People ask us here in Tucson,
“How do you stand the 110 degree summer heat? “
We desert rats think to ourselves –”What wimps for asking!” –
yet our polite answer is, “We go up to the High Country!”
The High Country is only a few hours out of town. One nice place in the High
Country is Ramsey Canyon, world-known for gorgeous hummingbirds
And dorky looking frogs.
The Ramsey Canyon trail is steep and uphill, but worth it for the view. The
country is a mix of desert and mountain pine, because it is where the
Sonoran desert meets the Rockie Mountains.
About half-way up I see a mama turkey with six babies. I did not know
that turkey babies like to climb up mama turkey’s back for rides.
I make friends with a squirrel. He jumps around in Shakespearian iambic
pentameter … Under the Greenwood tree …
who loves to lie with me …
Here shall we see no enemy
but winter and rough weather …
Da Dum da dum da dum da dum…
I forget that the Canyon has bears and puma and I take the colors of
the many greens and the sweet way the trail winds.
I watch a spider happily at work.
I spot a gentle deer in the meadow, and watch him as
he leaps like a springer spaniel to eat some leaves.
I follow him into tall grass,
all the time all spaced out watching him, all rapturous like St John of the Cross
wrote,
I was so caught up and rapt away,
In such oblivion immersed,
That every sense and feeling lay
Of sense and feeling dispossessed;
I do not notice a coiled-up rattler at my feet –
his hissy sound like water rustling –
his hooded mean little eyes –
and his awful open serpentine mouth!
YIKES! Run away!
Suddenly formerly friendly forest is forebodding!
Every tree looks like a monster!
Friend-squirrel stops to eat; he knows my mind is playing forest tricks
on me. He also knows I stepped on the snake first.
Did St John ever get so spaced out that a rattler snapped at him? I think
about that as I wander up to the top of the mountain and watch
civilization below. I take it in, no longer thinking, just feeling the
transcendental experiences St John knew so well:
I entered – where – I did not know,
Yet when I found that I was there,
Though where I was I did not know,
Profound and subtle things I learned;
Nor can I say what I discerned,
For I remained uncomprehending,
All knowledge transcending.
It is time to leave, but in the new stillness of my heart,
I know that I will come back to High Country sometime soon.
The other day it rained in the Sonoran desert. It took perhaps a month to build up to it; the desert is not a place for rain.
The sun shines 360 days a year, it hardly ever rains. Rain comes inbetween great lengths of sun; waiting for rain is like walking on pebbles that are too far apart.
Without rain, the plants in the desert grow brown. They lose their tops first — their tops shrivel up and fall off and then the whole plant goes into shock and struggles to survive. The big saguaro cactus turn into drying watermelons; the paws of the prickly pear go from thick and chubby and childlike, to old and dry and thin.
Meanwhile, the sun keeps shining in its fake-friendly way, forcing the animals into panic mode. They drink every bit of standing water left; when that disappears, they suck water from cactus; when that dries away, they must go without water. Snakes, lizards, turtles – they are the most fortunate because they can go without drinking for the longest time. The liquids in their bodies become so concentrated as to be poison. The mammals –bobcat, pack rat and coyote — are less fortunate. A local puma, so desperate for water, comes to a children’s park to drink from the swimming pool.
A terrible tension builds up in the desert as the plants struggle against wilting, drying and premature death, and the animals slow themselves down to survive. There is no water, no water anywhere. Arizona has great beds of dry sand where rivers can run, and long stretches of dry creeks that run from the mountaintops to the valleys, but they run dry between rains.
Then one day, the storm begins to spin itself! Big dramatic white clouds take days and days to form in the clear turquoise sky like the overture of a grand symphony.The Navajo call the spirit of rain Yei. On his body are bars of rain, on his wings hang bags of water, his legs are dark clouds, his hands and feet are lightning. At first Yei brings his gifts slowly, gently.
Then the whiteness turns strange unearthly colors: –grey, black, blue, pink, orange– like a horrible gigantic bruising wound in the heavens.
Thunder roars – something has to let loose and something must crash and shake down from the sky! there’s too much tension! So it rains, how it rains, rain like you’ve never seen before!
The people of the Tohono T’oham Nation, the Native American people here, say the desert smells like rain. Now as the rain comes down in great solid sheets of water, it does. The desert has the musty odor of wet creosote, and it smells like rain.
Then two great arcs of color form over the Catalinas: a double rainbow: red, yellow, blue, violet. Bright light of color, lighting the soft pastels of the desert into the colors of jewels: emerald, citrine, ruby, sapphire.
