Euthanasia - For OR Against.

[lambjam]

I can't multi quote but I actually asked how it's the same as abortion where backyard abortions kill otherwise healthy women when their intent was not to die? Committing suicide (and there are non violent ways btw) the result is their intent?
Euthanasia is suicide, it's just assisted and legal so the person assisting isnt prosecuted. Being unassisted doesn't mean it needs to be violent or worse.

They weren't comparing abortion to euthanasia. They were saying that the argument of "they're going to do it anyway, we might as well give them a safe and legal way to do it" applies equally to both.

For what it's worth, I'm 100% pro-choice and 100% pro-euthanasia, and I don't accept this argument. I don't think "people will do it anyway" is a good enough reason to condone or legalise something.

[Guest]

For what it's worth, I'm 100% pro-choice and 100% pro-euthanasia, and I don't accept this argument. I don't think "people will do it anyway" is a good enough reason to condone or legalise something.

Yes I agree with this.

I don't believe terminally I'll patients are having incomplete suicide attempts to warrant a law being passed. We do see and hear of patients dying of morphine overdoses which happens a lot, I've seen this 1st hand, it was neither traumatic or painful.
Legalising euthanasia is about protecting family members and dr's from litigation and some patients wanting to choose a time while they're lucid to pass peacefully and not have to endure extreme suffering. And I do believe only a very select few would choose euthanasia.
I don't accept legalising euthanasia based on harm minimisation. I do accept the above reasons.

[Guest]

Yes I agree with this.

I don't believe terminally I'll patients are having incomplete suicide attempts to warrant a law being passed. We do see and hear of patients dying of morphine overdoses which happens a lot, I've seen this 1st hand, it was neither traumatic or painful.
Legalising euthanasia is about protecting family members and dr's from litigation and some patients wanting to choose a time while they're lucid to pass peacefully and not have to endure extreme suffering. And I do believe only a very select few would choose euthanasia.
I don't accept legalising euthanasia based on harm minimisation. I do accept the above reasons.

I should add the families already performing euthanasia and being prosecuted for it.

[WorkingClassMum]

i would think that home suicide attempts, successful or not, could end up being more traumatic for the family, especially if they find their loved one after the attempt.

The side to home suicides that many people don't realize is the clean up. Having cleaned up after a suicide it's an awful awful awful thing. Death is not pretty, it's messy, it's smelly and it's blardy traumatic.

Leagalised euthanasia also means dignity after death and less trauma for the people left behind.

Opa was able to make sure that Oma had virtually no clean up - even the funeral director had been organized to be at the house the next day at an agreed time. Opa had the funeral organized - everything was organized.

Whereas my family had to deal with the agony of wishing my grandma out of pain and guilt for wishing her dead etc etc. We had three years of watching her p1ss herself, shat herself, not being able to feed herself, not being able to have a conversation with her, watching her die slowly agonizingly in pain. She was blind, deaf, and had advanced dementia, she had type 2 diabetes, was incontinent and incoherrant. She had often asked to be allowed to die when we had years earlier watched her mother and father go in the same horrible way. The only sop is that her mind was no longer aware of the degradation of her body.

Id go to jail if I inflicted the same torteous agony upon a person and somehow it's legal to let nature do this. I'd be fined and probably jailed if I let a dog or vat longer such a disgusting existence but must stand aside for and watch a human's body go through the same.

[Ana Gram]

My grandmother is in the same position WCM My dad is on that track unfortunately, so I have a fairly reasonable chance of going there too. I don't want to exist like that. I can't call it living and if anyone could see my grandmother, they couldn't call it living either. For me, I would chose to end my life before that happens. My mum has already told me that she wouldn't want to exist like that and we have had family discussions about what to do in the event mum was in a coma etc.

[Amiedoll]

I'm for Euthanasia as well. I think it's important to let people decide when they have had enough of life, in most cases it is very cruel to make them live past that point.

I'm very grateful that my pets can have a nice death in the loving arms of family before any condition they get can cause them so much suffering and loss of quality of life. It would be lovely if I knew that I also had that option.

I know people have religious grounds for not allowing it, and while I respect the beliefs of others, I don't like it that religious beliefs have the power to dictate the policy for everyone. Surely if it was against your religion you would just have it in your living will that under no circumstances are you to be euthanised?

Its also the kind of thing that should be hard to achieve (maybe go to court to get permission to euthanise). I would hate for people to abuse the system to get their inheritances early from relatives that are in their care (with use of power of attorney, and other legal/medical decision making).

I also wanted to point out, in case I've mentioned things that have been brought up a lot, I haven't read much beyond the original post (I just wanted to stick my 2 cents in without too much bias).

[Misschief]

I have had 2 grandparents who both ended in a coma had NO quality of life whatsoever. My grandfather had mad cows disease, grandmother had had a severe stroke and heartattack only 1 day apart. She also had diabetes.
With my grandfather, they increased the morphine shots to 1 every 2 hours and 2 days later, he had passed away. It was an incredible hard decision to make for my grandmother (may I say she isn't religious) as they had been married for over 60 years and she didn't know life without him. I still cry when remembering seeing him there, curled up in the fetus position and crying like a baby. Noone could touch him or he would wail out. He couldn't open his eyes, he couldn't eat, communicate, move, etc. He was nearly paralized.
He just wasn't there with us in spirit anymore. Such a highly intelligent man I have admired all my life, turned into an 84yo 6ft baby in a matter of weeks

My other grandparent, they stopped her insulin which got her into a coma and they had an automated morphine injection thing that injected morphine every hour. She too passed 2 days later. This was my mothers and uncle's decision to make and til today it still haunts them. They never got looked at strangely in Europe, but here my mother has had several disapproving looks and comments. She will never know if it was the right decision to make and she is a Christian. It was either that, or have my grandmother lying in bed for another year, staring at the ceiling, not being able to wee, poo, eat, drink, communicate, move, etc. She would be alive but "not there" iykwim. It is when you are mentally that affected that I believe it is the right decision to make.
It is also a huge burden on the full hospitals and nursing homes and tax payers money to keep a person alive who isn't really "living".

I support my mothers decision as well as my grandmothers decision. If your body is there, but your mind and spirit have died, why keep going? What is the point? Is it for the ones who are left behind? We all got enough time to say goodbye and were prepared when they passed. We cried so much in the days leading upto it, that when they passed, we actually felt relieved that their suffering was over and there were no tears until the funeral.

Oh and the doctors were the ones who made the suggestions of increasing the morphine to let people gently go.