Can someone explain why they're against mercy killing?

[HEyHEY]

I don't understand why people are against it.

I know not one person who is, yet it seems to be such a pain in the ass to make it legal. What are their arguments?

[RoyGBiv]

1. What do you mean by "against"?

And what do you mean by "mercy killing"?

Are you referring to assisted suicide or something else?

[HEyHEY]

3. Not for it - assisted suicide

[RoyGBiv]

9. Not for It

"Not for it" or "for it" can mean a lot of things. This is a highly politicized issue that encompasses religion, personal morals, medical ethics, and most frighteningly to me, economics. I don't like it when people try to simplify it into a "yes" or "no" question. It is not and should not be that simple.

Personal story: In 1991, my grandmother was suffering from total renal failure due to complications associated with diabetes. She was also approaching the advanced stages of congestive heart failure. Because of this, her doctors said she couldn't endure any of the surgeries that would necessary to prolong her life without daily dialysis treatments, and she probably be dead anyway in a month or so.

In Oklahoma, it is legal to withhold treatment in cases like this if the consent of the patient is granted. (Or, if the patient can't be consulted, the consent of nearest living relatives.) This is a form of assisted suicide, just not as direct as using a lethal injection. My grandmother's doctor sat down with me, my mother, and my grandmother and explained this to us, what my grandma's "quality of life" would be like, what her options were, what it would cost to keep her alive, etc. She also explained the procedure for withholding treatment and what would happen. In essence she said that Grandma would fall asleep at some point and not wake up. It would be as simple as that, a painless death.

That's total bullshit. Death due to renal failure is incredibly painful, both to experience and watch, and at a certain point, the effects are not reversible. The doctor stood there solemnly with us and lied her ass off. Why? Grandma's insurance would not pay for the dialysis treatments. She didn't tell us that, of course. We were told this by a nurse who had witnessed the conversation and took it upon herself to let us know the reality. Should we follow the doctor's advice, my grandmother would be in agonizing pain for at least a week, possibly longer, would slip into a coma at some point, and spend the next several hours experiencing convulsions while we watched her die.

I'm sure this is not what you were thinking about when you asked the question, but that's where it leads. When assisted suicide becomes an legal option, it becomes an option for insurance companies, doctors, etc. to "sell" to their clients and patients. It becomes a product. When "quality of life" is seen as a measure of dollars and cents, there is all manner of abuse possible and likely.

I understand the argument for it. Even though I am fairly young, I have signed DNR orders in the event of something catastrophic happening to me. I watched my uncle die from cancer and could understand why he would want and should be allowed to take his own life rather than endure the suffering he experienced. But making this a strictly legal options changes the dynamics so that what appears to be a personal decision is no longer influenced primarily by personal reasons. Fundamentally, it reduces the value of human life to a cost/benefit equation.

My grandmother died in 1994. She lived long enough that my daughter was old enough that she remembers her vaguely now, and more importantly, she influenced my daughter's life at a critical age. I asked my grandmother not long before she did die -- it was a freak sudden death due to a dislodged blood clot that occurred due to complications from a surgery her former doctor told her she wouldn't live through -- if it had been worth it. She told me she was tired. She was ready to go, but before she hadn't been, and she was glad she'd had a few more years, enough years to see me mature a little and to see my daughter walk, talk, and call her grammie. Her time was short, though, she said, and she wanted no more surgeries. So, this time, when she was wheeled into the emergency room unconscious and suffering from a massive heart attack (the blood clot), we let her go.

No one has had any regrets about any of the decisions we did make because *we* made them.

[ghostsofgiants]

10. "Not for it"

"Not for it" means you do not believe it should be legal.

Jesus, it's not that vague of a question.

[RoyGBiv]

12. Did you even read the message? n/t

[ghostsofgiants]

13. Yours? No.

I'm just saying that the original question posed wasn't as vague as you make it seem.

[RoyGBiv]

15. Yes, it is ...

And if you'd read the message to which you responded, you would have seen why I asked the question.

[jdj]

21. The ten commandments.

It's that simple.

They'll let you rot away, starve, smother in your own fluids, but they aren't gonna get a stain on their soul to ease your suffering. God is in control, and he wants your ass to SUFFER.

[knowbody0]

2. watched my ma die slowly of alzeimers

have discussed it with my kids.plan to od myself if i get the diagnosis. that's what we all have to do. it is after all our life

[DIKB]

4. Doug Stanhope has a good skit

where he addresses the issue.

"Life is like Animal Porn. It's not for everybody. If life's like a movie where every minute has sucked so far, chances are nothing real great is gonna happen at the end to make it all worthwhile. No one should blame you for walking out early."

[951]

5. Suppose I forged a document that said that you consented

to me killing you.

That would suck huh?

Anyway I'm afraid if someone is given the power to kill another for the purpose of mercy it can get out of hand fairly quickly for an example if a physical healthy person with severe mental illness wanted to die should we grant them that wish or how about a child under the age of consent (18) would this mercy killing apply to them?

[BOSSHOG]

8. Yes, Kill Me

If I had Alzheimer's I would want to be "put to sleep." Spend a day in a nursing home full of Alzheimer's patients (they used to be better described as Insane Asylums) and tell me if that is the quality of life you want and the financial and physical and emotional strain you want to place on family members. I don't want somebody to spoon feed me and wipe my ass and take me for walks since I could not do such things for myself. A "healthy person with a severe mental illness" would not have the mental capacity to want to die. Therefore the decision has to be made before the disease sets in and day by day destroys the person and his loved ones. Been there; don't want to do it again. So yes, kill me (if I get Alzheimers).