The riverbeds fill up and develop currents that drown automobiles and people. The little dry creeks run again.
It’s dark and very cold for us outside, but we run out barefoot anyway to see the rain. Everyone is out for the party – bobcat, snake, lizard, coyote, puma – everyone’s out for a drink – just because it rained.
Recently Al Pacino played Jack Kevorkian in a HBO movie called “You Don’t Know Jack.” Kevorkian was also the subject of an HBO documentary called simply “Kevorkian” which aired June 28, 2010.The ladies of “The View” talked about this movie and they viewed things in an emotional way.
Whoopi Goldberg described Jack Kevorkian as a “doctor who had invented a machine to help terminally ill people voluntarily end their lives painlessly.”
“It’s a very lonely thing to take your own life. You need help with that. When you’re very ill, and you’re in pain, and the life quality is horrifying, you need help with that,” said Joy Behar.
“War” a painting by Kevorkian
Barbara Walters talked as if Kevorkian had been hounded by the law unfairly and was heroic in his efforts to stand up for what is right.”They took his medical license away,” she said. “They prosecuted him three times. They finally found him guilty and he served seven years in prison. I interviewed him four times. He was interesting and rather weird. He fully believed people should have this right. He didn’t have to go to jail. He could have copped a plea.”
Then we were treated to a clip from the HBO movie in which Kevorkian explains how he turned away 90% of the people who want his help, and how he demands a second and third opinion before he “helps” them die.
REALITY CHECKS:
WHOOPI GOLDBERG GOT IT WRONG.
Kervorkian did not help terminally ill people end their lives voluntarily and painlessly. He took over the job of killing himself, which is why he got convicted of homicide.
Jack Kevorkian claims to have killed 130 people. According to the New York Times, “At least half of the people whom Dr. Kevorkian helped to die were not terminally ill. And a number of those driven to seek his help probably could have had their suffering eased.” (”Depressed? Don’t Go See Kevorkian,” The New York Times, September 16, 1995).
The vast majority of Kevorkian’s victims were women. Some were in their 30’s and 40’s, not terminally ill but suffering from multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, spinal cord disorders, and so forth. Many were not in chronic pain. They were often lonely, isolated depressed women who could have benefited from counseling and anti-depressants.
Kevorkian killed two people by his own hand with lethal injections. When he did this on national television, even the Michigan courts had enough. (”60 Minutes,” November 22, 1998). It was not an assisted suicide because the patient did not administer poison or gas to himself, although he gave permission. Under the law, it was a homicide.
“Nearer my god to thee” painted by Kevorkian
THE HBO MOVIE GOT IT WRONG.
Kevorkian never got “second” and “third” opinions about his victims. He did not have his victims seek out psychological counseling before they died.
Some families of his victims complained about this to authorities and to the fact that Kevorkian never consulted them before “assisting” their loved ones. In any video of any “suicide,” you can see for yourself that Kevorkian is cold and offers no emotional support to anyone. He is nothing like the warm person Pacino portrays.
Psychologists did not determine if Kevorkian’s victims were competent to make the decisions to end their lives. One woman had been in a psychiatric hospital twice in the year before Kevorkian killed her (”Suicide’s Partner,” The Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1992).
The doctor of Kevorkian’s first patient, Janet Adkins, testified: “I felt Kevorkian’s plan was totally inappropriate, and that, in my opinion, Mrs. Adkins could expect several more years during which she would be able to maintain self care and enjoy the types of experiences (spending time with her grandchildren, outdoor activities, etc.), she was currently enjoying.” (Inventor of Suicide Machine Arrested on Murder Charge, The New York Times, December 4, 1990.)
BARBARA WALTERS GOT IT WRONG.
Barbara Walters said Kevorkian was “rather weird.”
This man “chopped out” the kidneys of 45-year-old Joseph Tushkowski, according to Oakland County (MI) Medical Examiner L.J. Dragovic, after he died of poison from an intravenous injection. The death was ruled a homicide. Kevorkian took out this man’s kidneys even though he knew there was no chance that they would be assigned to a living donor. [UPI, 6/8/98]
As a medical student, Kevorkian wanted to be around death as much as possible, and liked to take pictures of dying people’s eyes. He used cadaver blood in his paintings. Go look at his paintings at this PBS website: www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kevorkian/aboutk/art/.
The ladies of “The View” present themselves as caring individuals. They reach millions of people every day. It’s time they stood up for the most helpless among us, or at least made sure they get their facts straight about Jack Kevorkian.
“Choices and Compassion” is a group that promotes assisted suicide. They want Arizona and other states to pass laws that allow doctors to poison their patients.They used to be “the Hemlock Society” but now they are “Choices and Compassion.”
