Escape? Of course you can’t escape!
I was flicking through tv stations the other evening and happened on Martin Sheen looking earnest, so I paused to hear what he had to say – expecting pleasant murmurs about Obama or urbane skepticism about McCain, I suppose. But no – what I got was some irritating Catholic boilerplate about Washington state’s Initiative 1000, which allows doctors, under certain very limited careful circumstances, to give terminal patients drugs with which to end the misery. Martin Sheen’s against it. This makes me angry. It makes me angry because it shouldn’t be anyone else’s business. No one is offering to force assisted suicide on anyone. The point of the initiative is to make it available (with level upon level of safeguard) to people who need it. I don’t consider it moral for people to interfere with other people’s reasonable wishes in that way. I consider it intrusive, and presumptuous, and a horrible officious superstitious interference with desperate needs. It makes me angry. I do not look forward to needing such drugs myself and being unable to get them because the Catholic lobby has succeeded in persuading people that it is ‘against God’s will’ to cut short the period of terminal illness. I bitterly resent religious bullies telling everyone else what to do on the basis of a non-existent deity who gets to decide what diseases we get and how long we have to let them torture us. We have no reason to think that god exists, and we don’t think it exists, and we don’t think that if it did exist it would have the right to force us to suffer longer than we can put up with merely because our suffering is ‘God’s will,’ so we really really don’t want people who do believe it exists forcing its putative will on us. We want them to fuck off and mind their own business.
But they won’t, of course – they think everything is their business. Nobody is trying to tell them (or anyone else) to resort to assisted suicide, so why they feel so ready to tell other people not to is somewhat beyond me – but they are.
Opponents of a Washington State assisted-suicide ballot initiative say hastening the deaths of terminally ill patients is “playing God.” The initiative, which if approved would allow physicians to prescribe lethal doses of medication if requested by terminally ill patients, is against God’s will, faith-based groups say…Washington’s Roman Catholic Church has been the initiative’s most visible opponent…Rev. Paul Pluth, pastor of St. Anne Catholic Church in Seattle, said by taking a utilitarian view of life, the measure “cheapens life, demeans life and debases life’s worth to merely an equation with obvious utility and usefulness.”
That’s just obscurantist pious self-congratulatory verbiage. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a pretext for trying to force everyone to obey Catholic ‘teaching.’ Assisted suicide for the terminally ill no more cheapens or demeans life than gay marriage cheapens or demeans marriage. Catholics want to force unwilling people to suffer at the hands of a torturing god – and they think they are Better People for doing so. Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, as Lucretius so wisely put it.
That ‘playing god’ bit always gets me when religious people use it. There’s no reason it can’t be used against (or to justify) virtually anything, if by what they mean by ‘playing god’ is going against their perception of ‘god’s plan’. Any medical treatment, choosing to exercise and eat a better diet, giving up smoking – all are ‘playing god’ if they can be perceived as trying to do something to affect how a life is lived or how long it lasts relative to a supposed divine plan; by the same token someone could suggest it was ‘god’s plan’ that they have a short happy life full of drugs and booze, so it’s ‘playing god’ if they give them up. But of course people don’t say that, because even though it’s an entirely subjective faith-based thing there still, apparently, seems to be a way of defining what isn’t in god’s plan, which usually involves people actually using their own intelligence and having rights over what happens to themselves and their bodies.
Ophelia, I couldn’t agree with you more. My wife died at Dignitas in Switzerland, because this option is not availble in Canada. Had it been available here, she would have lived some months more. But since she had to be able to travel long distances by air, and be able to take the ‘medicament’ (as they call it in German) herself, she did not dare leave it till the last moment. It is completely unintelligible to me that this is opposed, by Martin Sheen, or anyone else. As you say, what business is it of theirs?
I think it is interesting that a recent report of Pope John Paul II’s last days seems to indicate that even he thought it was time to go. The writer of the article, or the documentary about the pope, don’t seem to have noticed, but it seems clear to me. Here’s the story:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081015.wpope1015/BNStory/International/
Apparently, after having a tracheotomy, he whispered: “If I can’t speak any more, it’s time for me to go”. That seems pretty clear to me. Shame on Martin Sheen and Christians practically everywhere who refuse to allow people to die in peace and with dignity, instead of ending their days in pain and misery. Playing god? Who is playing god? These pitiful gullible idiots who presume to decide for others!
