Julia Gross with her mother Estelle.
Posted on 08/23/2011 3:51:54 PM PDT by wagglebee
Julia Gross with her mother Estelle.
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, August 22, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A recently retired New York Times reporter has penned a book in which she details how she followed through on a shocking pact to help her 88-year-old mother, Estelle, starve to death.
In an excerpt from the book, “A Bittersweet Season,” published recently in the Daily Mail, Jane Gross describes her mother’s increasing dissatisfaction with life as her health deteriorated, and her mounting desire to die, despite the fact that she was not terminally ill.
“So here we were, my mother and I, wishing that she were terminally ill and feeling a bit creepy about it,” Gross writes about her conversations with her mother about her death wish.
Gross admits that there “was no pretending I hadn’t been part of her decision [to die], and had arguably even encouraged it,” but argues that she made sure that her mother, with whom she had never been particularly close, was “doing this for herself,” and not out of a desire to spare her children “trouble and expense.”
Finally, after her mother spelled out the words “N-O-W,” Gross met with staff at the hospice where her mother was being cared for, and thus began the lengthy and grueling process of her mother’s death by starvation and dehydration – a process that staff had told Gross would only last a week, but that actually lasted 13 days.
“As the days passed, I watched the hands of the clock from my perch in a corner of my mother’s room,” she writes. “They seemed to have stopped moving. She soon became a curiosity, as staff stood in her doorway to watch the old lady who would not die. I accused staff of sneaking her ice cubes when my back was turned. I was twitching with impatience. I wanted my mother to hurry up and die, and was ashamed to admit it.”
Finally, Gross writes, “On the 13th day without food or water, my mother finally got her wish.”
In an interview with LifeSiteNews (LSN), Alex Schadenberg, the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, expressed his sorrow at Gross’ account, saying, “Sadly, the concept of dehydrating and starving a person death, whether it is done in a voluntary way or not, is becoming more common.”
“This sad article about the death of Estelle, is held up as an example of fulfilling the last request or ensuring that a person’s autonomy has been maintained,” he said. “The fact is that Estelle was abandoned in her death.”
“We need to make it clear that dehydrating people to death, who are not otherwise dying, is not only an abuse of good care, but also euthanasia by dehydration,” Schadenberg said. “The acceptance of euthanasia by dehydration leads to the acceptance of killing the most vulnerable in society. This abuse of the vulnerable cannot continue.”
Schadenberg said that Compassion & Choices, the group that lobbies for the legalization of assisted suicide in the U.S., recently published an article extolling the virtues of death by dehydration.
“The suicide lobby is using death by dehydration to break down the resistance to assisted suicide,” he said. “It is well known that once people have experienced someone dying by dehydration that, out of compassion for the dying, they will demand death by lethal dose.”
Exactly, they want to make it as horrific as possible so the public demands euthanasia.
Remembering the court ordered murder of Terri.
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There are suicide web sites out there.
You can buy helium and a plastic bag.
Rather than put her mother through this she could have done helium.
Mother would be just as murdered.
Throw NYSlimes reporter in jail for murder
bfl
Sitting there and watching her own depressed mother starve to death. We used to call this parricide. I do not know what to name it today? Perhaps “nameless horror?”
This woman should be sitting in a prison cell for murder.
Was Terri Schiavo not enough???
What makes THIS story even worse is that this “reporter” was so desperate to publish a book, she used her mother’s death.
Disgusting!!!
If the mother decided this herself, it’s quite different than the daughter withholding food and water. Not quite the same as Terri Schiavo who had absolutely no control over what happened to her. I’m sorry the old lady was so depressed she wanted to die, but no one forced it on her.
Right, that’s a right she has. Just don’t involve the medical profession.
This woman thinks she did her mother a favor. I think she was worried about the cost of her future care. Sick, sick people.
What a cold blooded bit*th of a daughter.
Karmas gonna be a beech when it catches up.
No other word for it and doesn't deserve any more words.
Her efforts would have been better spent helping to make her mother’s life happier and worth living despite its infirmities.
OMG!!! The Nazis would only DREAM of this!!
Freeper responses are encouraging on this. The general population may be morally confused but most people here are not. Encouraging.
“A Bittersweet Season,” published recently in the Daily Mail, Jane Gross describes her mother’s increasing dissatisfaction with life as her health deteriorated, and her mounting desire to die, despite the fact that she was not terminally ill.”
So what was she doing in hospice if she wasn’t terminal? How did she qualify for hospice care? I watched my M-I-L die of Parkinsons disease and she did not qualify for care in a facility until she stopped eating and drinking on her own and had refused to a feeding tube. Still, this was a tragic way to go. Why could they not give this woman drugs to ease her discomfort as opposed to dehydration?
So sad how we handle our elderly. Sounds like the author just wanted her out of the way. I hated to see my M-I-L leave us.
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