Posted on 01/16/2024 10:41:42 PM PST by Morgana
The euthanasia movement is continually looking for new ways to allow people to be made dead. One of the cruelest is known as VSED (voluntary stop eating and drinking). The idea is for doctors to help people commit suicide by self-starvation and dehydration by palliating the agony such a slow death would otherwise entail.
Activists are also trying to pass laws that would allow people to prepare a written directive (VSED by Advance Directive) ordering themselves starved and dehydrated should they become incapacitated by dementia or other cognitive disability. This is even if they willingly eat or ask for food after losing decision-making capacity. (Here is a piece I wrote that describes the agenda in more detail.)
A bill has been filed in Arizona that VSED activist, the bioethicist Thaddeus Mason Pope, thinks would legalize VSED by Advance Directive. The bill is vague, but depending on how the law would be interpreted if it passes, he may be right. From, HB 2254:
A. An adult may prepare a written statement known as a living will to control the health care treatment decisions that can be made on that person’s behalf, INCLUDING: 1. HOSPICE CARE.
2. THE USE OF MEDICATIONS FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF PAIN AND SUFFERING.
3. HOW AND UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES THE INGESTION OF FOOD AND LIQUIDS MAY BE LIMITED OR DISCONTINUED.
A few thoughts.
First: The language in this bill is way too imprecise to know exactly what it means by “health care treatment.” But it has a provision that could allow caregivers to refuse sustenance to a patient who willingly eats without fear of a lawsuit or criminal penalty — even if that is not what the authors of the bill intended:
A health care provider who makes good faith health care decisions based on the provisions of an apparently genuine living will is immune from criminal and civil liability for those decisions to the same extent and under the same conditions as prescribed in section 36-3205.
Since the term “health care treatment” isn’t defined in the bill, a caregiver could claim a “good faith” belief that an order directing the withholding of food orally came within the provisions of the law. So, we could see people starved who beg for food. (It’s happened before with feeding tubes.)
Second: In contrast to feeding tubes, spoon feeding has not traditionally been considered a medical treatment. Rather, giving people food and water is humane care, akin to keeping a patient warm or clean.
But many in bioethics and the euthanasia movement — such as Pope — want to change that distinction. Nevada already passed a law that could permit the refusal of wanted food and water from an incapacitated person if ordered ahead of time when competent.
Third, providing oral feeding is not forced feeding. That is not what VSED by Advanced Directive is about.
Fourth: It also isn’t about when people stop eating and drinking as a natural part of the dying process. Rather, it is making them stop eating and drinking by withholding sustenance.
Fifth: People should not be able to order themselves starved to death when they willingly take sustenance. It is not only cruel to their future selves but to caregivers forced, in essence, to kill the patient in a way that, if done to a sick dog, would be rightly considered animal cruelty.
Sixth, the ultimate cynical goal here is to get people to accept lethally injecting the incapacitated if they ask to be killed in an advance directive as already happens in Canada, the Netherlands, and Belgium. “After all,” the argument will go, “Why force people to die painfully when we can simply put them to sleep?” The rejoinder to that, of course, is that we shouldn’t make people die at all.
HB 2254 needs a lot of work done to clarify what it means by “under what circumstances the ingestion of food and liquids may be limited.” The issue is literally life and death and, hence, too important to be passed in its current vague iteration. If the provision would include withholding orally taken food and water, it should be rejected out of hand.
What if they change their mind???
DO NOT PUT “DNR” on your medical records.
I’ve watched enough crime shows involving killer nurses to know why that is important now this.
If you feel you must kill someone, cut open their chest and scoop out their beating heart or something. Own it. Don't try to wrap it up in clean linen. Turning people into jerky so you can say that it wasn't really you is the most democrat thing I have ever heard of.
I agree. If you absolutely believe someone has to die, it is more humane to actively kill them than to Terry Schiavo them so they starve or die of thirst for up to 10 days. We don’t even do that to our household pets. Why on earth we do it to our fellow human beings is beyond me. Some kind of cognitive dissonance that lets people say “well I didn’t kill him/her” even though that’s exactly what they did. No different than leaving a baby in a crib without food or water. Neither a baby or a dementia patient has the ability to feed themselves but that doesn’t make it OK to let them die of dehydration. You can’t murder a man on death row 1 day before his execution and say “well, he was going to die tomorrow anyway”.
But with the baby boomers nearing their 80s I can see why these questions are becoming bigger political issues. And heaven knows the politicians don’t want to pay for long term care or see the courts clogged with wrongful death cases. Not saying I have the answer but this isn’t it.
The activists pushing this should be the first ones to go.
I knew this would happen.....don't be surprised if they place an age limit on surgeries, or transplants, or dialysis....
perhaps they'll deny antibiotics...
life has become so cheap...
I think that is called Hospice “care”
Yes there are a lot of people with power that want old people dead.
Useless Eaters, I think coined by 1984 author George Orwell.
Even Bill Gates, who himself is old!
You first Billy Boy!
Not allowed!
Yes!
I just suggested Bill Gates.
You go first...
This stuff was mostly set up after the Terry Schiavo case to prevent decades of food/hydration only treatment for someone who was purportedly never coming back, so to say.
However, if you’re not in that type of situation, going to hospice means you’re denied food/hydration so if you’re not coming out of something in two weeks, you’re not coming out at all. You could be a stroke victim that could live w/nursing care, but if you take the hospice route, you’ve got a two week death sentence. (about as long as you can go w/o food/hydration).
Murdering bastards. What’s that old saying about how you can tell a lot about a country by the way it treats its children and elderly. Well, here in America, WE KILL THEM just like friggin’ animals would do.
I'm conflicted because this recently happened with my own mother who had advanced dementia, was 90, and was almost a vegetable mentally. She expressed a wish to die years before as this disease progressed. She clearly didn't want to live like that. As the long years went by we all watched her suffer and what it did to my dad who was her primary caregiver. Her primary doctor (this was in California) finally and mercifully called in Hospice to relieve my dad of the burden of being her caregiver. She was Catholic so suicide was out of the question.
The decision was made by Hospice and her doctor to withhold food and water. Mom had basically done this herself, probably as a normal function of her body shutting down anyway. A few days later she was gone. Of course we all felt incredibly sad but we also felt a sense of relief knowing her years of suffering were finally over.
This is not a simple one-size-fits-all issue. It's complicated and fraught with lots of legal potholes.
All I can say is that I would not want to live like my mom did for the last year of her life. It was inhumane and unnecessary but that's how the legal system works. During that last year she spent 3 months in a hospital for a bedsore. This gave dad a break from the caregiver burden. He needed this break even more than mom needed the advanced care but it was only to prolong her suffering and fill the hospital coffers. Fortunately it was covered by insurance. Miraculously at the 88th day of her covered 90 stay they decided she was well enough to go home to heal up the rest of the way.
Like I said, this is not a simple issue and why I'm conflicted. If done right for the right reasons, it can be a good thing. Three or four days of starving and dehydration that are dulled with morphine is better than years of needless suffering. Where is the line drawn between being humane and adhering to someone's advanced directive of their own care and willfully ending a life? We make this decision for our pets all the time. I personally have done it 7 times and it's never gets easier. I'm nearing the time to make that decision an 8th time with another beloved dog.
going to hospice means you’re denied food/hydration
Not so. I have had clients who were on hospice for years and then were released from hospice. In Texas, the Directive can be revoked at any time, orally, in writing or by gesture.
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