‘Death with dignity’: Medically assisted suicide may be legalized in Michigan

[Chrystal-J]

Once again, death is the answer to a problem that could be remedied another way. I hate to think this is happening in Michigan (or anywhere). All this does is open the door to killing anyone who is disabled or elderly.

‘Death with dignity’: Medically assisted suicide may be legalized in Michigan

25 years after a ballot initiative firmly failed, Michigan Democrats want to enact physician-assisted suicide.

www.mlive.com

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Once again, death is the answer to a problem that could be remedied another way.

What other ways is a terminal illness remedied?

Safeguards in Michigan’s legislation include:

• A required medical determination that the patient is terminally ill with fewer than six months to live.
• Ensuring the patient is voluntarily making the decision to die.
• A minimum 15-day waiting period.
• Access to insurance coverage in treatment and benefits in death.
• Licensing requirements, limitations and protections for prescribing physicians.
• Criminal penalties for non-compliant physicians.

Not that I am for it. I just want to look at both sides of the issue without knee jerk reaction.

 

[Chrystal-J]

What other ways is a terminal illness remedied?

Safeguards in Michigan’s legislation include:

• A required medical determination that the patient is terminally ill with fewer than six months to live.
• Ensuring the patient is voluntarily making the decision to die.
• A minimum 15-day waiting period.
• Access to insurance coverage in treatment and benefits in death.
• Licensing requirements, limitations and protections for prescribing physicians.
• Criminal penalties for non-compliant physicians.

Not that I am for it. I just want to look at both sides of the issue without knee jerk reaction.

With proper pain medicine, people can be comforted until natural death. Who's going to participate with this murder? What will it do to their soul? There's a lot to think about on this issue.

 

[mourningdove~]

What other ways is a terminal illness remedied?

There is NO remedy for a terminal illness, unless the Lord chooses to perform a healing miracle.

What we have for the terminally is hospice care ...
at home, or in a medical facility.

"Hospice is a philosophy of care. It treats the person rather than the disease and focuses on quality of life. It surrounds the patient and family with a hospice care team consisting of professionals who not only address physical distress, but emotional and spiritual issues as well."

 

[fide]

What other ways is a terminal illness remedied?

Safeguards in Michigan’s legislation include:

• A required medical determination that the patient is terminally ill with fewer than six months to live.
• Ensuring the patient is voluntarily making the decision to die.
• A minimum 15-day waiting period.
• Access to insurance coverage in treatment and benefits in death.
• Licensing requirements, limitations and protections for prescribing physicians.
• Criminal penalties for non-compliant physicians.

Not that I am for it. I just want to look at both sides of the issue without knee jerk reaction.

Everyone has a "terminal illness": mortality. We each will die and then will continue in a new existence

Both sides?
To look at the "side" that includes recognition of the Creator God who will judge His creation of every human person who has existed, I would say every moment of life is another to prepare for that judgment, and for the eternity that awaits us. Now is the preparation; then is the life that really counts.

 

[mourningdove~]

Not that I am for it. I just want to look at both sides of the issue without knee jerk reaction.

I read elsewhere on CF that you have been a hospital chaplain for many years.
With your years of experience, have you not already formed an opinion on this issue?

What is your opinion, based on your experience ministering to the sick?

 

[RileyG]

This breaks my heart. Lord, have mercy!

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

I read elsewhere on CF that you have been a hospital chaplain for many years.
With your years of experience, have you not already formed an opinion on this issue?

What is your opinion, based on your experience ministering to the sick?

Thanks for asking.

The dying process can indeed be well managed. But that often includes drugs that alter a person's consciousness so much they hardly know what is going on. Then the person with something like ALS is totally dependent on others for the most intimate care with full knowledge if it all, is embarrassed and feels like a harsh burden. I can see how someone might want medically assisted suicide and would not judge them for it.

