Quotations and Literature Forum

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marjorie asencia

I belive that it is moral, and I do not have any problems with it, I think a person shoul have the right to take thier own life, and the way I see it if people can have thier pets put to sleep why should it be any different for humans, espcially sense a cat or dog cannot acutally tell you what they want you just have to make the best choice possible from your own judgement but a person can tell you this is what I want.

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Every man carries a circle of hell around his head like a halo. Every man, every man has to go through hell to reach his paradise.
Robert De Niro, Cape Fear

I believe that i have no say in what decision she wants, if she wants the doctor to help her not suffer then that is her choice, not mine.

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Sanctuary: a small safe place in a troubling world

I think this is absolutely and utterly wrong. One's life is not bound of one's self; one's life is bound to God alone. But after all, this is my personal opinion.

MohJ,


I think you said on another thread that you are a Moslem. This is very interesting to me because up here in Maine there are so few Moslems that one could go a lifetime without meeting one. It is only because in my jobs I've met tens ot thousands of people that I've met a few briefly. I'm a Catholic.

We agree on this issue. The administration of a drug to end somebody's life cannot be justified.

Among other careers, I was a registered nurse in a nursing home for five and a half years. It is "standard medical practice" ( that is an important legal term ) that a patient will not be denied analgesic medications to alleviate pain. In practical terms, somebody who is in pain is given morphine, or a similar narcotic, to make the patient comfortable. Sometimes, the patient is so far deteriorated that they can not longer eat, drink, communicate or otherwise enjoy life in the usual sense of the term, but from tenseness in the hands and body muscles and other signs you can tell whether they are in pain. With doctor's orders, and the family's approval, morphine or other narcotics are administerd to alleviate pain even though it is known that these narcotics will shorten the person's survival time.

My Church has said that one is not morally obliged to extend life by unnatural means. A person can refuse surgery, medications or other means to extend life if the person feals the consequences of these treatments will diminish his dignity as a human being. In the case of the nursing home situation I just described, I suppose a terminal patient's life could be extended even with sufficient morphine to alleviate his pain if he were also hooked up to life sustaining equipment such as nasal oxygen tubes, intraveous and stomach tube feeding and other devices, but this is not what most people would call a dignified life.

It is common practice for people going into hospitals or nursing homes to sign a "living will" wherein they specify what treatments will or will not be administered. Typically, people will specify morphine or other narcotics to alleviate pain, buy most people rule out unnatural life extending treatments such as IVs, stomach tubes and all that. However, no willing will specifies administering of a drug to directly cause the person's death. This would be illegal.

My brother, sister and I all have signed living wills although we are all healthy and expect to live many years.

There is no need to directly and intentionally cause a person's death by a drug for this purpose. Pain alleviation is not done with the intention of causing death.

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"I am not afraid... I was born to do this"

"Help yourself. God will help you" ( Aide toi. Dieu t'aidera. )

--- Joan of Arc

So what gives you the right to impose your moral standards on others?
Mostly directed at Joan because of the stresses of legal stances. I don't like the idea but it is between 2 people the patient and the doctor. Is there any none religious argument for it (we all(?) live in secular countries so religion should have no say in the law)



Why not to remove pain if it was they want?
Is it any different to switching off life support?

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"The Truth may be out there but the lies are in your head"
"I tend to think if God wanted us to believe in him he'd exist."

Yes I have always belived that, I think too much religion gets drawn into debates regaurding the law, in which it really has no place.



Someone of a different beleif might not hold that view, so why should they be bound to suffer for what you belive in?

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Every man carries a circle of hell around his head like a halo. Every man, every man has to go through hell to reach his paradise.
Robert De Niro, Cape Fear

True. This is only my belief, and I will be damned if I impose it to someone else.

Let us move a little bit away from religon. What happened to hope? Please put in mind that doctors don't know everything. A doctor saying that this women is going to die in 6 months may or may not be true. I heard about many people who were supposed to be dead years ago according to doctors validation, yet these people continue to live until this day.

Therefore ending your own life may be a mistake. Why not live? Maybe the doctor is wrong, who knows..

That depends on what kind of life they had, did they recover completely as they were before they became sick or injured, or did they live but bound to a hospital bed or in come care faclity for the rest of thier life?

Becasue some people might not want to live that way, they might prefer to just end it if they know they will never be the same again.

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Every man carries a circle of hell around his head like a halo. Every man, every man has to go through hell to reach his paradise.
Robert De Niro, Cape Fear

The case here is cancer. If one has cancer, like in this case, there is a chance of recovery. This process of recovering may be very painful, take a long time, and not be 100% guaranteed. But nevertheless, there is a chance.

In a case like cancer i think the questions should be asked "how much pain are they in? Can they handle living with it on the off chance that the doctor is wrong and they will keep living?" and most importantly "Do they want to take that chance that they could get better?"

I think that in the end it is their own decision, and they have to be the ones to make it. and if they are religous and feel that they would better serve god by being in his presence than that is their choice and not one i can make for them.

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Sanctuary: a small safe place in a troubling world

So you think it is a mistake so in that situation you wouldn't chose it but why should they not be allowed to choose it?



Do you think the person should be allowed to have this or not? I'm not sure by your posts.

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"The Truth may be out there but the lies are in your head"
"I tend to think if God wanted us to believe in him he'd exist."

Here here. The written 'rules' are just guidelines for individuals to follow, not for people to impose upon others. Too often and far too many people decide their opinion is 'right' and do not allow others live their lives by their own beliefs.

This is why religious decisions need to stay out of politics, and politicians need to stay out of mandating laws for medical options.

If we aren't allowed to do with our own lives what we want anymore, then what is life worth? If the poor woman doesn't want to go on, she should be allowed to put an end to it whenever she wants

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I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.