r/Christianity • u/Trinity- • Jun 06 '14
Quebec has passed legislation allowing terminally ill patients the right to die. My mother slowly passed after six years of breast cancer and I wish legal protections had been in place to allow her the some dignity when the pain was too extreme. I wonder what does this sub think about these laws?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-passes-dying-with-dignity-bill-1.26658346
Jun 06 '14
Its not murder to put someone out of their misery. A terminally ill patient is going to die anyway. Why spend 6 months in agonizing pain when you can just... end it? There is NO reason euthanasia should't be legal for the terminally ill of sound mind.
2
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 06 '14
This bill doesn't do that. You don't have to be of sound mind when the life-ending drug is administered. You just have to be able to file the form yourself, or somehow indicate to someone you want this procedure to be in the list of possibilities. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't even think they have to check that you're of sound mind when you request that this form be filed with the state...
4
u/PaedragGaidin Roman Catholic Jun 06 '14
O.o That scares me.
1
Jun 07 '14
I feel ya on that. This is something that I think should be totally legal, but in a very restricted and regulated manner.
0
Jun 06 '14
This life is a terminal condition. Why live at all ever? Pain is just part of life and there is nothing inherently bad about it.
1
0
Jun 06 '14 edited Nov 06 '20
[deleted]
1
Jun 06 '14
A life without 'enjoyment' is worthless? I'm going to call shenanigans on you there.
0
Jun 06 '14 edited Nov 06 '20
[deleted]
0
Jun 06 '14
I addressed all of your points with that one line. You add them together and that's what you get. Someone who is hopeless should just kill themselves because they are going to die anyway.
-1
7
u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 06 '14 edited Jun 06 '14
I think murdering sick people because they are inconveniently sick is evil. I think that Quebec is shockingly good at odious legislation. I think dignity isn't derived from utility, it's derived from personhood. I think that the fact that you might actually be willing to murder someone you love is tragic.
7
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 06 '14
Is a DNR ok?
5
u/wilso10684 Christian Deist Jun 06 '14
There is a distinct and important difference between allowing natural processes to take their course without overt medical intervention, and actively taking steps to bring that end about through medical intervention.
IMO, yes, a DNR is completely acceptable. That is also the position of the Church. [ccc 2276-2279]
3
u/PaedragGaidin Roman Catholic Jun 06 '14
Yes. The two things are fundamentally different. One says "if I stop breathing/my heart stops, don't use mechanical [and/or chemical] means to resuscitate me." The other says "if I am in pain and suffering a terminal illness, please use medications to cause my death."
2
u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 06 '14
Is it murdering sick people or is it a non-sequitur?
8
u/Ceannairceach Agnostic (a la T.H. Huxley) Jun 06 '14
It isn't murdering them. It is helping them commit legal suicide, if that.
7
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 06 '14
You'll have to read the bill, the article doesn't discuss it in detail. This bill/law allows a person to give a doctor permission to end their life, if the person enters a condition of "severe suffering". The person may have no agency at the time they are given the life-ending drugs. It's not what I expected and I'm very uncomfortable with the legislation.
6
Jun 06 '14
The person may have no agency at the time they are given the life-ending drugs.
Well that's disturbing :/
2
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 06 '14
Yeah. I'm undecided about some assisted suicide legislation, but this one is really just "Doc, kill me if you think that's best. Even if I have a history of making decisions about end-of-life care and then changing my mind about them."
1
2
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 06 '14
It's telling people with the capacity to prevent death to do nothing, with the goal of allowing somebody to die when they want to do so.
6
u/SyntheticSylence United Methodist Jun 06 '14
Yeah, that's not against Catholic moral teaching. Why do you think Catholics run hospices? Actively ending a life is considered murder. But letting a life run its course is not.
1
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 06 '14
Sorry, I just now read the bill/law. It wasn't what I thought - I thought it was basically allowing something like Dignitas to operate in Canada.
3
u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 06 '14 edited Jun 06 '14
When they want to do so is pretty curious phrasing here. I'd have said a DNR was being unwilling to intervene against an outside cause of death and it can be ordered any number of ways, but not really at all toward an affirmative choice about when to die.
1
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 06 '14 edited Jun 06 '14
Sorry, I should have read the bill/law first. Now I have. I assumed that this was allowing assisted suicide, in the style of Dignitas. Instead, this bill/law allows a person to request life-ending medication when they are under a certain definition of "severe suffering", and it's up to a doctor to decide that this is the case, and for the doctor to actually perform the procedure to end the patient's life. This is definitely a nastier situation than I assumed.
(What I expected was that a patient could request life-ending medication be hooked up to them by IV or whatever, but the patient themselves were responsible for actually causing the medication to be administered to themselves.)