I hope that in my own situation I would have the fortitude and courage to persevere with it all as God's will and even a blessing for me and us. To accept it as my cross. This is where I am inspired by someone Like St Francis.

"Praised be You, my Lord,
through those who give pardon for Your love,
and bear infirmity and tribulation.

Blessed are those who endure in peace
for by You, Most High, they shall be crowned.

Praised be You, my Lord,
through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whom no living man can escape."​

But I must ask myself how I would minister to someone wanting medically assisted suicide. I would try very hard to listen without giving my opinion (which would be don't do it). I would help them to identify all their feelings and all the reasons they want it. Help them to explore all the drawbacks. Explore all their fears, worries, regrets and do some life review of happy memories and what has been most meaningful. What has given their life purpose and meaning and what new purpose and meaning can there be at this stage of the journey? Who is the person they have been and who do they want to be now at this moment. What memory do they want to give to their loved ones. Of course that all depends on their desire and ability to talk about it.

I would not introduce religion other than asking if they have a religious or church preference I can help accommodate. I am not assuming they are Christian or even believe in God. That is for the patient to bring in, and hopefully they would do so when asked about what gives their life meaning, purpose, hope and joy. I don't see my job as one to judge nor persuade, but rather to help one navigate and in so doing facilitate an encounter with all they hold most sacred.

 

[Lady Bug]

Sometimes I think that, even without legalized euthanasia, that hospice tries to expedite people's deaths. I would like to be wrong.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Sometimes I think that, even without legalized euthanasia, that hospice tries to expedite people's deaths. I would like to be wrong.

I don't think they do. But main goal is comfort and sometimes that means morphine.

 

[WarriorAngel]

Once again, death is the answer to a problem that could be remedied another way. I hate to think this is happening in Michigan (or anywhere). All this does is open the door to killing anyone who is disabled or elderly.

‘Death with dignity’: Medically assisted suicide may be legalized in Michigan

25 years after a ballot initiative firmly failed, Michigan Democrats want to enact physician-assisted suicide.

www.mlive.com

Death by suffering is a minor suffering to avoid harder time in purgatory where it really hurts.
As people become elderly and their minds are less effective for understanding, telling someone you're going to take away their pain might seem good to them.

But a serious disservice.

The government wants to 'reduce population' of the less viable members.
If you're not producing taxes, you're now a burden.

Like OMGosh I lost two people I knew because think back to 2011, where medicaid recipients aged 69 were of no further use.
One needed 2 stints, after applying one stint the gov refused to pay for it because age. She was put in hospice.
The second one needed a few surgeries to redo her colon after necrosis, and was denied and put on hospice and lived 9 days because her colon was not working.

 

[WarriorAngel]

Sometimes I think that, even without legalized euthanasia, that hospice tries to expedite people's deaths. I would like to be wrong.

It's interesting to note; actually sick, that the crazy medical staff members who find ways to eliminate patients who are in pain are put in jail while the big wigs equally guilty can make laws to do the same.

Yes the serial nut jobs need taken out of medicine but just because someone has a white collar, doesn't make their laws any more acceptable and moral.

Bottom line, the $$$

 

[fide]

Sometimes I think that, even without legalized euthanasia, that hospice tries to expedite people's deaths. I would like to be wrong.

My experience is that "hospice" - like any other field or group or profession - is in its specific example, defined by its practitioners. Human persons show a wide spectrum of moral principles. Some doctors and other medical workers show such beautiful love and compassion and care for persons! Others give the vast amount of their "patient care" face time - even in the presence of the patient! - to their laptop looking at what only they know. Some care; some do not care, about the human persons who are trusting them.

God knows this era in human history is "for a season," which will come to "the harvest," and all will be changed.

 

[The Liturgist]

Death by suffering is a minor suffering to avoid harder time in purgatory where it really hurts.
As people become elderly and their minds are less effective for understanding, telling someone you're going to take away their pain might seem good to them.

But a serious disservice.