I meant to say, of course, that Lucretius was (and is still) right. Elizabeth’s motto was Libertas et Dignitas, and what she did was not evil, despite the evil that religious people would have done to her had they had the chance. In fact, a religious group had me investigated (by the RCMP) upon my return to Canada for aiding and abetting a suicide.
In fact, the Oregon (or the proposed Washington) law would not have enabled her assisted dying. She suffered from a very agressive form MS, but she might have lived for two or three years, completely paralysed, unable to communicate, and in great pain.
I know a woman now in a nursing home, diagnosed with MS last year. She cannot move, she cannot speak. The only thing she can do is cry. Religion persuades all sorts of people to evil. It is a great scourge of mankind, and its evils are not yet done. Sheen is a scoundrel. Perhaps appropriately he played Lee in the movie ‘Gettysburg’ – a great general in a terrible cause.
Sorry about your wife, Eric. What’s demeaning and debasing is not assisted suicide, but the way that many terminally ill patients, without the aid of assisted suicide, have to terminate their suffering. A friend, suffering from incurable lung cancer, leaped from a hospital window. With assisted suicide, he could have left this world in dignity, saying farewell, surrounded by friends and family.
Yeah, Dave. And Eric.
I thought of exactly that, Eric – the fact that the Washington law could well force people to take the meds earlier than they otherwise would, because the law won’t let doctors administer them. So what about MS, I thought, or the physical weakness at the end of the cancer process. That’s not a humane provision. The religious bullies have everyone so spooked that the law is worse than it should be – and that’s if it passes.
It is very bad of Sheen.
There’s a horrible bit in the state voter’s pamphlet where the opponents say that ‘Recent medical advances assure pain can be controlled and no one need suffer at the end of life. I-1000 is not needed.‘ Italics there.
Really! No one need suffer at the end of life! Boy, that’s nice to know, but you know what? I don’t believe it. In fact it’s one of the stupidest claims I’ve ever seen.
And to the extent that it is true that pain can be controlled – then people won’t choose to take the drugs, will they – so why bother to prevent them by force from choosing the drugs? Why not keep the drugs as a last resort for people who do desperately need them? Why not decide not to be so god damn cruel and irrational?
Grrrrrrrrr.
It’s a stupid claim. And it is not true. Not true. Not true.
People who say that all suffering and pain can be managed and that no one need suffer at the end of life are lying. None of us can know a goddamn thing about the pain and suffering at the end of life from a terminal illness. No way to measure it. No way to document it.
It’s not only a stupid claim, it’s an out and out lie. Besides, pain is not the only thing that meets people at the end of life. There are so many forms of distress: nausea, air hunger, diarrhea, paralysis, chronic headaches, chronic coughing, chronic hiccups, bloating, and then, as Marilynne Seguin, founder of Dying with Dignity (Canada), says in her book, A Gentle Death, “so much suffering is intangible, unmanageable and personal and cannot be entirely resolved by presently accepted means of alleviating suffering.” (62-3)
The ‘all pain can be relieved’ ploy is just something to mislead and conceal the truth about dying. Sherwin Nuland says, in his book, How We Die, that “the belief in the probability of death with dignity is our, and society’s, attempt to deal with the reality of what is all too frequently a series of destructive events that involve by their very nature the disintegration of the dying person’s humanity. I have not often,” he continues, “seen much dignity in the process by which we die.” (xvii)
Not only do religious people insist that their god prohibits assistance in dying, thereby causing much unnecessary suffering, but they lie in order to get people to bow in mute obedience to the monster they serve. Religion is the root, if not of all evil, of a great deal of the world’s cruelty and dishonesty.
People dont have to suffer pain what a crock! it depends on the doctor if you happen to be unlucky enough to have a doctor that is reticent about giving terminal patients heroin you will die in screaming agony,asisted suicide takes place every day all over the world all measures like this do is take away the added pain of a criminal trial from the person that helps their loved one end the suffering. I so agree with O.B and Eric on this what gives the R.C church the right to make these decisions for me and my family?what a jerk Sheen is.
For Christs sake who owns my life anyway me or the bloody state?
In the UK the government is very reluctant to clarify its position on assisted suicide overseas. If someone accompanies a terminally ill person to Switzerland, are they criminally liable on their return? A straight answer is just not available.
