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ThatDamnedPanda -> RE: Acceptable Murder (3/3/2009 10:59:27 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: StrangerThan
Abortion. If you are a pro-choice person, is there a point where you view the process as murder or is it until birth, a choice?
I'm not touching that one. That's the one that's probably going to get the thread burned down, and I'll let others gather the wood.
quote:
ORIGINAL: StrangerThan
Executions: Regardless of whether or not they deter criminals, do you think executing someone for the murder of another to be an acceptable form of punishment? If not, are there instances where it would be?
No, and no.
quote:
ORIGINAL: StrangerThan
Right to die: How do you view right to die laws that exist for the terminally ill? Should it be a right in your view? Or do you believe that medical science has evolved to a point where one can die in peace without suffering? If you were the person making the decision, what would drive that process, fear? Economics? What?
Pulling the plug: One of the areas in which I've always found pro-lifers to be inconsistent in defending life is removing others from life support. Aside from Terri Shaivo (sp), it is a common practice done in hospitals every day that generates little if any uproar. But in a technical sense, it is taking the life of another person. A few months ago a story ran on the front page of Yahoo about a man who had been brain dead, or at least thought to be, for 17 years who suddenly woke and came back with most if not all of his mental faculties. If you were called upon to make that decision, do you feel it to be one that could haunt you?
I'll take these two as one question, because it's too hard for me to separate them in my mind right now.
In a sense, I was called upon to make that decision, a few months ago when I had to help my father make the decision to end his own life. It was by far the hardest thing I've ever had to do (and hopefully the hardest thing I ever will have to do), and the second most horrible experience I've ever gone through, but if i had to go back and make that decision again I would make the exact same decision without a moment's hesitation.
He fell and broke his hip on a Saturday, and underwent surgery that night. Late Sunday night, he suddenly developed pneumonia, and when the hospital called me at 5:30 Monday morning, there was little hope he would survive. I got there around mid-day on Monday, and from Tuesday afternoon until Friday morning, never left his side. He knew his situation, was fully aware of exactly where he stood every minute of the process, and I had a talk with him Monday night. I told him I was there to help him in any way he needed, and support him in whatever decision he made. I said that if he decided he wanted to fight, I was behind him 110% every step of the way; but if the time came that he decided he didn't want to fight anymore, I'd support him 110% in that, as well. Whatever he decided, I was behind him all the way, and I was going to help him through it one way or the other.
He fought until there was literally nothing left to fight with. From Tuesday afternoon through Friday morning, he never slept a wink. He couldn't. He had to fight like hell to suck in every ragged breath, as though he was trying to breathe through concrete. If he'd fallen asleep, he'd have died, and he knew it. So I didn't sleep either. I stayed next to him, hanging on every breath, listening for the most subtle signs of even the slightest changes, so that I could alert the nurses and the respiratory therapists. I told him not to feel badly about it; i said the way I looked at it, he'd finally figured out a way to get even with me for all the nights he'd stayed up until dawn wondering whether I was going to bring the car home in one piece. We stayed up together, fighting together, until finally, at around 3 AM on Friday, his breathing changed in such a way that I knew he'd lost. I could hear it; he had nothing left. He just couldn't suck air through it anymore.
I met with the nurses and the respiratory therapists, and then asked them for a moment alone with him so i could be the one to tell him. I held his hand, told him where things stood, and asked him if he thought he was ready. He thanked me for what I'd done, and said he figured he finally was. At 7:30, when the doctor came in, he ordered a morphine-atavan drip, and he slipped into unconciousness within seconds. He died shortly thereafter, on his own terms. He knew he'd fought heroically, against impossible odds, that he'd given it everything he possibly could have given, and that there was just nothing left to do. That's what he needed to know. Once he knew that, he was able to let go.
The point of all that? It's pretty simple. I said earlier that helping him make the decision to let go was the second-most horrible thing I've ever had to experience; the one thing that was more horrible than that was watching him go through what he had to go through to get to that point. Every single minute for 2 and a half days, every breath he tried to take. The only thing in the world that's harder than watching someone you love go through that, harder than holding their hand and encouraging them to keep fighting, is silently wishing they would just die as quickly as possible. No human being should have to go through what he went through if they make the decision they would prefer to just let go. I thank god every single day since then that he had a doctor, and a hospital, who understood what the right thing to do was, and who were prepared and willing to do it. There are other doctors in this country, and other hospitals, who would not have let that happen. Then it would have been up to me to make it happen. Nobody should ever have have to go through that if they don't want to, and no loved one should ever have to make the choices I would have had to make if his medical team hadn't been willing to make them. Not in a civilized society.
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