Dying in peace? What a bizarre world we've created
What a bizarre world we’ve created.
On the one hand, we spend multi-millions of dollars on research to provide us with ways to stay healthy; and if sick, how to recover.
We seem to have an unlimited desire to live as long as possible, but yet we also seem to strive for death, on our own terms, when and how and where.
How do you reckon the balance between using the very best of medical technology to save a life; and at the same time, have more and more laws which aim to make it easier to have someone die, either on their own terms or at the decision of someone else?
The ongoing battle about abortion, now seemingly state by state, is a reflection on the issue of who lives or dies, who decides and how is it accomplished.
It’s presented to the public as a question of a woman’s rights; but in reality, it deals with what is developing inside her body as a result of nature and what can or should be done about it. Who gets to make that decision and how is it accomplished?
When you argue issues like that, there really is no winner, regardless of what is done. The basic loser is the developing life. You hear people shriek that it is not a life, that it is not human, that the woman can decide to rid herself of it and that a doctor, or in fact just about anyone, has the right to remove that little life by whatever method, however horrific, is deemed desirable.
We even have supposedly educated elected officials and medical people say that if the “fetus” survives the abortion procedure, it can be deliberately killed or left to die – if the woman still doesn’t want it.
People say things and propose things like this – and this does happen – with a straight face and expect others to accept what, under any other circumstance, would be deemed cold-blooded murder.
It seems to me that once the fetus/child is outside of her body and it is still living and breathing, that woman has lost her right to choose its fate
Why don’t we care? Why do we deny the reality that that ‘thing” growing inside of a woman when she is pregnant is another living, breathing human being that should be protected?
I can remember when doctors used to say that when he is caring for a pregnant woman, he actually has TWO patients: the woman and her developing child.
While we battle over the “right” of a woman to kill her child, thousands of infertile couples spend multi-millions of dollars on methods to get pregnant and keep the pregnancy to birth. Try telling one of those women, once she gets pregnant, that what is in her is not a human child and does not have the right to live.
On the other end of the life/death spectrum is the growing acceptance, legally and otherwise, of what used to be called “mercy killing.”
How’s that for an oxymoron?
It’s also called euthanasia, which usually means killing a person painlessly if that person has an incurable disease or is in a coma. It used to be illegal just about everywhere; but as we have become more “modern,” laws have loosened and more and more people are killed by their own physicians or family members – even if they say they don’t want to die.
Example: 64-year-old Catie Cassidy in a Minnesota hospital with lung cancer. The hospital decided she would be euthanized by the removal of her oxygen supply; but when she was asked, she said she is “not ready” to die.
The details became public and the Life Legal Defense Fund supported her and the hospital gave her a reprieve. LLDF Executive Director Alexandra Snyder told Life Site News that the hospital was inundated with calls about the case and that Catie will get the care she needs as long as she can.
Snyder said withdrawing oxygen from Catie would be active euthanasia, and that is illegal in Minnesota and all other states. Despite the fact that many people are surprised such things can happen, Snyder said, “People need to wake up to the fact that this is happening … and that they need to fight for themselves and for their loved ones.”
Canada, assisted suicide was legalized in 2016 – called Medical Assistance in Dying – and since then, 5,085 people have been killed that way. In the two years, that’s more than 250 a month, more than 58 a week, more than eight per day – about one every three hours.
Canada is also considering the legalization of euthanasia for “mature minors” without parental consent, for those with mental disorders or dementia.
The Netherlands was the first major Western nation to legalize euthanasia, and it quickly moved from the terminally ill to just about any condition where the patient or someone else decided death would be better – and that included children. There have been scandals concerning those issues.
The same situation exists in the United Kingdom hospitals. There have been prosecutions of physicians for the deaths of patients, but the situation continues.
In France, 42-year-old Vincent Lambert suffered a massive brain injury in an auto crash and has been minimally conscious for eight years. His parents want him to be maintained; but the hospital, the European Court of Human Rights and the Council of State ruled that he be deprived of food and water and sedated until he dies.
His parents called on the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and its most recent ruling was that the case will be studied and Vincent will be allowed to live – at least for now.
In California, the 2016 End of Life Options Act is supposed to allow a person to choose how and when they will die – naturally or with assistance. The Public Health Department reports that in 2017, 274 doctors prescribed “medical aid in dying” to 577 people.
The current controversy deals with Catholic facilities and their religious beliefs about the morality of euthanasia. It is not permitted. These same facilities face the controversy with abortion, which they consider the taking of a life.
For all our fancy technology, it all boils down to the question: What is life? Who has it? Who can end it – where, why and how?
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