One of their slogans is “LET ME DIE LIKE A DOG.” They believe we offer dogs “compassionate choices,” and should do the same for Grandma.
This is hard for us simple Westerners to understand.Most of us are not intellectual enough, advanced enough, or living life on a high enough plane of compassion to compare our Grandma to our dog.
Our dog does not look back on his life when he is dying the way Grandma does. Dogs don’t say goodbye to other dogs or to their children — in fact, the dog’s children probably got sold off years ago. Dogs don’t analyze their past mistakes. Dogs don’t make out wills. Dogs don’t think about much when they’re dying because they don’t know they are dying. The truth is dogs don’t think much even when they are not dying , which is why most of us do not compare our Grandmas to our dogs.
To the ordinary dumb person, it sounds as if Choices and Compassion would put Grandma in the car and drive her to a veterinarian and then have her put her to sleep. She deserves a compassionate death because she, like a dog, is no longer wanted or needed because she is dying. But is this truly the compassionate death “Choice and Compassion” believes it to be?
What if we could ask a dog’s opinion? After all, in real life your dog cannot express his opinion when you put him to sleep.
If you could ask your dog if he wants to be put to sleep, he would no doubt say “I do not wish to be put to sleep. No thanks. I’ll take my chances with life. I’ll crawl under the bed. I’ll eat grass for a few days. I do not wish to be put to sleep. That’s your idea, not mine. I’m sorry you can’t stand to see me so sick, but that’s your problem. You’re being compassionate to yourself, not me.”
Most dogs hate to go to the vet for any reason whatsoever. They really do not wish to go to the vet to be put to sleep.
Dogs want to live. How do we know this? They avoid death. They hide from danger. They run away from fires and mountain lions. They growl or attack when another dog threatens them. Dogs take a pro-life stance all day long. They believe “where there’s life, there’s hope.”
While you will not necessarily hurt your dog’s feelings by offering him death by lethal injection or poison, you will definitely hurt Grandma’s feelings if you do this. Grandma can think through such things, and she may decide you are after her money. If she dies now, she won’t waste your inheritance on nursing home bills and doctors. You won’t have to wait around for your money.
If you gave your dog a vote about turning over his health care and end-of-life issues to the government, your dog would vote no. The government already runs dog pounds that routinely execute three million dogs and cats a year for no reason except humans do not wish to take care of them. Dogs in “shelters” get killed for what dogs consider silly reasons — because humans move into apartments that don’t allow dogs or because dogs are not obedient or because they are old or because they are sick. This would not seem like choices and compassion to dogs. Is that the government model we want for dying people — round them up and put them in nursing homes or hospices and execute them? That’s the compassionate choice the government gives dogs.
Someone once observed that your average dog is nicer than your average human. This is true. When dogs threw their lot in with us thousands of years ago, they definitely got the short end of the stick.
Do you really think the way we treat dogs is all about compassionate choices?
On Jane St. Clair’s website - you will find articles against assisted suicide, and poetic essays and stunning photographs of Arizona. See the link “Desert Songs.”
Jane is the author of Walk Me to Midnight, a fast-paced suspense murder mystery that critics have call “taut, penetrating, and impossible to put down - a novel that will keep you reading all night long until you get to its horrifying conclusion.” Yet it’s a serious book guaranteed to make you think –some scenes from this book were included in a scholarly journal about contemporary fiction.
This novel defies classification - published by a Christian book company, it has been banned in some Christian bookstores. The tone of Walk Me to Midnight is more spiritual than religious. It includes chapters on New Age vision quests in Sedona, Arizona.
Walk Me to Midnight is available for at online stores (used copies are under$6!) For more information about Walk Me to Midnight and to read an excerpt from Chapter One, see Walk Me to Midnight.
Thirty Logical Reasons Against Physician-Assisted Suicide first appeared in the November 2008 election cycle as a series of ads in Washington state, where assisted suicide was on the ballot. Over 7,000 people have read this article.
Reason #30- No on Assisted Suicide
Sunday, November 2
Today’s AD-Some terminally ill people recover and get well.
A hospice nurse told me about a lovely 24-year-old given three months to live. Five years later, she is still with us and the mother of a child.
Every good doctor knows that medicine is an art as well as a science. No one can predict with 100% certainty who will live and who will die. Although it is rare, some terminally ill people can and do get better. Everyone who works in hospice can tell you at least one story attesting to that. They personally knew a patient who beat the odds and is still vertical today.
Offer them suicide and you take everything away from them. You take away hope. You take away their lives.
