Maybe they aren't all crazy...
The US Supreme Court today upheld Oregon's law regarding physician assisted suicide.
It figures that Justices Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas would dissent with those justices that believe the power to regulate this sort of issue is the purview of the states. What strikes me as ironic about the ground being staked out by conservatives is that it is exactly the ground liberals were criticized about for years by the right - that of the Federal Goverment becoming an oppressive authority interferring with people's everyday lives. Conservatives, having acquired power in almost all areas of goverence now, are demonstrating the belief in their views' rightness by attempting to force others to conform to them.
Fortunately, it appears there is still some degree of sanity left on the Court and not all justices are ready to rubber-stamp conservative ideology.
On this particular issue, I also agree with the decision. It seems to me that the dissenters are missing one key element in the role of a physician in a person's life - while it is true the oath states, "do no harm," isn't it part of a doctor's responsibility to assist a patient to develop, maintain and live out the quality of life one seeks?
When Justice Scalia writes, "If the term 'legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death," he reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of the role I want my doctor to play in my life. If it becomes medically certain that I am facing imminnent death, I would hope to be allowed to pass with dignity.
If this law is unjust, where is the clamor to eliminate hospice care for terminal patients? When my father was near the end of his battle with cancer, his hospice nurse counseled my mother not to dial 911 as the end approached. Once put into that system, all medical means possible would have been mandated to prolong Dad's existence (but not his life; in my opinion that was already over). The decision for hospice was made after much soul searching, discussion and anguished moments between Mom and Dad, I'm sure. Married for more than 40 years, their lives were totally connected. The realization that one would have to go on could not have been easy. Yet with love and concern for each other, they decided together that the suffering each would endure by prolonging his struggle, while vastly different, would be too cruel for each to consider inflicting on the other. So he was allowed to die in his own bed, with morphine for pain management.
Mom always told me that if she had known Dr. Kevorkian's telephone number, she'd of called him. She was so sad to watch his decline. I'm pretty sure he wasn't enjoying the ride either.
I love being alive. Every breath is an adventure, a gift, a moment that I am so glad to have been given, even though not every second is pleasurable. Sugar and spice. Salt and pepper. It's all good. But when my life here is done, when I can no longer travel my mind's weird pathways and can no longer savor its taste, don't keep me around simply because it is medically possible. Let me go, because I'll be going home...
It figures that Justices Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas would dissent with those justices that believe the power to regulate this sort of issue is the purview of the states. What strikes me as ironic about the ground being staked out by conservatives is that it is exactly the ground liberals were criticized about for years by the right - that of the Federal Goverment becoming an oppressive authority interferring with people's everyday lives. Conservatives, having acquired power in almost all areas of goverence now, are demonstrating the belief in their views' rightness by attempting to force others to conform to them.
Fortunately, it appears there is still some degree of sanity left on the Court and not all justices are ready to rubber-stamp conservative ideology.
On this particular issue, I also agree with the decision. It seems to me that the dissenters are missing one key element in the role of a physician in a person's life - while it is true the oath states, "do no harm," isn't it part of a doctor's responsibility to assist a patient to develop, maintain and live out the quality of life one seeks?
When Justice Scalia writes, "If the term 'legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death," he reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of the role I want my doctor to play in my life. If it becomes medically certain that I am facing imminnent death, I would hope to be allowed to pass with dignity.
If this law is unjust, where is the clamor to eliminate hospice care for terminal patients? When my father was near the end of his battle with cancer, his hospice nurse counseled my mother not to dial 911 as the end approached. Once put into that system, all medical means possible would have been mandated to prolong Dad's existence (but not his life; in my opinion that was already over). The decision for hospice was made after much soul searching, discussion and anguished moments between Mom and Dad, I'm sure. Married for more than 40 years, their lives were totally connected. The realization that one would have to go on could not have been easy. Yet with love and concern for each other, they decided together that the suffering each would endure by prolonging his struggle, while vastly different, would be too cruel for each to consider inflicting on the other. So he was allowed to die in his own bed, with morphine for pain management.
Mom always told me that if she had known Dr. Kevorkian's telephone number, she'd of called him. She was so sad to watch his decline. I'm pretty sure he wasn't enjoying the ride either.
I love being alive. Every breath is an adventure, a gift, a moment that I am so glad to have been given, even though not every second is pleasurable. Sugar and spice. Salt and pepper. It's all good. But when my life here is done, when I can no longer travel my mind's weird pathways and can no longer savor its taste, don't keep me around simply because it is medically possible. Let me go, because I'll be going home...
posted by Kurt at 12:26 PM
4 Comments:
Here, here...
Your big brother here, eventually in consultation with your doctor, has determined your condition to be terminal. Therefore, as soon as we can convince you that keeping you here is nothing more than a drain on our limited medical resources, the doctor will be prescribing a lethal dose of painkillers. At that point I'll fly to Texas and administer the blissful concoction. "Not ready to go yet," you say. Well, give us an ear and we'll convince you shortly of how worthless your life is and how it really isn't possible to manage your pain. So you must be helped to die.