Within the UK it is customary for the law to turn a blind eye or at least to be very lenient, which would indicate that there is a tacit acknowledgement that the act of assisting is not seen as morally abhorent or deserving of punishment.
This seems to me to be an unstated policy based on moral cowardice. The government is aware that to prosecute those who assist their loved ones to die with dignity would be met with massive public outcry, but Lord Joffe’s bill to legalise very tightly controlled physician assisted suicide (similar to the law in Oregon) was blocked by the Lords following a campaign led by the AoC.
As Richard rightly points out, it happens anyway, but unacknowledged, unregulated, uncontrolled, and with the assisting partner knowing that prosecution and possible imprisonment depend on arbitrary decisions by agents of the state.
As was the case with our friend Eric, I’m very sorry to say. I looked it up after he mentioned the RCMP, and it was all about arbitrary decisions by agents of the state. Fortunately in his case they were (explicitly) sensible and understanding – but that’s hardly a guarantee of anything, is it.
I’ve just looked that up too. Eric, please accept my sympathy, respect and admiration.
I read “only the state of Oregon, the Netherlands, and Belgium permit physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill, competent adults, but it is for residents only, and there are strict rules. Such an action remains a crime in England and Wales, although the Joffe Bill now in front of the House of Lords would modify this if it passes.”
Sorry for your troubles, Eric, you have certainly been through the mill with respect of your dear wife. I would surmise that she was treated with the utmost care by the Swiss doctors/nurses in Forch, near Zurich, Switzerland.
Undoubtedly, Switzerland, for you, for the rest of your life, will hold strong memories.
First of all, thanks for the support and encouragement. It’s been a tough and sometimes lonely road, and it’s good to hear from those who support what my wife Elizabeth did, and fell that it is time for this change to become more general.
I have to be frank when I say that the only support that there is for opposition to assisted dying is religious. I know that there are a few people who claim to make a secular case, but it is almost always, in my view, a concealed religious appeal. I do not think that is a sufficient basis for the cruel laws that obtain almost everywhere in the world. The appeal in Washington is obviously almost entirely religious, and I do not understand why religious beliefs should be taken seriously as the underpining of law that governs people who do not share those beliefs. It’s time for people to recognise this and move on.
In the meantime Switzerland is the only country to which people may go where assisted dying (in the form of assisted or accompanied suicide) is available to non-residents. Assisted suicide law in Germany is peculiar, in that assisted suicide is not illegal. It is illegal for an accompanied suicide to take place in that country.
Germany, of course, has a difficult history when it comes to what so many people still call euthanasia. The T4 programme, named after the address of the Party Leader’s Chancellory in Berlin, 4 Tiergartenstrasse, led to the brutal murder of around 100,000 people, mentally challenged, disabled, and suffering from various diseases. It is a tribute to Germany that they have at least provided for limited forms of assisted dying.
It is, I believe, a scandal that other liberal democracies are so cowed by religious influence that most politicians dare not stand up for the rights of those whose lives have become burdens to great to bear. Even Pope John Paul II, in a recent report, is said to have whispered to his closest aid, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz: “If I can’t speak any more, it’s time for me to go.” That was not, it seems to me, an appeal for hope when all hope is gone (as John Paul II said in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae); it is a simple request to be allowed to die, and could be interpreted as a request for help in doing so. The churches are the great enemies of kindness and compassion in dying. They deserve to be repudiated on this account alone, in my view.
Meanwhile, Canadians or British subjects, Australians and others who accomapny their loved ones to Dignitas in Zurich for an accompanied death, will continue to face the scrutiny of the law when they return. The fact that neither Canada nor Britain has ever prosecuted anyone for doing so, does not take away the threat of legal action, and the implict threat of imprisonment for many years.
Dignitas itself was caring and compassionate, as well as very professional, and treated my wife Elizabeth with great consideration and dignity. My hat is off to them. They are a wonderful caring group of people whose only purpose is to allow people to bring to an end lives which have become, or are in the process of becoming, intolerable. The Swiss authorities likewise were a study in politeness, kindness, and genuine compassion.
It was very difficult to take Elizabeth (who loved her country very much) to a foreign land so that she could die with dignity, and it was difficult too to leave her there in the hands of strangers. But she is not suffering any longer, and that is indeed a comfort, as much as her loss is a great sorrow. She was a very special person, and was very brave, full of life till the very end.