Reason 29: No on Assisted Suicide
Saturday, November 1
Today’s Ad: Doctors make mistakes in medical care.
This week, Mississippi Supreme Court has upheld a $4 million award to the
family of a woman misdiagnosed with cancer and then given a lethal dose
of painkillers.The 66-year-old woman received massive doses of painkillers at a hospice for cancer, which an autopsy showed she never had, according to court
records. See http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20081025/NEWS/810250356/1001/news.
That’s just this week’s news. It happens all the time.
The JOURNAL of the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (JAMA) Vol 284, No 4, reports that medical errors may be the third leading cause of death in the United States at 225,000 deaths per year. Half are medical mistakes, including 2,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery; 7000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals; 20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals; and 80,000 deaths/year from infections in hospitals.
Do you want to give doctors the right to administer suicide medications? Hey, mistakes happen.
Reason 28- No on Assisted Suicide
Friday October 31
Today’s AD-Assisted suicide laws give societal approval to suicide.
These laws create a world where everyone agrees it’s okay to check out at certain times. In fact, we’ll help you do it. We’ll make it legal. Society approves. This creates more suicides among people who are not sick, and leads to increased medical killings. It creates incentives to do less medical research and to save money on medical care by offering people poison pills. This is already happening in Oregon.
In the Netherlands, assisted suicide has moved into mercy killings of deformed babies, and into allowing mentally ill people to kill themselves rather than seek treatment. There is no reason to believe the United States would do any better if such laws are passed here.
Reason 27- No on Assisted Suicide
October 30 Thursday
Today’s AD No one, not even incapacitated people, needs assisted suicide.
This is the worst case scenario argument from people who want assisted suicide laws. It goes like this: people who are paralyzed cannot commit suicide themselves. Therefore, they are denied a right. Therefore, we have to pass assisted suicide laws.
First of all, assisted suicide laws are written only for the terminally ill. Someone like Christopher Reeve and Terri Shiavo may have been too incapacitated to commit suicide but they were not terminally ill. Assisted suicide laws have nothing to do with their cases.
The vast majority of people who are terminally ill do not become incapacitated until the very end. They have plenty of time to kill themselves without help. If they ask friends and doctors to help them commit suicide once they become incapacitated, they are often looking for approval of their act or sympathy for their condition. It’s no one’s job to kill another person, and unfair to ask that of doctors and family members.
Reason #26- No on Assisted Suicide
October 29
Today’s AD You already have control over your final illness.
Many people believe that assisted suicide laws are bad for society, but they want them just in case they personally need them. They want control over their dying process. It’s a me-first attitude.
What they do not understand is that they already have control of their dying process. My own grandfather pulled out his feeding tubes and respirator himself, telling his doctor and his son that he was an old man and his time had come.
You already can kill yourself any time you want. You have the right to refuse any medical treatment at any time. You can choose pain relief only. You can tell your hospice nurses and caretakers to keep everyone out of your room, if you want control over who sees you when you are sick. You already have control, and you don’t need assisted suicide.
Reason #25- No on Assisted Suicide
October 28
Today’s AD-We can come up with better ways of helping the dying besides assisted suicide..
A young man was diagnosed with HIV in the Netherlands. Even though his doctors told him he could live many years free of symptoms, he asked for an doctor-assisted suicide. No one talked to this young man and helped him work through his feelings of depression and of being overwhelmed by his own diagnosis. His culture accepts suicide, so that was that, and he ended his life in despair.
In our own country, oncologists routinely walk away from cancer patients they have been treating for months or even years once they are terminal. The person’s death becomes a personal failure on the part of the physician, even though it’s nothing of the kind. The only failure is the doctor’s lack of caring and lack of courage to stay involved. Caring is not always curing, but every bit as important. If you only think in terms of curing and winning battles against illness, you walk away from your “losers” and you walk away from caring.
We can come up with better ways of dealing with death than this, but we never will if we pass assisted suicide laws.
Reason #24- No on Assisted Suicide
October 27
Today’s AD Oregon offers terminally ill people assisted suicide in lieu of medical care.
Oregon and the Netherlands, where assisted suicide is legal, keep expanding it. This passage, written by Dr. Herbert Hendin in Psychiatric Times, sums up what’s happened in the Netherlands:
The Netherlands has moved from assisted suicide to euthanasia, from euthanasia for the terminally ill to euthanasia for the chronically ill, from euthanasia for physical illness to euthanasia for psychological distress and from voluntary euthanasia to involuntary euthanasia (called “termination of the patient without explicit request”).
The Dutch now end the lives of psychiatric patients and deformed babies.