Sarcasm is hard to do via a blog, but I think y'all can gather that I'm not in agreement with Kurt. One of the grave concerns I have with assisted suicide laws is that they put an awful lot of power in the hands of so-called experts (often the doctor) and the laws do very little to protect people in very fragile and vulnerable conditions. It is not uncommon for people in severe pain that is not being adequately managed to become depressed. And depressed people often lack a desire to continue living. So they become very susceptible to pressure from family and doctors to "ask" for a hastening of death.
Another grave danger to assisted suicide is the slippery slope that moves from "the right to die" to "the responsibility to die." Some medical providers and insurance company ethicists are already espousing a moral position that states that it is immoral and selfish for patients to prolong their lives through the use of extreme medical care because doing so uses up limited resources that are best used in the care of healthier people. Some are even arguing that ANY care extended to the dying is immoral. They contend that once we can no longer cure, or provide a good quality of life, then any medical care other than that which alleviates pain and hastens death is immoral because it steals care from those to whom it is most beneficial. This is incredibly scary to me. Especially since some of these proposed laws allow the doctors and medical boards of hospitals to overrule the expressed desires of a patient or their family. In effect, the law says that if some government approved expert determines that Bruce is a drain on the country's resources because his life does not measure up to the quality of life that they think is minimal then it's time to withhold medical care to him. And Bruce, isn't your illness one that is slowly degenerative. Like Parkinson's. In the responsibility to die way of thinking my Mom would have been assisted to die years before she finally passed away.
Too often when people talk of death with dignity they are not talking about what that term means in the world of health and death care. Usually folks mean something that matches current hospice care. Under hospice care, treatment is no longer geared toward "a cure", but instead is given to alleviate pain and discomfort while still allowing the patient to maintain consciousness for as long as possible prior to the time of death. It does not view death as an enemy to be conquered at all costs, but as an inevitable result of living. Something we are all destined to do. And hospice care is designed to allow us to die with as much human dignity as possible. Death is allowed to happen in nature's time. Often this is in the presence of family and friends.
Death with dignity as expressed in the assisted death laws means actively choosing the time of death. Proponents use the language of rights and human dignity in framing their argument, but at its heart it is about actively ending life. Which is killing isn't it?
I am not an opponent of care that takes a passive role in assisting death to come sooner for the terminally ill. But even moreso, I am a PROPONENT of our improving the way we provide pain care in our country. It is getting better, but too often people suffer when the treatments and procedures exist that can manage their pain and allow them to make the most of their dying days.
And Kurt, as for Mom's comment about calling Dr. Kevorkian: there was one way in which she meant that, but there was also the side that absolutely would never accept it. What I heard in those comments was her desire for Dad not to suffer. And for him to go quickly. But whatever extra time she had with him she also gladly accepted. Besides, if we had "assisted" Dad's death when the pain first became extreme many cherished moments would have been lost (and some hellish ones, too, I admit.) But he actually had some good weeks after those first few agonizing days once he accepted how to manage the pain and stopped trying to mix Scotch and morphine. He thought the two would help, and didn't realize that the Scotch actually interfered with the morphine and kept him in more pain, not less. Once we got him onto loading doses in the morning and then additional morphine as needed he actually had some lucid fairly pain-free days that allowed us to spend some of his last days coming to terms with our lives. A quick Kevorkian solution would have eliminated even the possibility of those days occuring.
So for you Kurt, we''ll kill you off at the first sign of death. As for me, don't do anything heroic. When the time comes, keep me comfortable, and stay with me to wish me bon voyage when the time comes and Christ calls me home.
I told Stephanie that Ma also told me she was glad there wasn't a gun in the house years before - she would have shot him for some of the stunts he pulled! You and I might not have made adulthood either ;=)
I, too, worry about the potential of a Big Brother mentality mandating the way we deal with life, death and everything in between. I find that without a firm moral footing, every slope can become slippery. At times, we need to put our trust in our fellow man and expect them to be able to rise on occasion. We do it with elections, we do it with amendments to the Constitution and other areas. Corporate greed and expediency are certainly threats that will need to be monitored. Witness the struggle that goes on even now with the legality of unsupervised spying.
Here is an interview with Dr. Peter Rasmussen, an oncologist in Oregon that aired on NPR tonight. Dr. Rasmussen has been involved in prescribing lethal doses to patients. He notes that of the roughly 65,000 persons that have died in Oregon since the law was first passed, less than 300 have opted for suicide. He makes interesting points.
As to my euthanasia, the orders have already been given to my kids that if I am observed outside in shorts, dress shoes and socks, pull the trigger - I have obviously lost what senses I had.
That was very stirring Kurt. Your last comment above me was funny. Nice way to end an emotional subject.I am glad the Supreme's upheld Oregon's right to enact this law.
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