About six years ago my dad had a stroke that killed him. Had he never been taken off life support,he would’ve been forced to live in a vegetative state (And hated every second of it I’m sure.) probably to this day. Please, PLEASE tell me how pulling the plug on him makes my mom a horrible person.
I feel like you are taking offense based on an emotional reaction and not really wanting to speak intellectually. After all, I called the act evil, not your mother.
Regardless, I feel compelled to talk about this. This is a controversial issue and one that needs to be discussed.
Letting people die because their quality of life is “bad”, is horrible. It implies other people in similar situations should do the same, and are “selfish” if they do not. It starts a trend (which we already see with the Dutch and other places) in which people are killed off, making it seem like their only or best option.
Is that what you want me to support? Just because I made you feel bad about something I believe?
Many people have awoken from vegetative states, and stated that they were appalled when doctors or even their own family wished that they would just die. If they can not respond to you, it doesn’t mean you can assume to know what they want, even if they made previous intentions known. In fact, many people were quite aware in their vegetative state, or become so after some time, but simply had no way to communicate. Living wills are more for legal purposes to protect hospitals and to give the relatives something to go by, not to truly speak for the patient in such a situation.
People are lied to about the act of assisted suicide, “pulling the plug”, and the “right to die”, thinking they are doing good, but that doesn’t stop the act from being any less evil. And that’s the worst part: people thinking they are doing what is right, when in fact they are devaluing human life and being cheated out of something good and righteous.
I don’t say this to upset you. I say this because I know too much about the intentional suicidal acts in the medical world and wish to speak out the truth. I say this because doctors should allow you to heal, or to naturally die in comfort with the aid of pain medication, not to claim that your quality of life is not worth saving/preserving. I say this because it affects people LIKE ME, who may one day be in a position of low health and be pressured by disillusioned doctors and others who claim that it’s better if I die off right now (otherwise I would be selfish for making my family and their wallet’s suffer, right? That I should just clear up space for “more deserving patients”, am I right?).
I say this because people are being harmed by this ideology. If said ideology devalues human life and dignity, then it is evil. Simply put.
Is your mom a horrible person? I wouldn’t know. I never even claimed her or anyone else to be horrible; that is a baseless assertion you made on your own.
But I am sad that she had to be a part of her own husband’s death. I am sad that she felt that an evil act was in fact compassion for him. No one should feel that allowing a loved one to die is the best way to care for them. That’s all I can say about that.
I pray you find peace, and that your mother is at peace as well.
You can read more about the Church’s stance on euthanasia here, and they explain it better than me anyway:
On the So-Called “Choice in Dying”
And some writings on the subject:
20 Answers: End of Life Issues by Jason Negri
Forced Exit: Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide, and the New Duty to Die by Wesley Smith
Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life by William May
To any Catholics reading this: please correct me if I misrepresented any Church Teachings.
Pulling the plug on life support is not the same as assisted suicide! At all. I’ll add a research paper I wrote about the subject later, but no no no.
Simply letting someone die naturally is NOT the same as actively giving them a fatal dose of medicine to kill them.and a vegetative state is not the same as a coma. Vegetative – when life support is removed means there is no brain activity – and they are dead but the body is being kept alive with a machine. No one has ever awaken if they were declared brain dead.
A lot of people have actually recovered after being declared brain dead. Here’s an article http://kgov.com/brain-dead
It is such a hard choice to make. Personally I’ve always told my husband keep me plugged in give me time and by time I don’t mean a week. Sadly people are encouraged to pull the plug after such a short amount of time for one reason and that reason is to clear up a bed.
That is not true – if they are “brain dead” no electrical function they will never come back and a machine is just keeping a body alive. Now there are differences between hospitals/doctors as to what kind of test they will accept. But when there is no activity it will not come back. A good example is Shivo – she was brain dead but people did not want to accept it and when she died they did an autopsy and actually her brain was dead. If you know what kind of tests are used by the hospital/doctors to determine death then you can make a better decision. If there is some electrical activity then there might be a chance but when there is no activity anywhere they are dead and the machine is just keeping a body alive. It is not clear from your article how they were determining “brain dead” but several of the stories were not about brain dead people. All this demonstrates is the need to further understand what the diagnosis actually means. But medical journals do not show any actual cases of someone who was truly brain dead coming back.
This^ I do not support assisted suicide, but a truly brain-dead person is dead. Not the same thing.
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