In Oregon, medical systems are already offering people assisted suicide in lieu of chemotherapy. See “Oregon Offers Terminal Patients Assisted Suicide in Lieu of Medical Care,” FOX NEWS, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,392962,00.html.
Reason #23- No on Assisted Suicide
October 26
Today’s AD Assisted suicide laws give more power to the government, not the individual.
On the surface, it looks like you gain a new “right” when you vote for assisted suicide. Actually, you turn over more power to the government and medical establishment.
You already have the power to commit suicide at any time. But if you sign a paper agreeing to have your doctor do it for you, you are turning over your power to someone else. You are creating a mechanism for the government and medical people to enter into decisions as to who lives and who dies. You are taking away the power of the individual.
Reason #22- No on Assisted Suicide
October 25
Today’s AD-Assisted suicide laws removes incentive to do medical research.
If cancer patients routinely kill themselves rather than undergo treatment, you have removed a reason to perform medical research to cure cancer. Research scientists receive funding based on how much money illnesses are costing insurance companies and how many people suffer from them. If an illness is rare, it gets less funding.
Also, think about the parents of terminally ill children. They will move mountains to cure that child. Rich parents fund research. Average people find breakthroughs themselves, like the parents in Lorenzo’s Oil.
Suicide laws remove such incentives for medical research and human progress.
Reason #21- No on Assisted Suicide
October 24 Big financial interests are often behind assisted suicide laws.
When are you dead? When your brain dies? When your heart stops beating? When you stop breathing? When you are in an irreversible coma? No one really has come up with a working definition of death, so the concept gets abused, especially since death involves money.
The longer we keep sick people alive, the more they cost us. Last illnesses cost more than any other medical category. If we convince you that you have no hope for a future, we save money on your care and make money on your organs. If we convince you to die early, we inherit your money more quickly. The government saves on Social Security. Your company saves pension money.
So. Are you going to let such financial interests promote assisted suicide as a new public policy?
Reason #20- No on Assisted Suicide
October 23
Today’s AD Christopher Reeve considered assisted suicide.
In his autobiography,”Still Me,” Reeve describes the despair he felt after becoming paralyzed in a riding accident. Within seconds, he went from being a handsome, extremely physically fit person to one who could not move from the neck down. He could speak and drink through straws, and that was pretty much it.
He asked his wife to help him commit suicide, and she said, “I understand how you feel, but you’re still you and I love you.” Hence, the title of the book.
What Reeve confesses is that he was testing her to see if she was willing to take over his care.
He went on to live a life of example. Not only did he write an inspiring book, he also acted in and directed several movies and worked tirelessly to get funding for victims of paralysis. He never gave up trying to walk. He became a real superman.
Reason #19- No on Assisted Suicide
October 22
Today’s AD Assisted suicide asks too much of loved ones.
In the movies and on TV shows, the dying person is always in extruciating pain and crying out for help to the only one who will listen: an old friend or spouse or daughter or whatever. The writer presents the scene as totally hopeless unless the loved one helps the dying person commit suicide.
This is, of course, absolute nonsense.
The correct response is, “I can’t do that, but I can stay by you, love you, help you through this, make sure you get pain relief, counseling and help. We can get through this together. Please don’t ask me to hurt someone I care about. I love you.”
Reason #18- No on Assisted Suicide
October 21
Today’s AD-Assisted suicide laws put poor people at risk.
This is the Martin Sheen argument against assisted suicide. He is making radio ads in Washington partly because he believes that assisted suicide laws will put poor people and those without health insurance at an extreme disadvantage within the medical system. Think of the money we’d save on CAT scans, x-rays, medicine, nursing care, rehabilitation, disability payments, etc if we had this cheap alternative: suicide.
Martin Sheen is right.
Reason #17- No on Assisted Suicide
October 20
Today’s AD-Suicide interrupts a natural path to wisdom.
At the very end of human life, everything happens faster and better. When you don’t have much time, you prioritize. People become more authentic when they are dying, which is why courts give so much credence to a person’s “last words.”
Hospice nurses have shared many stories with me about how people come to realize new things about themselves, what was really important to them after all, who loved them and whom they really love, what the meaning of life is and what the afterlife, if any, looks like to them. They may go through a period of regrets, sorrow and mourning before they find wisdom, but it’s there. If you cut off your life too soon, you miss your chance for wisdom.
Reason #16- No on Assisted Suicide
October 19
Today’s AD-The first Nazi victims were terminally ill people.