[Nikia]

6. Concerns about disabled people's rights

The thought is if there were assisted suicide it would mean that some people's lives would not be valued. People who have terminal diseases and/or severely disabled may be encouraged or eventually made to die even if that is not what they really want or have wanted if they are unable to communicate their current wishes. This encouragement might come from their families who are paying lots of money for their care or insurance companies who don't want to pay for their care either.
Some people who receive a terminal diagnosis or become disabled or very ill feeling become depressed and want to die because they are severely depressed when they might have a decent quality for life for several years if they are treated for depression instead.

[lgardengate]

16. These are my exact reasions. I will never be "for it" because of

These reasions. Also,since i am disabled it scares the crap out of me to think what making assisted suicide legal would eventualy lead to (government making "quality of life" rules).

[patricia92243]

7. Mercy killing leads to non-mercy killings.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. How Oregon's assisted suicide law actually works

First of all, you can't kill another person--the person who has the ailment has to make the request.

In order to get permission, you have to be certified as having only six months to live, and you have to be certified as being mentally competent. (These decisions have to be made by a panel of three doctors.) You are then given a fatal dose of medication to use or not use as you wish.

In fact, most people approved for assisted suicide die of their illness before they ever have a chance to use the meds. However, they say that they feel better, knowing that I have the option of avoiding excruciating pain or helplessness.

[pretzel4gore]

14. value of life...

human, that is. It's either priceless or it's not....The main argument against mercy killing is STATE SANCTIONING IT. Otherwise no one outside the family/friends really cares...but changing the law to allow it makes it almost certainly will be used to murder helpless people, coercing them into asking to be killed...or swearing up and down that happened.....
mygod, humanity has existed thousands of years (4281 years, according to one old bishop) w/out legalized euthanasia, and things have worked out ok (well until geebush came along, that is)

[PsN2Wind]

19. LydiaLeftCoast

gives a pretty good synopsis of the Oregon "Death with Dignity Act"
passed by the voters of Oregon twice. We all heard the old "slippery slope" argument and being somewhat progressive decided that it should be up to the affected individual whether they should have to suffer the agony of the terminal stage of many diseases or if they chose, to end their lives "with dignity". If you want to spend your last minutes, hours, days, weeks or months gasping for the next breath, I say more power to you. If I choose not to do that, it frankly is none of your fucking business.

[pretzel4gore]

25. maybe god's business(?)

be there such a person(?)....anyway, i agree that pointless suffering shouldn't be forced because of some idiot law; but surely you then would agree that life's precious enough to make breaking the law to end it a valid idea (and if no one says anything, no one ever knows it happened) ...the very idea of giving bureaucrats anymore power is horrible, regardless of number of doctors or watchdogs etc the fact is a bureaucrat get final decision where applying law's concerned....

[sandnsea]

26. Not at all

No bureaucrats are involved at all in the decision to end one's life in Oregon. It's been used 171 times between 1998 and 2003. More info here:

http://www.ohd.hr.state.or.us/chs/pas/ar-index.cfm

[chrislrob]

17. Well, basic problem....

with mercy killings is the difficulty of knowing who the killing will provide mercy to. (I know that's not grammatically correct, but I like it better.)

Families suffer horribly when their loved ones are sick. It is a huge drain on their money and their time and their fucking lifeblood. So they have an incentive to want to provide "mercy" to the person whose pain is causing THEM so much pain. How can you tell the difference? Yes, I know some states have addressed that, but otherwise, how?

Also, legalized or not, euthanasia is not new. "Exposure" of newborns is not new. Abandoning old folks on ice floes is not new. Now whether we have evolved beyond that is the question.

[jdj]

22. It's called a living will, and everyone needs to have one.

We knew what my grandmothers intentions were, we kept her out of the nursing homes, and she passed away in her sleep. Hospice was immensley helpful, but had she slipped into a coma we would have know exactly what her wishes were.

[sweetheart]

18. You'll never find my body

I'll make sure that the method of terminating this lifeform
dissoves its body in to the ocean, from sinking it with weights
in the ocean, to simply rolling a bloody wheelchair off an ocean
cliff that i can die in nature and not in some ratty hospital.

I don't know about mercy killing. I'm for self determination.

People choose their own lives, and i believe, they should choose
(if they are so lucky) their own deaths.

Its gonna happen someday... FACT.

I think the best way to die, would be to jump from an airplane at
10,000 feet without a parachute... so maybe one day, when i'm dying
of whatever complication ulitmately kills this bio-lifeform, i'll
take up skydiving over wilderness areas.

I'd much rather that my dead body was left alone until nature's
animals and insects dissolved it totally, that no trace remain.

They used to call that "tibetan sky burial".... what fancy cultural
aphorisms for dissoling naturally.

[shraby]

20. One of the Scandinavian countries have

had assisted suicide for years now. There is a very strict procedure to go through, but it has worked for them and the people who are terminally ill. Myself, I would like to have that option available to me.

[camero]

23. Slippery slope

I know it's a lame way to make a point but it's true in this case.

Let's say someone was helped to die to escape being in alot of pain. Where does it stop? After that, some freep somewhere would more than likely kill his/her diabetic grandmother on the fact that she could develop complications and have a horrible death while there still could be some help.

It goes the same with any disease, MS, Lou Gehrig's, cancer.

[nemo137]

24. I have no problem with someone asking their doctor for a large amount of

morphine, and taking their own life with it, and the state turing a blind eye. IF someone wants to die sooner rather than later, and in less pain, that's between them, their god, and their conscience. Mercy killing, however, is another beast entirely.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. You're missing the distinction between assisted suicide and mercy killing

The existing laws merely make it legal for a physician to describe a fatal dosage to a carefully screened person who wants the option of taking his own life if his condition becomes intolerable.

None of the existing laws or any proposed laws that I know of make it legal to kill another person a la Dr. Kevorkian.