Vermont wants to corner the market on assisted suicide tourism
Vermont has long billed itself as the Green Mountain State. Is it now going to be known as the Green Pastures State?:
Vermont removed its residency requirement for assisted suicide on Tuesday, officially opening the door for any American to travel to the state to end their life.
Nine other states allow the practice of assisted suicide, but Vermont is the first to actively change its law to strip the residency requirement. Oregon, which also allows assisted suicide, agreed to stop enforcing its residency requirement as part of a settlement to a lawsuit that alleged the requirement is unconstitutional. Advocates of assisted suicide thought it discriminatory.
Carolyn McDonnell is litigation counsel for Americans United for Life. She wrote a Newsweek op-ed that made some interesting arguments against the practice:
California dropped its reflection period from 15 days to a mere 48 hours, severely limiting a safeguard that ensures a patient takes the time to understand the severity of assisted suicide. Vermont allows telemedical assisted suicides without requiring the prescribing doctor to medically evaluate the patient in person.
Those elements of the California and Vermont laws seem very dangerous to me, in terms of exploitation by those who are either impulsive or faking medical need. Slippery slope, indeed.
McDonnell cites research that has found in increase in suicide in general when laws allowing medically assisted suicide are passed. Also, she mentions cases that indicate that the rights of medical prrofessionals to refuse to assist in suicide may ultimately become compromised.
It is ironic that medically-assisted suicide has become more and more accepted at the same time the pharmaceutical treatment of the dying has advanced, in terms of hospice care and the greater availability of drugs such as morphine. On the other hand, suffering can be very acute and very terrible, and the “solutions” still often fail to alleviate much of the problem. And long before the legalization of physician-assisted suicide – which compromises the “first, do no harm” prescription for doctors in dealing with patients – many suffering and terminal people managed to get the means to either kill themselves or be assisted by a non-medical person in doing so.
But we have seen from Europe’s example that, once the first step is taken towards allowing physicians to help with suicide, the population of people who avail themselves of their services expands to encompass those who are not terminal and may even be suffering from depression only.
This is perhaps the most difficult area in all of ethics for conservatives, along with the issues of abortion and overpopulation. There are no easy answers, and the search for resolution is likely to lead nowhere; one of the lessons from the history of the “eternal questions” in philosophy is that it is probably inevitable that there will only ever be the same recurring questions to which there is never any completely satisfactory solution.
I will never forget this article in terms of the unintended fall-out with regards to euthanasia. It seems that people end up wanting professional assistance in these matters and the issues that arise are considerable. It would appear that the ancient “first do no harm” oath checked some unforeseen consequences,
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/18/death-on-demand-has-euthanasia-gone-too-far-netherlands-assisted-dying?CMP=share_btn_link
Perhaps Vermont could devise another tourist-destination theme for their leaf-peeping and maple syrup seasons. “Join our Very Special Kick the Maple-Syrup-Bucket Tours, running from September through early November. Luxurious motor coaches will ferry you in comfort and style from one glorious scenic vista to another. At the final stop, travelers will be treated to Fentanyl-laced genuine Maple Syrup lozenges, uniquely curated for each of our Special Guests’ tastes and BMIs. Just think….like the magnificent hardwoods of the Green Mountain State, you, too, can go out in a blaze of glory!*
* Fees and taxes will apply. Please note: all reservations are non-refundable and irrevocable: once you decide to take that final trip, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Guests can view the scenery in comfort from inside the bus or strapped down to the roof, because we believe in Your Body, Your Choice—as long as it’s the right choice.
I’m on the same wavelength as RigelDog, though not as creative.
“Vermont. Come and see the leaves die, then follow suit.”
The issues emerging around assisted suicide in Canada and Europe are deeply disturbing, and doubly so when it’s offered by the same government that distributes and rations health care. But I don’t know. My brother died a few years ago from cancer. He had already survived an extremely painful injury and long convalescence as a child. He knew all too well what awful pain was, and he dreaded having to experience it again 50 years later. As it turned out, it didn’t happen. Before he reached the worst part of his illness, he died rather suddenly from a treatment side effect. Afterwards, going through his things, we discovered that he had been researching places to move or travel to where he could have ended his own life before it became unbearable. Despite my misgivings in the abstract, this was my little brother. I would have done anything I could to help him.
