Physician assisted suicide

Why not? I have always found that laws against committing suicide are asinine. If you don’t want to be here, so be it. I have no problem with you finishing yourself off if that is truly what you want. Such a process needs to be well thought out, we don’t want errors in such a situation but you have dominion over your body. Why not dominion in ending it.
 
Do you feel terminally ill patients should have the right to ask doctors to help them die? Do we as a nation spend too much time trying to keep people alive that we have abandoned the notion of allowing people to have a dignified death?

Of course. As long as the doctor agrees to help, I don't see a problem with it. Its much kinder than making a terminally ill person suffer.
 
Do you feel terminally ill patients should have the right to ask doctors to help them die? Do we as a nation spend too much time trying to keep people alive that we have abandoned the notion of allowing people to have a dignified death?

Yes, I do feel terminally ill patients should have the right to ask doctors to help them die, and you would be surprised at the number of physicians I know, really feel that way, too.

They hate prolonging death, even though suffering can be relieved.

In Oregon, we have the Death with Dignity Law and I love that option. If two physicians and one psychologist agree that if a patient has a terminal diagnosis and would be expected to die within six months, the patient's physician can legally write a prescription for the medicines that would end their life. The physician cannot assist or touch the patient. The patient has to be able to hold the pills and swallow them, without any assist. from a physician. Not all patients can do that.

This is a state law voted in by registered voters.
 
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My mother-in-law was terrified she might suffer some slow agonizing painful downward spiral to eventual death as she'd witnessed of friends and loved ones in her later years. So she made the wife and her three brothers swear if it ever came to such circumstance for her that they'd just slip her a plastic bag she could put over her head and tie around her neck herself one night and just go to sleep, forever.

And there is no doubt in my mind one or all of them would have done it had it ever come to that, but she fortunately never suffered before just dying of old age one day. But it's sad she, or anyone, would ever have to consider something like that in this day in age.
 
My grandmother watched her brother and sister slip away into Alzheimer's. My great aunt lived for more than 10 years after her mind was completely lost. A better part of those years she spent drugged for her own safety. It was my grandmothers greatest fear, to end up like her siblings.
 
There is a human right to choice. Choosing a kinder, gentler way of dying is a basic human right.
Too many doctors have "god complexes" and think they should force people to exhaust every last chance (spelled dollar) for a few extra months of miserable life.
I should be able to choose if I want to live after my life, as I prefer it, ends.

Where in the constitution does it give the government the power to say I can't choose?
 
My grandmother watched her brother and sister slip away into Alzheimer's. My great aunt lived for more than 10 years after her mind was completely lost. A better part of those years she spent drugged for her own safety. It was my grandmothers greatest fear, to end up like her siblings.

Alzheimer's isn't a terminal illness.
 
Yes it is. You can't recover and you will die. Your life is, at some point over, controlled by fear of those who love you and an inability recognize who, what and when you are. It is most similar to life in a vegatative state with fear and torment added in.
Alzheimer's is most certainly a terminal illness and if you ever lived through it with a loved one you wouldn't even question it.
 
Yes it is. You can't recover and you will die. Your life is, at some point over, controlled by fear of those who love you and an inability recognize who, what and when you are. It is most similar to life in a vegatative state with fear and torment added in.
Alzheimer's is most certainly a terminal illness and if you ever lived through it with a loved one you wouldn't even question it.

The same can be said of COPD. Simply because a disease is progressive and irreversible doesn't make it a terminal disease that a person can evoke the death with dignity act.
 
I am not saying anything about the "death with dignity act", I am talking about a right that has been trampled by the government for whatever reason they may have. COPD is also a terminal disease. People get the same death care on COPD as they do with cancer once it progresses to a certain point. The difference with COPD is that the disease can be effectively treated with the constant use of oxygen to aid in providing high enough levels in the blood for a long time. Long enough that most people eventually quit hauling concentrators and oxygen bottles around and die quietly at home.
 
I am not saying anything about the "death with dignity act", I am talking about a right that has been trampled by the government for whatever reason they may have. COPD is also a terminal disease. People get the same death care on COPD as they do with cancer once it progresses to a certain point. The difference with COPD is that the disease can be effectively treated with the constant use of oxygen to aid in providing high enough levels in the blood for a long time. Long enough that most people eventually quit hauling concentrators and oxygen bottles around and die quietly at home.

I support PAS, but not for any condition that whatever person deems unbearable. I would reserve it for terminal illnesses with a short prognosis that carry a large degree of physical discomfort.

That is how the death with dignity act was written and why it is good law.
 
You have every right to decide for yourself when it is appropriate to take your life, but not when I should be allowed to take mine.
The "death with dignity law" has no place in our lives. What gives the government the power to limit personal choice of its people? Look at the tenth amendment. Show me where the constitution gives the government the power to dictate whether a person can take their own life or not. That is a personal decision - like whether or not you want to own a gun or whether or not you will fight to defend yourself. The government or even the voters should have no say in the matter. It is my life and I can choose whether it is worth living to me. It boils down to personal choice.
 
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Do you feel terminally ill patients should have the right to ask doctors to help them die? Do we as a nation spend too much time trying to keep people alive that we have abandoned the notion of allowing people to have a dignified death?

Ever here of the Hippocratic Oath?

I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:

To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art-if they desire to learn it-without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but to no one else.

I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.

I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.

Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.

What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself holding such things shameful to be spoken about.

If I fulfill this path and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely. may the opposite of all this be my lot.

I wouldn't trust anyone who violates an oath to take care of a hangnail, even if it is legal.
 

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