The Nazi party used very emotional propaganda films about terminally ill people who needed the compassion of assisted suicide. Today we Americans are watching similar movies like Million Dollar Baby, which got the 2004 Academy Award for Best Picture. The most effective Nazi film told the heart-breaking story of a doctor’s wife who begged her husband to kill her.
Once they sold the Germans on assisted suicide and had some doctors on board, the Nazi party moved into the concept of “useless eaters.” Germany was in a terrible depression in the 1930s, worse than America’s. “Useless eaters” were criminally insane, severely handicapped children, very very elderly, etc. Once they eliminated “useless eaters,” the Nazis went on to killing —- well, you’ve got the idea.
For more information, go to article “Hitler, the Nazis and Four Arguments Against Assisted Suicide.”
Reason #15- No on Assisted Suicide
October 18
Today’s AD-Assisted suicide laws cannot be written so as to prevent abuse.
This is the reason the American Medical Association opposes assisted suicide. Doctors know that there is no way to control assisted suicide once you make it legal. There is no foolproof way to write the law without opening it to abuse.In Oregon and the Netherlands, for example, assisted suicide laws require two physicians to “sign off” on a suicide. However, some doctors “sign off” routinely without examining patients. One Dutch doctor hurried up a suicide because he needed the bed for another patient. You can’t write a law that covers every contingency so there’s no way to control what happens to your patients once you open that door.
Reason #14- No on Assisted Suicide
October 17
Today’s AD-Dying people can be treated for depression.
Many people who are terminally ill are not depressed.At the end of her life, my sister became like a poet or artist, sitting outside and just taking in the beauty of everything. She got an enhanced sense of life, everything became so incredibly beautiful to her because it was not going to last very much longer.However, some terminally ill people are depressed and talk about suicide. If they get antidepressant medications, a good psychologist and a caring spiritual counselor, they can recover emotionally. They often find the courage to face the final work of dying: reconciliations, settling of old disputes, telling others how much they have meant to them, and so forth. Suicide is always an act of despair, and it’s not good to leave the planet in despair.
Reason 13- No on Assisted Suicide Today’s AD October 16 -The arguments for assisted suicide are all based on emotion.
Emotion is a kind of thought, but emotions are unreliable. We feel empathy when we see a dying person. Our first impulse is to hurry it along, end his suffering. However, behind that emotion of empathy hides a judgment: that person’s life is not worth living and needs to end now.
We can have a similar emotion when we see someone very very old or in a wheelchair or someone like Terri Shiavo. That life is not worth living. Are you feeling compassion or making a judgment?
Reason #12- No on Assisted Suicide
October 15
Today’s AD- Assisted suicide sets a bad example for other people.
A handsome young man, the father of two young children with a beautiful wife, a brilliant scientist passionate about his life’s work, was dying much much too young. Yet Randy Pausch inspired us all with his incredible “Last Lecture.” He knew he was dying, but he looked back to check on his two young sons, to make sure they and his wife would be all right, and to leave them and all of us all with a little bit of wisdom. When he was toward the end, his doctor said, “Randy, this may be it.”
He answered, “I’ll get back to you on that.”
Those were his last words.
He took control and he did it his way. We are all grateful for his example.
For more information on Randy Pusch, go to http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/.
Reason #11- No on Assisted Suicide
Today’s AD
October 14 -Insurance companies love assisted suicide.
About 27% of Medicare’s annual $327 billion budget goes to care for patients in their final year of life. That’s a lot of money, and one poison pill is so much cheaper.
You may be young and think that this is a great way to save money in the middle of a health care crisis. The insurance companies believe that too. They like doctors to help people commit suicide. It saves money.
However, what’s going to happen when it’s your turn to die?
Reason #10 Today’s AD October 13 -The American Medical Association opposes assisted suicide.
Here’s the American Medical Association’s statement as it appears on their website:
E-2.211 Physician-Assisted Suicide
Physician-assisted suicide occurs when a physician facilitates a patient’s death by providing the necessary means and/or information to enable the patient to perform the life-ending act (eg, the physician provides sleeping pills and information about the lethal dose, while aware that the patient may commit suicide). It is understandable, though tragic, that some patients in extreme duress–such as those suffering from a terminal, painful, debilitating illness–may come to decide that death is preferable to life.
However, allowing physicians to participate in assisted suicide would cause more harm than good.
Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks. Instead of participating in assisted suicide, physicians must aggressively respond to the needs of patients at the end of life. Patients should not be abandoned once it is determined that cure is impossible. Multidisciplinary interventions should be sought including specialty consultation, hospice care, pastoral support, family counseling, and other modalities. Patients near the end of life must continue to receive emotional support, comfort care, adequate pain control, respect for patient autonomy, and good communication.