Assisted self-abortion: Planned Parent/hood, Planned Patienthood, Planned Perphood, etc.
Mrs. Whatsit, I completely understand what you mean. When my mother in law was dying (May-October, stroke victim) that last morning, I arrived at the hospital and they had her suffering in a cold room, strapped to the bed. I rushed in and she said she was thirsty. Two nurses were outside the door and I asked for water. They responded, “no, as she might need surgery.” To which I responded, I am calling the doctor for the morphine, please get her blankets and some water. For the next hour, I rubbed her body where ever she said there was pain. My mother had died suddenly 4 years earlier, and my mother in law said to me, “I’m so glad your mother didn’t have to go through this.” It was 4 doses of morphine before she had comfort. When the doctor arrived he administered the morphine drip and I requested that the fluids IV be removed. She died in peace and comfort. I think of the Brother Cadfael stories. This kind of merciful use of medications has long been utilized.
As long as its Democrats and Progressives doing it, I’m okay with the program.
The only reason for the “assist” in assisted suicide is because they’re to cowardly to do it themselves, so they want someone else to kill them. Maybe they figure that they’re getting around religious proscriptions, and G_d won’t hold it against them.
Neither guns, razors, large vehicles, deep water, nor valium + vodka are necessary. Go to a medical supply, pick up an oxygen mask and some tubing. Stop at the welding supply and get a small bottle of nitrogen. Connect the bottle to the mask, put the mask on and turn on the valve. No struggle to breathe, no pain, just the world going black in about a minute. Shortly thereafter, breathing stops and then the heart. After 15 minutes, no medical miracle will reverse it.
As an aside, I don’t understand why this method is not used for capital punishment. Simple, cheap, and certainly not cruel.
buddhaha:
A great many of the people wanting assisted suicide are terminal and planning to have it done when they are so sick that they would be incapable of doing it themselves in the manner you’re describing. Or some are completely paralyzed, and that sort of thing.
I don’t see a good solution to this conundrum.
We can all imagine circumstances in which one might be forced to live the rest of life in horrific pain with death as the only relief.
Some of us may have witnessed that scenario.
Do-It-Yourself suicide can work and often does, but not always. People have shot themselves in the head and awakened later in the hospital still with their old problems and with new, worse ones.
Yet, we also know the drawbacks neo outlined — people give up and die, when they could have found solutions; the state finds it convenient to help people exit.
_____________________________
Resumé
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
–Dorothy Parker
I once was on a Suicide Hotline. I lasted about three months.
The key insight we were taught, before they put us on a phone, was that people attempt suicide when their physical, mental and emotional cycles all bottom out at roughly the same time.
Which may sound like biorhythm woo-woo, and one may be skeptical, but the take-away for us Hotline volunteers was The Strategy:
Keep the caller on the phone as long as possible, while giving them resources and comfort, but mainly to get them through their Window of Vulnerability.
An hour later, the odds are good, they would start feeling better and suicide wouldn’t seem like a good idea.
Suicide, assisted or not, is an abomination (I may add, in the sight of God, for Christian believers). It is a symptom of Western society’s decay, along with gender confusion, crashing birth rates, “climate change” and other anti-human, self-immolating idiocies. Suicide, by self or assisted, is basically a cowardly exit. Assisting in suicide is antithetical to the right and traditional practice of medicine, a caring science and art. (Art=skill).
As to buddhaha’s claim, there is a word, dyspnea, which is a most distressing symptom, related to the lack of oxygen. In lay terms, shortness of breath. Yes, oxygen, specifically. Our bodies have particular sensors for oxygen and push us into overdrive in its lack. It ain’t fun, nor easy.
The substitution of pure nitrogen for oxygen, as he recommends, is not physiologically sensible unless/until one gets into nitrogen narcosis, which takes some doing, as I understand it.
SharonW, thank you for your compassionate response. I’m so sorry for the losses of your mother in law and mother, and it’s a blessing that you were able to ease your mother in law’s passing. I hope it brought you some comfort.
