Euthanasia Quotes by Roedy

Quotations are selected from this pool (and other quotation pools) in a pseudorandom way every hour and inserted at the top and bottom of some of the major pages on this website. Feel free to copy any of these quotes and paste them for whatever purpose you please, including on your own website, blog, social media page or forum debate posts.

Is Phyisician-Assisted Suicide a Moral Question?

If you believe in a sadistic supernatural being in the sky who imagines he owns all humans as his personal property and if you believe that being often enjoys torturing people with excruciating pain as they near death and if you believe this being gets very pissed if you interfere with his torture by means of physician-assisted suicide and if you think it a good thing to kowtow to the whims of this bastard, then physician-assisted suicide is a moral question.

However, if you don’t buy this malarky, then physician-assisted suicide is nobody’s concern but the patient. As a purely private matter, it has nothing to do with morality. The principle of separation of church and state should protect non-believers from believers trying to impose their superstitions, but it does not.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)

Gloria Taylor had ALS, an incurable disease. My friend Geoff Sirois died of it on 2001-08-19. It is one of the most horrible ways to die. Gradually your muscles stop working so you can’t move, cannot eat, cannot speak and finally cannot breathe. It is like being buried alive. My friends at the BC Civil Liberties Association and three others in a similar boat to Ms. Taylor sued and overturned the law in Canada making physician assisted suicide illegal. The judge declared it inconsistent with the constitution. If parliament does not fix the law by 2016-06, it will become invalid.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

ALS

This has brought on a firestorm from meddling Christians who wanted to make sure Ms. Taylor did not miss a microsecond of the suffering they believe their god Yahweh was inflicting on her. This is as insane as insisting she have her appendix out without anaesthesia. They wanted to force their religion, complete with unsubstantiated superstitions about suffering, death, ghosts, bodies possessed by souls and after death torture on non-believers. Christians like Will Johnston refuse to respect the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion, which includes the right to reject Christianity.

Back in 1990, I comforted my friend David Lewis as he ended his life to avoid the final stages of AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome). At the time Christians meddled outrageously as well. I wrote an essay about it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

ALS

Gloria Taylor was a woman with ALS and the only person in Canada currently with a legal right to physician-assisted suicide. The KRTLS (Kelowna Right To Life Society) tried to take that right away from her. The KRTLS argued that taking the life of a human being is not an act of compassion.

Of course, taking a life is not an act of compassion, but that is not what was happening in the Gloria Taylor case. If the KRTLS had right on their side, why are they lying about something so basic? Christians were trying to ensure she suffered long after she had found life unbearable. That is far from a compassionate act.

Christians were doing this for sadistic-religious reasons. Christians have a warped S&M (Sadism & Masochism) view of suffering. They enjoy contemplating their enemies being roasted alive for eternity.

In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful and that they may give to God more copious thanks for it, they are permitted perfectly to behold the sufferings of the damned… The saints will rejoice in the punishment of the damned.

~ St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 1274-03-07 age:48)

Mother Theresa refused to give pain killers to people dying of extremely painful diseases like pancreas cancer. She would tell them they should enjoy the pain as Jesus’ kisses.

Christian women titillate themselves contemplating the suffering of the near naked Christ. Christian men in some cultures whip themselves bloody in emulation of the suffering of Christ. Nuns and priests torment themselves in penance hoping to placate the god Yahweh. The point is Christians have a rather unhealthy relationship with suffering, especially the suffering of others. They see it as a Good Thing™.

In this case, busybody Christians were trying to pretend they knew more than Gloria Taylor when her life was unbearable. They were sadists trying to force their nutty religious views on her when she was at her weakest. It was absolutely none of their concern. If Christians want to impale themselves on the altar of their cruel imaginary god Yahweh, they are welcome to it, but please leave Gloria, me and everyone else alone.

