This is EXACTLY what the culture of death is advocating.
Pro-Life Ping
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I’m afraid the generation that was too busy fulfilling itself to care much about its aging parents or even to reproduce (very much) will find it increasingly difficult to find anyone to a)care for it or b)to do so humanely.
Canada Ping
This is a very slipper slope for both sides.
I think that economic considerations and or the mere convenience of family or the Government having to care for the elderly or the seriously ill should never, ever be considered when making end of life decisions. These decisions should never left up to government or the HMO/insurance bureaucrats or to selfish family members.
Euthanasia = Wrong! Assisted Suicide = Wrong!
With that being said however, medical science has developed to the point where “life” can be “physically” extended past the point where any reasonable person or ethical or moral medical professional recognizes that any sort of life or chance at a recovery is possible and sometimes the more merciful thing is to stop artificial life support.
I’ve been through this painful process more than once.
My mother-in-law, after many years of illness and well into her eighties became comatose and total unresponsive while in a nursing home. She had no more will or desire to live. She was racked with pain and had one serious illness after another and was finally diagnosed with a very slow moving but ultimately fatal cancer. This cancer was not treatable in that any treatment for it, given her fragile state, would kill her more quickly than the disease would. She had finally refused to eat anymore before she lapsed into a coma. Before she lost consciousness, she told us repeatedly how tired she was and how she just wanted to “go home” so she could be reunited with her parents and her brothers and sisters.
Of course my husband and I insisted that everything possible be done to make her comfortable and while we didn’t want to hasten her death, we insisted that no extraordinary measures be taken. But against her written express wishes and ours, the doctors in the nursing home sent her to a hospital/hospice and put her on a feeding tube and a respirator and threatened to take us to court if we objected. She died three long years later after her heart finally gave out and the DNR order was followed. By this time she was in a rigid fetal position and the funeral home had to literally break her bones in order that she could be laid out in a coffin for her funeral. There was nothing merciful or ethical or medically sound in the treatment she received.
FYI, my mother-in-law was on Medicare and Medicaid and rather than saving money, we think the primary motivation for keeping artificially alive for so long against her and our express wishes was based on the money the nursing home and hospital received from the Government to continue her care past what was medically and ethically reasonable. To me, that is as morally irresponsible as it is to hasten a person’s death by euthanasia.
Several years later, within two years, both my parents suffered medically untreatable diseases. My parents and our family were fortunate that that they were in prestigious hospitals and that everything medically possible was done for them and all sound medical measures were exhausted. Believe me when I say that the doctors were not willing to give up and did everything possible to save their lives, but when science failed; we, their doctors and our family, were all in agreement to end treatment and artificial life support and they were allowed to die with peace and dignity. This was not an economic decision or one born out of convenience, but one based on true mercy and on sound medical advice without any concern or interference by the Government.
I have news for all: Socialist Euthanasia is the full-time standard practice in the USA right now. Oh, few hospitals will ever be honest about it.
But Medicare simply does not pay after a few weeks in the hospital. So the fragile, chronically ill old patient becomes a permanent financial loss at that point. And the hospital administrators begin to endlessly harass the doctors to pull the plug on “hopeless” cases or transfer the medical train wreck to a nursing home.
There doesn’t need to be any formal starting of euthanasia, the health care system kinda has that effect on the elderly as it is.