Posted on 09/09/2003 8:10:36 AM PDT by MarMema
In the sense that most Belgians, when they want to have a nice wedding, use Catholic churches for the purpose, sure.
But only one out of every 20 Belgian "Catholics" makes it to Mass on any given Sunday.
The Church in Belgium has been a source of much of the heterodoxy and heteropraxy infesting the Church today. Suenens anyone? Schillebeecx?
Perhaps the best way of finding out how strong the convictions of the Church in Belgium are would be to find out if they have been burying "Catholics" who have been euthanized with the rites of the Church.
Sickening to say, I'll bet they have.
It is another thing entirely to dehydrate or starve a non-terminal patient to death or to hasten the death of a terminal patient by giving them poison or an intentional overdose.
The former is death with dignity.
The latter is murder.
No wonder they don't understand what freedom is about.
"Though neither the patient nor her family asked him to hasten her death, Attorney General William Sorrell said no criminal charges would be filed against Thompson."
Not, it is not a bunch of crap. If you are suffering and going to die anyway, you will not think that.
Ah, and herein lies the slope.
We are all going to die anyway. Do you think an infant with a simple, correctable, birth defect should be starved/dehydrated to death because it was born with Downs Syndrome as well?
Do you think an elderly confused person should be starved/dehydrated to death because she has trouble swallowing?
Do you think hospitals should be able to decide when your quality of life is no longer worth treatment? Do you think you will be allowed enough say in the decision?
If you have a brain injury and are disabled as a result of it, do you want to be killed in a very painful and suffering-filled way, slowly?
Do you think the disabled, those who were in car accidents and took time to recover, but recovered enough to move around in a wheelchair and play card games, should be sacrificed for organ donations?
All of these things are being debated in the courts and in many cases have already happened.
I've cared for residents who are virtual vegetables, kept alive by feeding tubes. They are so contracted because of their diseases that they can't get out of bed to sit in wheelchairs. They cannot talk, they cannot swallow, so imagine the extreme discomfort of having saliva, etc. building up in their mouths till an overworked aide has a chance to clean and suction their mouths.
This issue is so very complicated. By the time residents have been in a nursing home for a few months, the average monthly cost of around $5,000.00 plus hundreds for medicine has depleted their assets. The home then gets medical assistance from the state, medicaid and takes their social security checks and any pension checks they may still get. Taxpayers pay for this.
My father is in the nursing home I work at. He had his stroke in 1998 and lived in assisted living till the past year. Between the assisted living and the nursing home, the prescription medicine cost and doctor and hospital bills and medical insurance premiums, his liquid assets are gone. All that's left is his house, that I live in.
His social security and pension checks go to the nursing home. They let him have $30.00 a month for spending money.
I make $10.05 per hour as a certified nurse's aid and I can't afford to pay the taxes on this house. However, when I sell the house I have to turn over the proceeds to the nursing home - all of it. When he dies, if there is anything left from the proceeds of the home, the home will keep half and my sister and I will get the rest. But at $5,000.00 per month, I doubt there will be little left. But that's OK with me.
However, I won't deny that dealing with my father who is paralyzed on his right side, seeing the effects of his brain deteriorating (he's extremely confused and has turned into a very combative resident to care for) and then seeing all that he saved for turned over to a place that cuts costs any way they can, has been an emotional rollercoaster for me and my sister.
When Dad gets a few lucid moments, he doesn't want to live anymore. He got a living will years ago, but he is not at that level where he's on life support or kept alive by a feeding tube. And I could never ever bring about circumstances to help him go home to God.
There are those in the home that have brain damage and cannot express if they are uncomfortable. As an aid, I have to imagine myself lying in bed and if the position I put them in would be uncomfortable to me.
The physical therapy department makes us put splints and braces on some of them to prevent further contraction. These things are hot, hard and I resent having to make a resident sleep with them on and they can't tell me they hurt.
I've gone on and on too long and I'm forgetting my point.
Suffice to say, if you have elderly parents who can still get around and function, it's hard to imagine that there are some don't want to live anymore. I'm OK with living wills, but euthenasia (sp?) is a very complicated issue and not one I'm ready to see applied willy-nilly in society.
And yet I imagine that the ones being kept alive in a vegetative state, lying in bed day after day, month after month, year after year, are using that time praying to God to please release them from this life on earth.
Our medical advances have kept alive people who God would've taken home long before, but have not improved the quality of their lives. Imagine not being able to dress yourself, to get to the bathroom when you want, to have to have someone clean you after you defecate and urinate. To not be able to scratch an itch or feed yourself. To be thirsty and not be able to get some water till an overworked aid can pour you a small glass. To be woken up every 2 hours during the night to get change the pads you urinated on. To be dependent on laxatives every 3 days because the food is not conducive to healthy bowel elimination and the medicines keep you constipated.
No, I do not want this for me when I get old. When I write my living will, I plan to specify that if I end up in a nursing home, all I want is painkillers, a handful of anti-depressants every day and about 4 ounces of Drambuie every night to sleep.
I'm scared of getting old now and would rather go in my sixties then have to endure my body's breakdown and being kept alive for years in my 70's and on.
"A viable fetus is one thing. Someone who is terminally ill and who is suffering and is going to die soon and who consciously asks to die now rather than later is different."
A viable unborn baby is no different. How do you justify speeding up their death? Are you god? Aren't you playing god? Who are YOU to determine when is it right for another person to die? When people are that ill they are NOT in their right mind.
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