My biggest nightmare is on my deathbed to fall into the clutches of arrogant, meddling Christians like those in the KRTLS.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Anti-Euthanasia Is Always Religiously Motivated

Pretend as they will to ethical credentials, the anti-euthanasia propagandists are always religiously motivated even if they try to buy credibility by concealing the fact.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) mirroring Richard Dawkins’ observation about anti-evolution propagandists.

Anti-Euthanasia Bastards

Perhaps we should take off the gloves and call the anti-euthanasia folk what they truly are: SFGists (Suffer For Godists), God’s Sadists, SADists (Suffer At Deathists), DLCHS (Death is the Last Chance for Human Sacrifice), Superstitious Loons.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Anti-Euthanasia ⇒ Premature Suicide

Even though the church officially condemns suicide, its meddling forces terminally ill people into premature suicide. The churches have successfully lobbied to make it illegal assist a suicide. Therefore someone with ALS, Huntingdon’s, pancreas cancer etc. has to do it prematurely, just to avoid procrastinating so long he could not do it on his own.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Asinine Rules

In Canada, you may not seek physician assisted suicide unless you are on death’s door. In that situation, you don’t need assistance. You can white knuckle it for a few days. What you need help for is weeks, months or years of suffering.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Assisted Suicide

A committee of the Canadian house and senate have produced a report on how Canada’s new assisted suicide law should work. It is for the most part excellent. Of course, the eventual law could be much watered down. To my surprise, Catholic hospitals that take public money will be forced to offer assisted suicide to their patients.

Unfortunately, Alzheimer’s has been effectively excluded as grounds for assisted suicide on four grounds:

1. It is not terminal. Patients can linger for decades.
2. It is not painful in early stages.
3. It cannot be diagnosed until you are already incompetent.
4. You cannot set up an advanced directive to handle a disease or condition you have not yet been diagnosed with.

The other problem is neither palliative care nor assisted suicide is guaranteed to be available all across Canada. The terminally ill are hardly in a postilion to travel to where either is available.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Assisted Suicide for the Mentally Ill

I am bipolar. Lithium completely controls it. I have had no incidents of either type of swing in over 20 years. Why should my suffering be discounted because I am Mentally Ill? What counts is competence, understanding the gravity of suicide, capable of balancing the pros and cons, not whether every part of my brain works perfectly without medication.

Further, if someone is not competent but is in terrible suffering, they too should have access to suicide. After all we put down pets, lovingly, who are in great suffering. They cannot give informed consent. You should have the right to designate someone to make the decision for you in case you became incompetent.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

BC Almanac

CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) BC Almanac radio show read two letters on the air that showed listeners did not understand what physician assisted suicide was. One believed that physician assisted suicide was currently highly regulated and all regulation was about to be removed and so abuse would explode. The very opposite is true. Physician assisted suicide occurs all the time, but on the quiet without any regulation or oversight. A new law would add legal, medical and psychological oversight to make sure all happens in the light of day and by the book.

The second writer suggested that people should register on their drivers’ licence whether they approved of euthanasia. She apparently thought physician assisted suicide was a sort of living will to decide what you wanted done with you if you went into permanent coma. With physician-assisted suicide, you request assistance with suicide at the time, in full control of your mental faculties to avoid the last few weeks of suffering or dementia. It is very much like having a pet put to sleep, only it is yourself.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bogus Respectable Arguments

Christians are motivated by religious superstition, but they have learned that people laugh in their faces when they present arguments based on such superstitions. So instead, they make up bogus arguments they imagine might fly. So, for example, in a euthanasia debate, they will usually avoid telling you that they believe the god Yahweh owns you and you have no right to evade the suffering he imposes. Instead they make up highly improbable scenarios about a Hitler murdering crippled children as a result of terminally ill people being given the right to choose the time of their deaths.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bullying Suicidal People

If your primary goal in dealing with someone suicidal is preventing them from committing suicide, you will most likely do more harm than good. Religious people often attempt to guilt trip or frighten the person into avoiding suicide. This just makes them more miserable than ever. Sometimes religious people use force. This just convinces the depressed person the world is a bullying uncaring place. Some try to browbeat the terminally ill into enduring unendurable suffering. This is unconscionable meddling. Instead, explain that suicide is usually a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Point out the ways in which the situation could change all by itself or with a little help from the outside. Don’t tell them to buck up and stop making a mountain out of a molehill. Let them do most of the talking. Don’t bully them, arrogantly assuming you know more about their situation, just how it feels and the best course than they do.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Can You Cry?