Sorry to go on at such length.
Thanks for sharing your story about Elizabeth with us @ B&W, Eric.
Just over half of Irish people, some years ago, believed that euthanasia should be permitted in Ireland.
If a poll was taken today in Ireland, it would reveal a similar picture.
An Irish man, some years ago – like your wife, Elizabeth, also travelled to Switzerland, where he availed of assisted suicide. The man who was in his 30s, had been left with severe disabilities following a train accident in Germany in 1997.
The controversial Terri Schiavo case, in which a Florida woman (who had been in a vegetative state for 15 years, and of whom, had her feeding tube removed at the request of her husband) was also another case.
No need to apologize, Eric. What you say is related to what who knows how many thousands of people go through every day. It infuriates me that religious people want to interfere in that in order to make it worse. (Remember the blood-chilling Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who was pleased that his father didn’t have the choice to escape his suffering early, so that he Rabbi JS would have an opportunity to show sympathy to his father. What his father might have wanted was apparently beside the point.)
(Within the UK it is customary for the law to turn a blind eye or at least to be very lenient, which would indicate that there is a tacit acknowledgement that the act of assisting is not seen as morally abhorent or deserving of punishment). Don I think that has more to do with the fact that the C.P.S find it all but imposible to obtain convictions in these sort of cases, I mean would you convict someone like Eric? I agree with you about the way the law is at the moment it seems dishonest.
Thanks Ophelia. I hadn’t heard of Sacks and his father, so found his ‘Thought for the Day’ on the BBC 2005. Unbelievable! His father suffered so much, and gave Sacks the chance to “be there with him in his suffering fiving back some of the care he’d given us when we were young,” and because of that, it would have been so wrong “for him to spare us those final tormenting days.” How many ways can you contort this rather mad hanging on? His father would have been wrong to have brought his torment to an end, because it would have robbed Sacks of his opportunity to care for him! The mind simply reels.
And this really gets me: “All of us, doctors, nurses, the family, my father himself, were united in cherishing life, leaving it to a will larger than ours to decide when it should end.” Madness! If they had left it to a will larger than theirs he wouldn’t have undergone 5 major operations in his eighties; they’d simply have left it up to this nebulous higher will. And if they say that the higher will decides when it will end, then that higher will must intend all the suffering too. The religious mind is a study in contradiction. What did I not see it sooner?
‘I was flicking through tv stations the other evening and happened on Martin Sheen looking earnest, so I paused to hear what he had to say – expecting pleasant murmurs about Obama or urbane skepticism about McCain, I suppose. But no – what I got was some irritating Catholic boilerplate about Washington state’s Initiative 1000, which allows doctors, under certain very limited careful circumstances, to give terminal patients drugs with which to end the misery. Martin Sheen’s against it. This makes me angry. It makes me angry because it shouldn’t be anyone else’s business. ‘
Except it requires a change in the law, which is the business of everyone. But Ophelia believes that only those in favour should have or state an opinion. How absurd.
ps You were already angry, calm down dear.
Resistor, are you the same person who perpetually tantalizes lots of folk on Wikipedia.
If so, did Harry not put you in your place?
‘dear?’
‘resistor’ aren’t you supposed to be some kind of right-on type? Yet you haven’t heard that blatant sexist condescension is a no-no? How clueless can you get.
Plebecites are not the best way of changing or making laws. In fact, they can retain laws, or make laws, which oppress minorities. All you need is a majority voice. Even if they have a majority voice, religious people shouldn’t get to make (or retain) law that is based on religious premises that others do not share.
“Maybe, one day, resistor will post something interesting. I give it another five years….” That was said two years ago @ Harry’s place. Has “B”? not yet moved forward?
Whoever said I was right-on? Most of the warmongers round here have been calling me a fascist – can’t they get their line right?
Oh dear, poor Ophelia, have those nasty men from Harry’s Place put more silly ideas into your pretty little head. Get thee to a Nunnery and remember your namesake didn’t need any assistance.
Don’t stop now, ‘resistor’ – don’t forget to talk about hormones, and needing a man, and needing a good fuck, and being on the rag, and where’s the baby, and women talk too much. If you’re going to make a fool of yourself you might as well be thorough about it.
A ‘resistor’ infamous quote.
“the only good Muslim is an Uncle Tom who was paid to kill for the Americans”
Charming ain’t it!!!