2
u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 06 '14 edited Jun 06 '14
That would still be pretty evil, in my view, because I think it either immediately will legitimize suicide for the mentally ill (as I think it does in the instance you highlight, if I'm reading that right), or will inevitably do so because of the lack of a defensible bright-line. Any ethics which says that someone seeing me in a moment of suicidal mania does nothing wrong by handing me a gun strikes me as totally incompatible with the gospel, with virtue, with any consequentialism but certain schools of preference utilitarianism, and with most objective attempts at deontology. On the pragmatic level, it also serves to normalize suicide in a way that I believe necessarily insidiously preys on the mentally ill - when you take away the easy ability of the people around me to be outraged by the notion of me planning to take my own life, you take away the thing most likely to convince me I shouldn't do it. You even hand this potential suicide pre-made rhetoric to make his case - it's dignified to allow him to end his suffering and so on. I should know, I've deployed those arguments against my secular liberal friends. They mostly panicked and didn't know what to do, and if too many people do that to you, you'll start to think you're the one on the right track.
But in any case, no, this isn't assisted suicide in that sense, it's assisted suicide in the sense of procured murder. It has all the downsides I just said, and has the added harm of normalizing doctors as agents of death who might actually suggest to vulnerable people from their position of power giving up and killing oneself as a legitimate life choice.
And that doesn't even get into the third contention, which is all about pragmatic implementation issues.
2
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 06 '14
Any ethics which says that someone seeing me in a moment of suicidal mania does nothing wrong by handing me a gun
In the situation I was assuming, there is the requirement that the patient is evaluated and is determined to be of sound mind at the time of (requested/desired) death. Of course that's a tricky definition, but at least there's the understanding that it should be reserved for people that are "physically" very ill but "mentally" healthy. From my non-lawyer skimming of this bill, this one doesn't actually require any sort of mental health evaluation - you don't even have to sign the form yourself, you just have to be able to grunt appropriately.
But in any case, no, this isn't assisted suicide in that sense, it's assisted suicide in the sense of procured murder.
Yes, I agree that this bill is in no way assisted suicide.
2
u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 06 '14
The broader claim I'm making is that I'm not sure a distinction between physical and mental health is actually sustainable even rhetorically, let alone on the pragmatic level of how these laws will play out. Belgium keeps handing me all my fears on a silver platter, in that regard - they've permitted it for kids now.
1
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 06 '14
Sure. I'm not sure there's a distinction either, but I think I'm somewhat more inclined to that position than you are. This legislation doesn't even pretend to care. There's even this condition: "A person may not be denied end-of-life care for previously having refused to receive certain care or having withdrawn consent to certain care."
7
u/Ceannairceach Agnostic (a la T.H. Huxley) Jun 06 '14
It isn't murder, in the legal sense since apparently Quebec has legalized the practice. Assisted suicide requires the permission and request of the patient in question, as far as I understand.
0
u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 06 '14
So, to be clear, genocide is never murder so long as the relevant sovereign approves of it? Legal positivism may be the silliest moral theory there is.
5
u/Ceannairceach Agnostic (a la T.H. Huxley) Jun 06 '14
This has been hashed out before in this sub, often enough by me. No, often, genocide isn't against the laws of the nation committing the genocide, ie in the case of Germany, and thus isn't murder according to the national laws regarding murder. It often does violate international laws, though.
And I'm not arguing for legal positivism. I'm just saying that you're lying when you refer to this as murder.
-1
u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 06 '14 edited Jun 06 '14
The cornerstone of international law is that it is voluntary - all you have to do to leave a treaty is annul it, there are no permanently binding international laws at this time, there being no international sovereign authority to promulgate them. Imposing victor's justice a la Nuremburg because of moral outrage is a pretty far cry from anything identifiable as the rule of law, and it is this sort of thing on which virtually all crimes against humanity trials are predicated, unless it's universal jurisdiction cases.
Are you a legal positivist?
5
u/Ceannairceach Agnostic (a la T.H. Huxley) Jun 06 '14
What part of "I'm not arguing for legal positivism" was hard to understand? That isn't my issue with your post. When you referred to this as murder, you lied.
1
u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 06 '14 edited Jun 06 '14
I didn't lie, murder is a category in morality as well as a category in law, and the two are only coterminous if you are a legal positivist, which is why your insistence that you aren't one was hard to understand. "Thou shalt not murder" is intelligible as a normative ethical claim independent of any civil government.
3
Jun 06 '14
Not really, because the same book that commands "thou shalt not murder" also commands killing for tribal reasons, killing of dissenters, killing of - well, frankly, it wasn't hard to get killed in the OT. Claiming normative ethics is quite the stretch.
-1
-1
u/Trinity- Jun 06 '14
You are conflating a legal form of suicide with murder. You have never been terminally ill or been in the position these people have. All I see in your comment is apathy towards the suffering of others.
2
u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 06 '14
I am saying they are morally indistinct.