A rep from the Sally Jesse Raphael (a talk show host) once phoned me up and asked me to come on her show to talk about euthanasia. They asked if I could guarantee I would cry. I said no. They then decided I was not a suitable guest.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Catholic Sadists

A Catholic is a cold-hearted bastard who thinks his religion gives him the right to torture a terminally ill stranger by dragging their life on and on when they are screaming to be put out of their misery. If he did that to a dog, we would lock him up.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Catholics Freak Over Euthanasia

On 2016-09-29 the Catholic Bishops of Alberta and the Northwest Territories issued guidelines that say priests should refuse funerals for people who die by assisted suicide. This is odd. Of all possible sins, the Catholics have singled out assisted suicide as the only one worthy of punishing the family rather than the sinner. They consider it even worse than suicide, murder, rape and child molesting. Why punish the family? The family might even have opposed the assisted-suicide.

Suicide is usually a rash decision, made while impaired with drugs or alcohol. It is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

In contrast, physician-assisted suicide just chops a few weeks or months from the life of a terminally ill person. It is done in consultation with, and with the permission of, many experts. It isn’t about ending life, but rather avoiding needless suffering.

Catholics never cease to amaze me how little common sense they have. I am so disgusted with the Catholics and their ancient con, tricking people into believing they will be tortured for eternity if they don’t pay the church to perform magic propitiation ceremonies.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Catholics, Butt Out

If you ask a Christian, especially a Catholic, to butt out of other people’s end-of-life decisions (e.g. suicide or physician assisted suicide), their most passionate argument is You can’t. It is not your body. God owns you. If you die prematurely you will be extremely sorry. God will be very angry with you for destroying his property. He will torment you for eternity. Any amount of suffering here on earth is worth it to avoid that. I have to forcibly prevent you from making such a big mistake. This, of course, is a religious argument. You would think freedom of religion would protect me from such a fanatic forcing his religion on me, but it does not. Christians have managed to get their superstitions embedded in law.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Check History

Before you sign up for a nursing home, check out their euthanasia policy. At least make sure they have never legally snatched legal guardianship to impose their religious will.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Christian Arguments Against Euthanasia

When debates about end-of-life decisions come up, Christians are at their worst.

• They believe their religion gives them the right to interfere in the end-of-life decisions of people they do not even know.
• Their arguments are never about the patient, but always about themselves and crazy speculation about highly improbable things that might happen to them and their religious superstitions. They believe their paranoid imaginings should trump science and experience. They believe others should conform to their nutty religious superstitions. Because they are Christian, they believe they know better than anyone else even when they know nothing of the circumstances.
• As young and healthy horses, they imagine themselves far more qualified than the elderly to make decisions and rules about end-of-life options.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Christian Palliative Care

Even the nastiest cancer is only 1/100 as scary as being assigned Christians to care for me in palliative care. With the best of intentions, they would drag my life out as long as possible to maximise my suffering which their deity relishes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Christian Paranoia

Euthanasia terrifies Christians. Their heads are filled with visions of devils and hellfire. Death is something that must be endlessly procrastinated at any cost. No earthly suffering could possibly be as bad as what is to come. This silliness gets really annoying when they impose their childish fears on everyone else.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Christian Sadists

Palliative care is good, but cannot deal with everything. For example no drugs could do a thing for my nausea so bad I had to learn to read while vomiting. It could do absolutely nothing for kidney stones. It could not help my step mom with pancreas cancer. Just because palliative care works for many people, does not mean those for whom it does not work should be forced to rely on it.

