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I understand.

While it was an imperfect parallel, on one level, I was considering it more from the “loved one” angle. It isn’t that I was approaching the topic lightly or without a great deal of thought, bringing into it my Christian background as well.

I think of Samson, and I think of Saul, and I see room for mercy for a truly dying person in pain that cannot be dealt with. But as I pointed out clearly, really truly at the end of life, one that is in the dying process. Not this woman. she is not an example that fits that.

My other point is that when people are dying slowly in hospice and enter into that last stage where they are dying, pain meds are both masking pain and also probably easing them towards death at the same time. Generally not on purpose to kill them, but the end effect is that it does.

Just a few months ago I listened to a sermon by a pastor who had traveled to a third world country. As he was walking to a village there was a person lying on the side of the road. The pastor had cancer at the time. I do not recall whether or not his condition was terminal.

The individual who was lying on some kind of blanket or cardboard was dying of cancer. No medication. No treatment. Just suffering. This persons asked the man if he had anything to take. The pastor gave this man his entire supply of medication. Due to the circumstances, he was unable to stay with the man.

For so many in this world, the process of dying is not only physically painful, but emotionally hopeless. That person, unless help came along other than a pastor providing him with temporary pain relief and/or the Lord granting him His divine mercy, died alone on that roadside.

I am thankful that my loved ones were able to benefit by modern medicine and society, and had been relieved of some of the pain before they died. Intentionallly administering an overdose of drugs, regardless whether the state law allows you to or not, is criminal because you play an instrumental role in the death of an individual.

I’m 57.

Ive cared for and been present at the following deaths;

Father....brain cancer...same as this girls.....64....hospice center...I watched my dad struggle through the death rattle for days (most folks don’t last the nite)given his supreme athleticism even though the tumour was devouring cerebral tissue hourly...like an all consuming nebula...I thought about the pillow honestly but knew any doc would know instantly from eye capillary ruptures.....you just want their struggle to end...I did not find it as beautiful or peaceful as some here think

Mother....mass in lungs and elsewhere...started ovaries.. 77...home hospice...chemo is truly poison...brutal brutal.....for nothing

Grandmother......mass in lungs etc,........88...hospital....quick

Grandmother......brain tumour.......90....home hospice...went to sleep...peaceful

Father in law.....bone cancer.....81....home hospice.....extreme pain....worst I ever witnessed....three war combat vet.....suffered even with major opiate goodies

Mother in law.....pheocrysetoma and congestive heart failure 75...hospital....had been expected to live

I was in charge of parents hospice as POA in Living Will....spent all night every night up to bitter end with my own parents....months....

This notion many are drugged to death at final stage is not true...I have never seen this in hospice family care and in fact hospitals do everything to not appear that way

Pain meds of course increase in dose for final stage uncle charlie victims but that isn’t what kills them

Unless its brain cancer....which kills life sustaining motor tissue

Folks die of suffocating....pneumonia...struggling to breath....heart gives out

Or liver or kidneys fail

Or less frequently systemic depths...

That’s it....trust me...

Now in nursing homes with no family around or in public hospitals with indifferent care...perhaps