Posted on 01/13/2014 2:17:35 PM PST by xzins
State law provides a fundamental right to a terminally ill, competent patient to choose a physician’s aid in getting prescription medications that will allow a peaceful death, a state judge ruled Monday in a seminal case.
Second Judicial District Judge Nan Nash said Drs. Katherine Morris and Aroop Mangalik, both oncologists at the University of New Mexico Hospital, could not be prosecuted under the state’s Assisted Suicide Statute, which is defined as the act of “deliberately aiding another in the taking of his own life.”
The practice recognizes that the patient is dying from his or her underlying disease and allows the patient to have medication, usually sedatives, that may be taken at a time of the patient’s choosing to achieve a peaceful death. Patients who most often choose the option are those dying of cancer.
Nash found that the right exists under the New Mexico Constitution, which prohibits the state from depriving a person of life, liberty or property without due process.
“This court cannot envision a right more fundamental, more private or more integral to the liberty, safety and happiness of a New Mexican than the right of a competent, terminally ill patient to choose aid in dying,” Nash wrote in the opinion. “If decisions made the shadow of one’s imminent death regarding how they and their loved ones will face that death are not fundamental and at the core of these constitutional guarantees, then what decisions are?”
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
In general, I agree. But I do not and can not know how I might feel if facing a terminal disease, chronic pain, or some similar situation.
Too many I have known as a pastor have fought ‘til their last breath just to have one more second with their loved ones, with life.
One this that struggle telegraphs to me is how precious is life...and that underscores how sacred.
Mr Ruger is faster than to many sleeping pills and I don’t have to involve stains on anyone else’s soul.
When your loved ones are scraping your brains off the walls, they may find they disagree with that assessment.
My father did the same, it took that tough old Coot the full fourteen days to starve I was privileged to sit and be with him that last night.
I wouldn’t do it that way, my uncle did it that way and it was wrong. Also I wouldn’t put them through the prolong suffering of the extended illness. Lastly the event and afterwards would be paid in full no lingering funeral cost.
I won't say she didn't. She was my perfect wounded angel and a much finer person than I have ever been. And I was grateful for every minute I had with her.
Still, I will admit that in her last ten days, when she was no longer conscious, I did pray to God to either take her or give her back to me because the ordeal was so emotionally exhausting and the outcome so certain, although the ultimate timing was so unpredictable (days, weeks, months?). I was at the hospice with her pretty much every day and every night all night, and was alone with her the morning she passed, as I promised her I would be so many months earlier when her metastases was first diagnosed.
But let me ask you a question: If you knew that your prognosis was very bleak, and that whatever treatment was available was both very uncertain, full of documented horrific side effects, and expensive beyond the point where you or your family could afford to pay for it, what would you do?
Conservatives are supposed to believe in self-reliance, and while they may be charitable, do not believe that people have an inherent right to demand that others pay for their lives and needs
So if someone can't afford the treatment, shouldn't that person be allowed the dignity of ending his life painlessly and on his own terms, rather than fighting for a few months or a year of life at the expense of other people who are being forced to subsidize what remains of his existence?
Even if you believe that it is against God's will to take your own life under any circumstances, isn't that between the patient and God? Why should the government be able to outlaw the decision and impose its own judgment?
I am committed to the idea of fighting until the last breath. And that doesn’t mean one can’t have meds to make the pain bearable. There is, though, a distinct difference between actively taking life and actively attempting to preserve life with the means that one has available. You don’t quit. You never give up. And if it gets to the point that your only weapons left are prayer and painkillers, then you use those.
We never let anyone forget how precious life is.
Yes, but you didn't answer my question over what happens went you can't pay for your life anymore because the cost of your treatment is hopelessly beyond your means to pay it? Who should be forced to pay for it then?
If you manage your pain meds, you can accumulate enough to kill yourself pretty easily.
A lot of theory gets blown out by a little experience.
I am in awe of your strength. God bless you and your partner.
Which would be use of a lethal dose.
We don’t give up. We don’t quit.
I did answer it.
“And if it gets to the point that your only weapons left are prayer and painkillers, then you use those”
Been happening since the dawn of man. Patients routinely can choose a lethal dose of various meds, and do.
Oh...well.
Being able to do something must make that thing a good thing to do, then, and must make it great public policy.
“I’ve always laughed about the laws against suicide. “
I’ve always believed the only reason for them was to protect the life insurance companies from having to pay out. As you said, watta gunna do, arrest ‘em?
“I am committed to the idea of fighting until the last breath.”
One of these days you’ll have an experience that allows you to overcome those childish altruistic beliefs. You’ve never seen a dying cancer patient in agony much less yourself in that situation.
From my experience (four long term illness deaths in the past two years) by the time the sick person would pull the plug, they can’t do it, physically or mentally.
But I am really not afraid of that. I have seen the process. While the morphine doesn’t kill you, it certainly hastens the process.
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