…as being acceptable for people with disabilities, and they defined it fairly openly so someone who’s a person with disabilities like John Kelly – who is on the call – if he were considered competent he could simply be euthanized, if it were approved by a doctor. The concept with this I have an issue with is about choice, because it’s not always about choice. It’s often about people in a difficult time of their life and their being – they feel bec…
…ying was protected under the law providing for living wills.” More accurately and narrowly, the court held that the patient’s consent to assisted suicide would constitute a defense that a physician could raise if they were charged with homicide. (Baxter v.Montana at page 25 – available at the Court’s website.) A court or jury would still be able to consider all the facts and circumstances (e.g. misdiagnosis, malpractice) in deciding whether to acq…
…e medicine, and so they don’t use the medicine simply to end their life willy nilly. People who live longer than six months is proof that in fact they live as long as they possibly can-we all want to live as long as we can. Family members encouraging one to have alternative medicine, to live longer so no, the data actually proves that we encourage people to live as long as possible, and they do. Emma Wilson: Let me bring in John Kelly from Boston….
…ks apart the complicated relationship between assisted suicide and the mostly-undefined concept of “dignity.” Below is an an excerpt from “Death with dignity devalues disability.” What does it mean to die with dignity? Or the opposite, what is death without dignity or with indignity? There is no legal definition. It is a phrase people like to use with the hope that it is sufficient and accepted. Remember the bit George Carlin did in 1992 about eup…
…ll the plug.” The doctors, courts, media and public all viewed these severely disabled individuals as the equivalent of terminally ill. They did not get suicide prevention equal to that offered nondisabled people, nor the right to live in real homes instead of facilities, but courts uniformly granted them a “right to die.” Then the 1990s brought Dr. Jack Kevorkian, conducting assisted suicides using lethal drugs, with two thirds of his body count…