Reason #9- No on Assisted Suicide Today’s AD October 12 -Allowing assisted suicide will increase teen suicides.
American teens kill themselves at a rate of about one every two hours. About 19% of our teens tell researchers they have experienced depression, and half of those have had suicidal thoughts. Our kids take three times the number of prescription drugs for depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions than do European teens.
By okaying assisted suicide laws, we are telling our teenagers that suicide is okay and necessary sometimes. Given the above data, do you really think that’s a good idea?
News flash: Martin Sheen opposes Pro I-1000 see http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/sep/08093007.html.
Reason #8- No on Assisted Suicide Today’s AD October 11 - You don’t need a doctor to commit suicide.
Assisted suicide gets lumped into abortion issues, but the two are very very different. You don’t need a doctor to commit suicide. There are many ways to do it, and it’s not my place to show you how (even though I am a crime writer and know a lot about painless quick poisons and such).
Suicide is an intensely private act. You don’t need to involve anyone else, and society is better off not approving of it.
Reason #7- No on Assisted Suicide Today’s AD October 10 - Skilled hospice caregivers can control physical pain.
Some people are more afraid of physical pain than of actually dying.
There is no need for that fear because of modern pain control methods. I watched my parents and sister die from cancers that had spread through their bodies, and they did not feel pain, even in their last days. Morphine and other drugs did the trick, and they were not even that sedated.
One reason hospice nurses can control pain is that they don’t have to worry about addiction and can use higher levels of medications. They know how to look for and take care of blockages and other problems. Please do not be afraid of pain.
Today’s Ad
Reason #6- No on Assisted Suicide October 9 - The American Nurses Association is against assisted suicide.
Official Position: “The American Nurses Association (ANA) believes that the nurse should not participate in assisted suicide. Such an act is in violation of the Code for Nurses with Interpretive Statements (Code for Nurses) and the ethical traditions of the profession. Nurses, individually and collectively, have an obligation to provide comprehensive and compassionate end-of-life care which includes the promotion of comfort and the relief of pain, and at times, foregoing life-sustaining treatments.”
Today’s Ad #5- No on Assisted Suicide October 8 -All humans have dignity, even the sick and dying.
One old man was taking care of his wife who had Alzheimer’s disease. His friends said, “Why do you put so much into her care? Can’t you see what she has become?” The old man answers, “Maybe, but I remember who she was.”
No matter where you are in your life, you are still human and you have the dignity of being human. Babies are helpless but they have human dignity. People with terrible handicaps, scars, amputations, mental illness — they still have human dignity. No one and no sickness can take your human dignity away from you. You are still someone’s spouse, someone’s parent, someone’s child, someone’s loved one. No matter what happens to you, you are still you. No one can take that from you, no matter what.
Today’s Ad:
Reason #4- No on Assisted Suicide
October 7 - Suicidal people have a diminished capacity to make the decision to end their lives.
If you tell a psychologist that you are suicidal, he or she has the power to put you in a hospital because you are a danger to yourself. Legally, you have diminished capacity and are unable to make important and rational decisions.
If you say a dying person has a good enough reason to kill his/herself, why not a person in a wheelchair? Someone whose family was killed in an accident? Someone who faces financial ruin? Suicidal people need treatment for depression, not help committing suicide.
Today’s AD
#3- No on Assisted Suicide
October 6 – Assisted suicide puts pressure on dying people to end their lives
One hospice nurse told me that he has seen families fight over estates and money even as their relative lay dying. The attitude was: Please get this over so we can get our inheritance.
Likewise, in the Terri Schiavo case, her ex-husband stood to gain money and freedom to remarry once she died.
On the other hand, it is very hard for most people to stay near someone they love who is dying. If you want to get your pet’s life over, multiple that by thousands when it’s a person you love. You really want it over, but that’s making it about you. The loving attitude is “I want every possible moment with you. Take your time.”
October 5, 2008 Today’s Ad
Reason 2 -Assisted suicide makes doctors accessories of fact to homicide.
“Accessories before the fact” is a legal term. Let’s say you buy someone a gun, knowing that he plans to kill someone with it. You are an accessory before the fact of homicide and could go to jail for doing that. Similarly, when a doctor provides a dying person with poisons, knowing that the person is going to kill himself, he is an accessory before the fact.
Assisted suicide laws are written so as that all doctors get off the hook for helping murder someone. It becomes a legal parsing of morality. Isn’t that what we hate about lawyers?
October 4, 2008 Reason 1 Assisted suicide creates a world without love.
