Posted on 04/18/2015 6:30:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
"It's scary and it knocks the breath out of you."
Maggie Karner is not unrealistic or "romantic" about death and dying. And she should know.
"It takes a long time to come to terms with a disease -- especially a terminal illness. And then you start thinking; 'OK, this is the new me. This is the new normal. And I can still appreciate every moment.'"
Earlier this spring, when I co-hosted a National Review Institute panel on assisted suicide with Ryan T. Anderson of the Heritage Foundation, we began it with a video of Karner. No speech is as compelling as her testimony.
Karner is dying. Last year, she was diagnosed with brain cancer. After chemotherapy and radiation, the cancer cells are growing again. Karner has seen tragedy before. In the video from the Patients Rights Action Fund, Karner talks about her father, who suffered an injury to his spine.
His accident was devastating. He became quadriplegic, after leading a very active life. Karner's family wondered how he was "going to exist without the use of his arms and legs."
But "he settled in very gracefully," Karner says. And the family greatly benefited from watching his struggle.
"We learned a lot. It was a gift that our Dad gave to us." He showed her that life doesn't have value because of what we can do. "I saw with my two eyes, what joy can still be found in just valuing every moment. It doesn't mean it's going to be great. It doesn't mean it is going to be romantic. But there are moments that need to be cherished.
"He left us a legacy with the time that he gave us," Karner explains on the video. "He could have checked out right away and said 'I'm done with this.'" Instead, "My dad showed me not just how to live and how to do stuff and how to be productive. He showed me how to die with grace and dignity."
Six in 10 Americans do not support assisted suicide, according to a new Marist poll commissioned by the Knights of Columbus, and a large majority -- including supporters -- has deep concerns about the effect it will have on the practice of medicine. This is despite well-funded campaigns that insist that assisted suicide should be a free choice and is a matter of "mercy" and "dignity."
But physician-assisted suicide is based on the lie that some lives are unworthy to be lived. And that notion has grave implications for health care in America.
"A commitment to never participate in assisted suicide is essential for the possibility of doctors continuing to care well for patients who are dying," one of our panelists, Farr Curlin, a professor at Duke University School of Medicine, argues.
"The commitment to not kill our patients or help them kill themselves is an essential guard against the temptation to get rid of a patient's suffering by getting rid of the patient."
The Marist poll shows that very few people consider legalizing physician-assisted suicide a priority. So why is it being considered in almost 20 states this year?
A lot of the media coverage of assisted suicide has profiled beautiful young women, points out Sr. Constance Veit of the religious group Little Sisters of the Poor. But it's the people her organization serves in over 30 nations who are most affected by assisted suicide's implications -- the elderly. She tells of family reconciliations that have happened during final days, with "the room of a dying person almost (becoming) the spiritual center of our house at that point."
What legacy will we leave here? Assisting the suicide of medicine or cherishing life, especially the lives of the most weak and vulnerable?
As for state-approved options to alleviate those, it's entirely possible that none exist. That's certainly what I believe, even if you don't.
But we're not really talking suicide here, but conspiracy to commit murder. It doesn't get much more selfish than that.
Ah. I retract my prior.
Quashing debate for religious reasons or because it’s unpleasant to discuss and easier to let the State come up with a solution...
Appalling. Worse that I stepped into the arena and others are just watching. But that’s Ok. I can fight my own battles. The problem is that this social problem will only get worse and, lacking individual rights, will be relegated to backroom/black market scenarios where the State doesn’t end up making the decision for those poor people and/or the families.
Or, worse, convalescent homes will be ‘the next big thing’, business-wise (I type that simultaneously with seriousness & sarcasm).
This is not about suicide or, as you put it, ‘murder’, but dignity and individual rights, both in life AND death and, as I’m finding, tends to expose the most deep-seated hypocrisies from those that oppose it.
Yes you are. You are demanding laws be written so others can end your life for you at your beckoning. Suicide has never been a "Right" in the Judeo/Christian history nor this nation and yes that matters because like it or not The Bible and the morality therein is the basis of our nations founding and our laws and system of justice are based on that very foundation.
Some of the founding fathers were not Christian likely including Jefferson of which evidence points to him being a Deist. He still believed in GOD as Creator and the one who gives and takes away rights.
You are egregiously in error.
I made a comment prior that is apropos.
Figure it out for yourself.
-fini-
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