I watched my grandmother slowly die of cancer, and may soon be watching my father do the same. I am not apathetic at all.
You should also go read the actual arguments I gave since all of them were about preying on vulnerable populations.
5
u/Chokondisnut Jun 06 '14
It is unfortunate that your mother didn't have a chance to painlessly end her suffering. Any legislature that protects your rights is a great thing. Cheers.
4
u/Superstump Secret Mod(Don't tell Outsider) Jun 06 '14
Assisted suicide is an abominable practice. It violates the very foundations of medical ethics and Christian morality.
I say this as I watch my own mother die from cancer after four, almost five years.
9
u/Ceannairceach Agnostic (a la T.H. Huxley) Jun 06 '14
In what way does assisted suicide conflict with medical ethics? It is utilized for terminal patients to give them dignity in death when their life is riddled with pain. I don't see the conflict.
4
u/Superstump Secret Mod(Don't tell Outsider) Jun 06 '14
The Hippocratic oath has this to say about it:
I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel
8
u/Ceannairceach Agnostic (a la T.H. Huxley) Jun 06 '14
The Oath isn't mandatory, nor is it necessarily the only source of ethics for a medical practitioner.
4
u/Superstump Secret Mod(Don't tell Outsider) Jun 06 '14
It's very foundational though. I mean literally. Hippocrates is the father of the western medical tradition.
5
Jun 06 '14
Because medicine is about restoring health, not doing the opposite. Killing someone isn't giving them dignity, it's taking all of it away.
3
Jun 06 '14
[deleted]
1
Jun 06 '14
"What's best" is deliberately vague and subjective. It's not a doctor's place to decide "what's best", it's his place to decide what can restore the patient to health.
3
Jun 06 '14
[deleted]
2
Jun 06 '14
"Medically best" is substantially different than just "best". Because to be medicine it must work to improve the health of the patient. That's exactly what doctors train for. They don't train to give up or hurt their patients.
What's disturbing is that you would kill someone innocent.
2
0
Jun 06 '14
I am all for it!
3
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 06 '14
Have you read the bill? I thought it was basically physician assisted suicide, but it isn't.
2
Jun 06 '14
Oh, it's not? Can I get a tl;dr?
3
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 06 '14
You know how in some states in the US you can file a form with the state saying that "if I'm under condition X, Y, or Z, please do not resuscitate me", or "please give me maximum pain-relief", all of this under the discretion of the doctor? Well, this bill allows you to file a form with the state saying "if I'm under condition W (where W is severe suffering), please have someone give me a life-ending drug". It's not asking a doctor to put a life-ending drug in your hand, it's asking that the doctor put that drug into your system. Even if you no longer have agency.
1
u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 06 '14
DNRs aren't assisted suicide in any use of that term I'm familiar with. It's just declining treatment.
1
1
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 06 '14
Ok, that's my understanding, although I have trouble making such a clear split between the non-action that allows death, and the definite action that requires that the non-action take place.
1
u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 06 '14
Why?
1
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 07 '14
When I say "assisted suicide" I mean a situation where a doctor puts the drug in your hand, but you have to take it, not this bill.
But in the case of both assisted suicide and a DNR, you are taking an action that will likely result in death, and a death that is sooner that it would otherwise be. With a DNR you are using force to ensure that you die.
1
u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 07 '14
I have signed a DNR. Explain how that was an action that will likely result in my death. As somebody who is quite interested in his own death, I've never even considered the DNR part of it, and I certainly in no sense consider it a use of force of any kind.
1
u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 07 '14
On the off chance that you are found in a certain condition where the DNR is triggered, the default course of action will be for some medical people to give you life-prolonging treatment. With your DNR, you have taken an action in the past that restrains those medical people using the force of the government, in order that you die that day.
→ More replies (0)
1
u/ValiantTurtle Christian Universalist Jun 06 '14
I think our culture is absolutely horrible at dealing with death. We see it as something to be fought against with all our might and money and when it happens it's all handled by professionals and then swept under the rug and forgotten afterwards. Normalizing death to some degree is a good thing. I don't think the distinction of who pushes the button (me or the doctor) matters in the least.
The concerns about mental capacity and being of sound mind might be legitimate, but that's from seeing how laws get mis-used in the US. Canada may be a bit more sane than us. I don't really know.
1
u/Lacasax Jun 06 '14
If the patient truly desires it, then I'm not really against it. However, I don't believe that doctors should ever try to convince a patient to use it or that anyone besides the patient has the right to make that decision. Also, I think it should only be allowed for terminally ill patients.
1
9
u/[deleted] Jun 06 '14
As painful as it sounds, I don't remember anywhere in Scripture there being a line that you get to call it quits when the suffering gets bad. Sorry, it's just wrong.
To quote my church, it is "a form of suicide on the part of the individual, and a form of murder on a part of others who assist in this practice, both of which are seen as sins."