And as for cowardice, I wish those who want to label people like my brother cowards could have seen the way he faced his terrible burn injury at the age of five. A coward, he most certainly was not. Nor was he perfect, nor was he an abstraction who could be summed up by any easy label. He was a human being with all the flaws and sterling qualities of any normal person, who had good reason to be desperately afraid and was trying for all he was worth to deal with his illness in the best way he could find — while knowing that no good solution existed. I think it would be wise for those who have not (yet) been in such a terrible position themselves to be a bit careful about passing such cheap and cavalier judgments on those who have.
Vermont was ruined by an influx over the decades of ultra liberal people from Massachusetts and New York (such as Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders).
Mrs Whatsit:
You are remembering your dead brother with affection and regard.
But “cowardice”or its absence in dealing with bad burns at age 5 is not relevant here. The 5 year-old is dependent, totally, both before and after such an injury. We are discussing here the suicide, assisted or not, of mature adults.
My sister sustained 3rd degree burns over 50% of her body at age 4. She did not attend school until the 3rd grade. She is now a happy grandmother in her 70s, having married a good man who was not deterred by her scarred breasts and body. Whether she was brave or cowardly in the face of many surgeries for split thickness skin grafts is irrelevant. That she survived is a miracle, absent the antibacterial agents now used in burn therapy. Those decisions and acts were not up to her.She was a child, at the same age as your brother, with the same problem.
Adults in their golden years have a duty, in my eyes, to contemplate their inevitable demise, as I have done and still do. Health care professionals who terminate lives for whatever reason are rightly called murderers, not healers! And suicide is the cowardly way out.
Suffering is undesirable, but unavoidable. That is a lesson the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, taught us from the Cross.
Assisted suicide will come to be accepted, because the left wants it. Post-natal abortion reimagined. When do we start retroactively aborting the mental ill?
Ethics is a religion (i.e. behavioral protocol) of relativity administered by mortal gods (his Choice), goddesses (her Choice), and experts (their Choice).
That said, people… persons, individually, are within their rights to self-abort at their pleasure, in darkness. However, we should be wary of grooming our medical professionals with a pro-choice… death orientation, which has diverse precedents to force a progressive path and grade.
When the doctor arrived he administered the morphine drip and I requested that the fluids IV be removed. She died in peace and comfort. I think of the Brother Cadfael stories. This kind of merciful use of medications has long been utilized.
This was something that doctors and families could agree on. It was pretty common until lawyers got involved. My old professor of surgery had a practice in which his terminal breast cancer patients were given increasing doses of steroids, which made them feel better. When they finally could not go on at home, he would admit them to the hospital and “forget” to prescribe steroids. They would die quickly and painlessly of adrenal insufficiency.
I have had a family hold a vote whether to have me do a painful procedure to restart an IV in a terminal relative. They vote something like 3 to 2 to do it so I did as I was told. I have also changed an IV to minimal flow (nurses get nervous when no IV is ordered) in a terminal patient of mine. I had kept her going until her brother could arrive, then after a few days of saying goodbye and with everybody agreeing, I let her slip away. Many of these stories are in my book, “War Stories, 50 years in Medicine.”
There is no constituency that wants to keep anyone alive against their will. Hospitals, insurance companies, and governments lose billions of dollars in heroic attempts to save lives. Something like 5% – 10% of Medicaid* costs go to trying to save babies.
Consequently, “assisted suicide” is the slipperiest of slopes, and I am convinced that the mind behind the “right to die” narrative is literally diabolical. It is intended to induce our culture to accept the medical killing of children and old people to save money, and it will be expanded far beyond the few hard cases we read about.
*Babies born with serious health problems have their own Medicaid eligibility and may be on Medicaid regardless of the economic situation of the parents–and unless you’re Bill Gates you can’t afford those costs anyway, you’d be bankrupt and possibly eligible for Medicaid on your own account if you had to pay them.
The problem with assisted suicide is that the government has a vested interest in killing the ill. How long before assisted suicide becomes mandatory, in an economy of declining resources?
RigelDog – The Soylent Green Mountain State.
RigelDig and Cappy: well played, gentlemen. Well played indeed.