Christianity is a sadistic cult. They focus on the suffering of Jesus and the martyrs as profound virtue. Mother Theresa refused pain killers to her charges dying of cancer. This is sick. Christians should not be permitted to force suffering on others just to get their religious jollies.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Christians and Euthanasia

Ask a Christian why they oppose euthanasia and they will give you one of three answers:

1. God owns you. You have no right to destroy his property.
2. God does not like it and will torture you in eternity.
3. People will be killed who do not want to be.

The first two reasons amount to Christians forcing their religious superstitions on others. Unfortunately, law makers are often Christian and see no problem with this. The third reason is bogus. When euthanasia is legal there are several doctors and bureaucrats overseeing. When euthanasia is illegal it happens anyway without oversight with a wink.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Court Ruling on Euthanasia

The courts overturned the law making physician assisted suicide illegal. Then Stephen Harper and his band of fundamentalist meddlesome loonies are tried to get their religious superstitions about death and god burned back into law. They wanted to micromanage the end-of-life decisions of the terminally ill. They wanted to force their religious beliefs down the throats of the terminally ill. They didn’t care how much suffering the terminally ill had to endure because they believed one should not escape suffering imposed by the sadistic god Yahweh. Other people’s end-of-life decisions are none of their business. Those decisions do not concern them in the least. Ask the terminally ill what safeguards they want. You will find don’t want Christians making those decisions for them. Only they are qualified to decide if and when life is too unbearable to require help dying. Christians keep trying to force their completely unscientific ideas about euthanasia, contraception and abortion on everyone else. The constitution guarantees freedom of religion which includes freedom from religion. What Harper and friends were doing is as wrong as making it illegal to refuse communion.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Death and Money

In BC the cost of medical care is going up. Why? Technology usually reduces costs. I can see three reasons:

• You spend the half your lifetime medical budget in the last year of life. We have found ways to keep people barely alive indefinitely, but very expensively.
• Doctors use expensive equipment routinely even when it is not necessary.
• Patent law allows drug companies to keep upping the price of drugs.

So what should we do about it?

• We should stop putting roadblocks to people wanting to avoid that last year of life, its expense, its discomfort.
• We should put a nominal user fee on expensive procedures like CAT (Computerised Axial Tomography) scans to discourage frivolous use.
• We should not allow drug companies to patent a drug that is merely a trivial variation on an existing drug. It must be truly novel.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Definition of Death

Death is the ultimate treatment for pain. It always works. Christian morality (aka Harper’s law) demands you should not use it under any circumstances (pets are a possible exception). You must instead make do with treatments that do not work. This is to avoid offending their sadistic god. What yours allegedly thinks does not matter.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Die As A Druggie

The new Canadian supreme court ruling permits physician assisted suicide only for intractable pain. If you don’t want to become a opiate addict at the end of your life, and drift out of existence in a fog like some druggie is an alley, tough. That is the ultimate indignity.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Disabled Paranoia

A disabled panelist on the CBC argued that the terminally ill should be prevented from taking their lives, (or receiving assistance to), on two grounds:

1. Everyone must be treated equally. She effectively asserts a teen wanting to kill herself because her boyfriend dumped her or a gay boy whom Christians have convinced has no right to life, whose whole lives are ahead of them, are no different from a terminally ill person with only weeks live in unbearable suffering.
2. She claims that not blocking the suicides of the terminally ill is a form of discrimination against them. If you don’t interfere with their attempts to avoid unbearable suffering, it means you don’t care about them. This is madness. If you cared, you listen to what they are asking you. You should care more about their unbearable suffering and what they are asking you to do than imposing your backward religious superstitions or slippery slope paranoias on them.

I get so impatient with the disabled, who seem to think that granting others the right to die is equivalent to surrendering their own right to live. They are so selfish and so irrational.

