I know there are many arguments against it. I know I get a lot of glances that tell me they are not utterly for this option but I know how I feel and how I think.
I am not tied into any religious dogma or magical thinking. I do not think bad things happen to good people for any purpose nor do I think a magical being intervenes when he saves your child but lets an equally good child of someone else die. I am not torn by this question because I believe in the laws of nature, nature's DNA and nature's laws of physics. Even the Biblical Ecclesiastes says there is a time for every season; a time to be born and a time to die. Of that we are in agreement.
If an animal is euthanized when the suffering becomes enormous and incapable to reverse then we as animals should be able to do no less. I understand it is not always that simple BUT it is simple enough for me. Suffering with no chance of amelioration is suffering for no purpose.
Remember the show Ben Casey from the 1960’s? It ended with the wise aged Dr. Zorba played by Sam Jaffe writing symbols on a blackboard saying: Man, woman, birth, life, death, infinity. That is pretty much how I see it. There is a beginning and there is an end and we know it will happen to us all. Why not enjoy the life one has and when it ceases to be enjoyable but is inextricably lived with never-ending excruciating pain, end it. I am voting yes on Question 2.
I agree that this is a touching editorial, but it is not an arguement in favor of Question 2 as it is currently written. According to Question 2, patients have to be able to sign a form and ingest the dose of pills, so this would not apply to the author's mother who was blind and paralyzed.