Sheen is more than entitled to have an opinion on what happens with his own life resistor. O.B has a problem with him wanting a say in her life and how it should end, quite rightly I would imagine that she thinks thats her business not Sheens,O.Bs opinion does not have an impact on other peoples lives Sheens does?
I find the debate on assisted suicide very challenging. In practice, it occurs on the quiet where it is illegal, but it is only a few people that are involved. Many more die slowly with whatever pain relief can be offered. The obvious fact is that medication is imperfect.
I held my father while his heart stopped due to a kidney failure that saved him from a long painful death from bone cancer.
In a speaking contest once, I spoke against euthanasia on the grounds that the motives of the people around the sufferer are questionable. Empathising with a persons pain is itself emotional suffering, and a motive to help push the sufferer to choose death. But with a person of sound mind in terminal suffering I feel their personal autonomy has to be respected and if they ask for help it should be given, at least by an individual if the ethics of the medical profession and the State prevent it.
In studying suicide, a high proportion of gun suicides are people in their late sixties and older, and many are thought to be taking a clean exit though the stats usually exclude such information.
1. Ophelia, I was just exercising my ‘right to offend’. And as for making a fool of myself, I couldn’t ask for a better teacher.
2. I see the Harry’s Place chickenhawk takes my example of a prejudice, removes the ‘e.g.’ that preceded it and thus makes it appear to be words from my mouth. Well up there with the best propaganda techniques – but then ‘Harry’ used to be a member of Stalin School of Falsification.
Resistor, no one needs to alter your quotations to make you look foolish. You do a top-notch job all by yourself. You’re obnoxious, provocative without a point, hostile, and intellectually dishonest. Oh, and you’re contemptible.
“chickenhawks” lack the experience, judgment, or moral standing to make decisions. What do you lack, resistor? Chicken feed, to make sound judgements from that pea-sized, puny chicken brain of yours.
The previous posts make my points for me. Thanks.
Sorry to deflect the righteous attention on whatshisname above, bu tI felt I had to add something here.
A colleague told me a couple of hours ago that he had been away because his father had suicided. The impact on this gentleman is quite obvious, and it is ongoing as he has to deal with the mess that was the prime motivator for the suicide. It reminds me why I am against suicide at a bsic level: its an indefensible blow at the hearts of those who care for you, or depend on you.
One of the principal arguments against the death penalty is that it degrades the society that uses it, institutionalising and legitimising killing with overtones of vengeance and mob violence. Suicide as a whole is no longer illegal, as a measure to assist prevention and recovery of all parties. That does not make it a good act; legitimising suicide carries the risk that killing and assisting killing become morally ambiguous acts.
The sad loss Eric’s wife is probably as morally clear-cut as any of us are likely to see. But I feel the moral indignation against opponents of changing the law is disproportionate. It is realistic to expect that ambiguous and frivolous cases will misuse the legitimate freedom after a law change. It is legitimate to believe that all deliberate killing is morally questionable, and I am sure that if the debbate were not clouded with such obscurantist god-bothering language it may be easier to agree on the real difficulties.
You are sure that it may be easier (you mean ‘might’). Hmm. The subjunctive or conditional don’t go well with ‘I am sure that.’
However, I agree with you that suicide can be very reprehensible when other people are taken into account. On the other hand, the law doesn’t usually get involved with the ethics of personal relations. Dependent children are an issue – but the law in question applies to people who have less than six months to live, so any dependent children they have are in trouble anyway, and would perhaps not do best with a suffering parent who is prevented from committing suicide only by the law. Apart from dependent children – it’s not clear that it’s up to the law to make adults be kind to each other. It’s not clear that the wrong your colleague’s father did (if he did) is best seen as a literal crime.
I don’t think it’s true that legitimising suicide in the case of terminally ill people carries the risk that killing and assisting killing become morally ambiguous acts. Why would it? We don’t force chemotherapy on people who don’t need it; why would assisted suicide in this narrow situation be different?
“It is realistic to expect that ambiguous and frivolous cases will misuse the legitimate freedom after a law change.”
No it isn’t, not really. That hasn’t happened in Oregon. And it’s not even clear why it would – why would doctors want to kill people frivolously?
If all deliberate killing is morally questionable, does that mean that antibiotics are morally questionable? What about disinfectants? What about killing ticks, lice, mosquitoes?