When we think of people who showed great love and compassion — the Good Samaritans and Mother Teresas of the world –we think of how they stopped and they took the time to help others.
When they saw suffering, they didn’t shoot the person to put him out of his misery. That only creates a world without love.
Do you want your kids to grow up in a world like that? When people are so sad they want to die, they need love and understanding.
People who argue in favor of assisted suicide and euthanasia often say they and others should not live if they are a burden and require help in feeding and self-care. They say that such a life lacks dignity and autonomy.They say handicapped people are a drain on the health care system.
At this month’s International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in Washington, DC, many speakers were handicapped or else they were people with profoundly disabled family members, including the brother of Terri Schiavo.
I copied 17 provocative quotes from their speeches here.
Bobby Schlinder, director of the Terri Schiavo Foundation:
Rolling Stone published an article about Terri=s Avegetable life … her dead fish eyes … and her doped up smile …@ This was my sister they were talking about.It was just one example of the media=s profound prejudice and bigotry against handicapped people, and their slander and defamation of my sister.
My sister was never dying or on life support. We took her everywhere in her wheelchair. The media distorted her condition.
The diagnosis Apersistent vegetative state@ dehumanizes people.It is a subjective diagnosis. My sister was not a diagnosis.She was a human being with a profound brain injury.
The number one question that I am asked all the time is AWho would want to live like your sister?@That question is used to leap frog into killing people.But the question was never about Terri.It was always about us and about how we are going to treat our most vulnerable.
Diane Coleman, founder, the Not Dead Yet organization
Every time read I the phrase “burden of care” I feel a threat.
We are sometimes asked, “Who are you - the disabled – to take away our rights to euthanasia?”However, the reasons for euthanasia are disability-related – things like loss of autonomy, loss of dignity.We don’t believe in that.We do not believe those are reasons for physician-assisted suicide.
We’re not dead yet and we will fight back.
Randy Richardson, father of Lauren
I want to say that my word “compassion” is not followed by the word “choices.” My word compassion means someone with a heart taking care of someone else.
When we told Lauren, “Lauren, we’re going to take you home,” she cried. Lauren is not a vegetable. Carrots can’t cry.
Lionel Roosemont, father of Tikvah
I thought they would do everything possible to help my child.Instead, they told us that we should have an abortion as soon as possible. They told us she would be born blind, deaf, paralyzed and helpless.When she was born, she was not blind, she was not deaf, and she was not paralyzed. Her APGAR scores were nine and ten.
The newest developments in Belgium society are that newborn babies are being killed and pharmacists are selling “euthanasia kits.”
Please publish the Belgium story to put them under pressure.Stand up for your country and for Belgium.You don’t have to be afraid.
Stephan Drake, Not Dead Yet organization
When I was born, the doctors put the odds at 100 to one that I would survive the night.They worried that I might survive and I did. I am living against medical advice.
The restriction of physician-assisted suicide to just the terminally ill should not be regarded as permanent.We know their strategy.They have laid it out for us.
Alison Davis, No Less Human
Once I accidentally went into the wrong room where proponents of assisted suicide were working.Everyone assumed I was pro-euthanasia because I am in a wheelchair.
The other side thinks we disabled people are clamoring for such laws.Most of us are terrified of these people and we are afraid of euthanasia becoming law.
About twenty years ago, I just wanted to die and this feeling lasted for years. Once I took a large dose of pills, slashed my wrists, and then I drank an entire bottle of martini.A friend took me to the Emergency Room where I was treated against my will.If suicide had been legal then, I would have satisfied all the criteria. It took me years to decide that my life was worth living.I have not thought about suicide since.I had no idea of the good times that were ahead of me.
I have experienced much pain in my life.When my pain is bad, I do not need to be told that I am burdensome.I need to hear that my life has meaning.The feeling that I may be abandoned is worse than any pain.
Jane St. Clair is the author of Walk Me to Midnight - songs and stunning photographs of Arizona and the seasons of the desert - as well as articles against assisted suicide.
Walk Me to Midnight is a fast-paced suspense murder mystery that critics have call “taut, penetrating, and impossible to put down - a novel that will keep you reading all night long until you get to its horrifying conclusion.” Yet it’s a serious book guaranteed to make you think –some scenes from this book were included in a scholarly journal about contemporary fiction.
This novel defies classification - published by a Christian book company, it has been banned in some Christian bookstores. The tone of Walk Me to Midnight is more spiritual than religious.
For more information about Walk Me to Midnight and to read an excerpt from Chapter One, see Walk Me to Midnight.
Friend-squirrel stops to eat; he knows my mind is playing forest tricks