The government wants to 'reduce population' of the less viable members.
If you're not producing taxes, you're now a burden.

Like OMGosh I lost two people I knew because think back to 2011, where medicaid recipients aged 69 were of no further use.
One needed 2 stints, after applying one stint the gov refused to pay for it because age. She was put in hospice.
The second one needed a few surgeries to redo her colon after necrosis, and was denied and put on hospice and lived 9 days because her colon was not working.

Wow, what state was that in? Were they on both medicare and medicaid?

 

[The Liturgist]

On this subject I really like the pro-life writings of Pope St. John Paul II, which make me regard him as the greatest moral theologian during his papacy. If I recall Pope Benedict XVI, memory eternal, contributed to some of those writings as well.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Death by suffering is a minor suffering to avoid harder time in purgatory where it really hurts.
As people become elderly and their minds are less effective for understanding, telling someone you're going to take away their pain might seem good to them.

But a serious disservice.

The government wants to 'reduce population' of the less viable members.
If you're not producing taxes, you're now a burden.

Like OMGosh I lost two people I knew because think back to 2011, where medicaid recipients aged 69 were of no further use.
One needed 2 stints, after applying one stint the gov refused to pay for it because age. She was put in hospice.
The second one needed a few surgeries to redo her colon after necrosis, and was denied and put on hospice and lived 9 days because her colon was not working.

You are talking about limits of government funded medicine. That is a long way from OP Medically assisted suicide.

 

[WarriorAngel]

You are talking about limits of government funded medicine. That is a long way from OP Medically assisted suicide.

Morphine drip and let them die.
I don't see a difference, with exception the folks left to struggle vs the ones left to struggle in purgatory.

 

[WarriorAngel]

Wow, what state was that in? Were they on both medicare and medicaid?

Pennsylvania.
Both medicaid supp of medicare

 

[mourningdove~]

My experience is that "hospice" - like any other field or group or profession - is in its specific example, defined by its practitioners. Human persons show a wide spectrum of moral principles. Some doctors and other medical workers show such beautiful love and compassion and care for persons! Others give the vast amount of their "patient care" face time - even in the presence of the patient! - to their laptop looking at what only they know. Some care; some do not care, about the human persons who are trusting them.

God knows this era in human history is "for a season," which will come to "the harvest," and all will be changed.

God is Sovereign. God is in control of all that happens. And He does not desert His children at the time of their physical death.

Weeks prior to my husband's death ...
The Lord gave me a vision of Himself, protectively standing behind my husband ...
His arms encompassed about him, as he rested in his recliner.
The Loving Shepherd was right there, with His dear and slowly fading 'sheep'.

Yes, at the end there was need of morphine.
Yes, at the end there was 3 days of silence.
And yes ... all throughout his lifetime, till he took his very last breath ... there also was Jesus.

For anyone to paint a 'doom and gloom' scenario for every death ... regardless the circumstances ...
shows a genuine lack of understanding and faith in the love and mercy of God.

 

[fide]

God is Sovereign. God is in control of all that happens. And He does not desert His children at the time of their physical death.

Weeks prior to my husband's death ...
The Lord gave me a vision of Himself, protectively standing behind my husband ...
His arms encompassed about him, as he rested in his recliner.
The Loving Shepherd was right there, with His dear and slowly fading 'sheep'.

Yes, at the end there was need of morphine.
Yes, at the end there was 3 days of silence.
And yes ... all throughout his lifetime, till he took his very last breath ... there also was Jesus.

For anyone to paint a 'doom and gloom' scenario for every death ... regardless the circumstances ...
shows a genuine lack of understanding and faith in the love and mercy of God.

Yes, we ought to seek the Presence of God every day, all moments of every day, being more and more alert of times we may forget all about Him! How much holier, and more worthy and noble, our lives would become if they were lived in Him, and He in us. And we would look with confidence to our last moment in this world, personally. We could look with confidence and peace to a holy death, with Him, and without fear or regret.