[link|http://www.iaetf.org/orr299.htm|Cutting through the doublespeak]

Excerpt:

Fifteen people in Oregon, we are told, legally committed suicide with the assistance of their doctors in l998. According to the report, not one of them was forced into the act by intractable pain or suffering. Rather, those who died had strong personal beliefs in individual autonomy, and chose suicide based primarily on fears of future dependence.

That isn't how assisted suicide was supposed to work. For many years, we have been told repeatedly by advocates that assisted suicide is to be a "last resort," applied only when nothing else can be done to alleviate "unrelenting and intolerable suffering."

Yet pain wasn't a factor in a single one of the Oregon suicides. Thus, rather than being a limited procedure performed out of extreme medical urgency, legalization in Oregon has actually widened the category of conditions for which physician-hastened death is seen as legitimate.


Another excerpt:

The first woman to commit assisted suicide in Oregon had a 2 1/2 week relationship with the doctor who wrote her lethal prescription. Her own doctor had refused to assist her suicide, as had a second doctor who diagnosed her with depression. So she went to an advocacy group, which referred her to a doctor willing to do the deed.

Hers was not a unique case. The report states that six of the 15 people sought lethal prescriptions from two or more doctors.

Assisted suicide proponents told us this wouldn't happen either. They promised that assisted suicide would only occur after a deep exploration of values between patients and doctors who had long-term relationships.

Thanks to the study, we now know that death decisions are being made by doctors the patients barely know. This isn't careful medical practice; it is rampant Kevorkianism.

The study is as notable for what it omits as for what it includes. Information about the people who committed assisted suicide came from death-prescribing doctors. Treating doctors who did not participate in their patients' deaths -- professionals who could have provided invaluable information about the health of the people who died -- were not interviewed. Nor were the doctors who refused to write lethal prescriptions. Family members were not contacted either.


I say:

The slippery slope is lubricated by selective information and short memories.

you don't seriously mean to suggest a moral equivalence here, do you?

Or are you one of those people who see a woman as nothing more than a pair of tits? No wait. Then you could only sanction assisted suicide when done to females.

I didn't present any argument. I pointed to the existence of the slippery slope. Look, there it is.

You're acting like a small child who won't admit the milk has been spilled. "Look at all the spilled milk on the floor!" I say. "That's a weak argument" you say.

The trouble with cheap dismissals like that is they work both ways.

I see your pink unicorn and raise you one willful refusal to understand.

[link|http://www.haciendapub.com/smith.html|Death culture meets the sexual revolution]

Excerpt:

Smith calls acceptance of euthanasia "terminal nonjudgmentalism." He finds a good example in A Chosen Death by Lonny Shavelson, an emergency physician, who describes "Gene" who has had strokes and depression but is not terminal. Sarah, from the Hemlock Society, is given the task of assisting in his death. Sarah found her first killing experience tremendously satisfying and powerful, "the most intimate experience you can share with a person...More than sex. More than birth." Sarah gives Gene the poisonous brew as if she were handing him a beer. Gene drinks the liquid, falls asleep on Sarah's lap who then places a plastic bag over his head and croons, "See the light. Go to the light." But Gene, suddenly faced with the
prospect of immediate death, changes his mind and screams out...and tries to rip the bag off his face. Sarah won't allow it, catches Gene's wrist and holds it. Gene's body thrusts upwards and Sarah lays across Gene's shoulders...pinning him down, twisting the bag to seal it tight. Gene's body stops moving.


I say:

Sarah's last words to Gene: "Was it good for you, too?"