When there is no formal procedure, the disabled are in much greater danger than they would be with review by multiple disinterested experts. Many of the disabled have been exposed to dishonest religious propaganda that tries to confuse them by claiming formally requested physician assisted suicide is the same as un-requested genocide, as Hitler promoted. They are extremely selfish people who put more weight on their paranoid imaginings than the unbearable suffering of others.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Do the Mentally Ill Have the Right to Die?

The unbearable suffering of someone with a mental illness is just as unbearable as anyone else. They should have the right to avoid it too. You don’t need a perfectly functioning brain to tell if life is unbearable. The patient always knows better than a paternalistic, religiously motivated doctor.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Effect of Legal Suicide

Only one in ten patients who seek legal assisted suicide in Oregon carry through with it. Before this counseling was available, many of these people would have killed themselves on their own via incompetent means without access to counseling. The irony is, Catholics are unwittingly promoting more suicide in their desire to impose their superstitions on others.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Effect of Religion on Euthanasia

Without religion and fear of imaginary deities, end-of-life decisions would be much simpler. You would have to decide between:

• Experiencing another month of life with the option to decide again in a month.
• Experiencing no more life.

People would not be pressured into experiencing intolerable existence. They would not have expensive, pointless medical procedures forced on them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

End of Life Compassion

We should be at least as compassionate with ourselves as we are with our pets. The problem is those surrounding the dying person are mostly concerned with themselves: not wanting to be abandoned, with promoting religious beliefs, with inheritance. We have to arrange things so that the patient chooses what they want without undue pressure from others, even pressure to live. The patient is the one who has to put up with the misery. They alone should get to choose.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

End of Life Resistance

Unfortunately, at the end of your life, you have the least strength to resist bullies and that is when Christian bullies attack en masse and try to take over your end-of-life decisions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Equality Argument

On 2012-06-12 the BC Supreme Court struck down a ban on physician-assisted suicide. The argument was peculiar — equality. Severely ill or disabled people cannot kill themselves as able-bodied people can. Denying them the right to die is denying them equality. I would have used a freedom of religion argument, that Christians do not have the right to impose their religious dogma on others, but all’s well that ends well.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Euthanasia for Children

If a child has a disability and is suffering, they should be able to apply for physician assisted suicide.

If a child has a disability and is clearly suffering, but is incapable of applying for physician assisted suicide, a parent or guardian should be able to apply on their behalf.

It is extremely cruel kill a disabled child by denying medical attention, food or water. That should be illegal.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Euthanasia For Kids

Belgium is enacting an euthanasia law for people under 18. It requires parental consent and terminal illness. I welcome this. There is no more reason to permit Christians to torment children than to torment adults to placate their sadistic god. However, Anna Marie Tremonti, of the CBC ’s The Current was concerned that children would not understand that death was permanent. I personally figured it out at age four by repeatedly digging up a turtle to see if it would truly stay dead. Further, it does not matter if the child has poor judgment because the parents have a veto. The problem with the law is a child could have the misfortune of two sadistic Catholic parents who will force her to suffer so matter what because their god feasts on suffering.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Euthanasia in Canada

Canada’s euthanasia law only goes half way. It permits you to die if doctors say you would die soon anyway. If you are merely in untreatable pain or some unbearable condition, like being unable to move or speak, these Christian fanatics insist you suffer indefinitely. May these sadists be forced to endure what they impose on others. When other people die is none of their business. It does not affect or concern them. They are meddling to impose their religion others when they are most vulnerable.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Euthanasia in Canada

On 2015-02-06 the supreme court in Canada ruled that physician assisted suicide is now legal for competent adults with enduring, intolerable suffering who clearly consent to ending their lives.

The disabled should be as happy as the terminally ill about this ruling. Prior to this people were bumped off on the quiet without oversight. Now there will be a formal procedure with doctors, bureaucrats and lawyers. Nobody will be able to push you into it. There will be lots of people to complain to.

The other good news is people who are merely depressed will get help if they apply for assisted suicide. Prior to this, they bumped themselves off quietly.

Kay Carter was a friend of mine who had to sneak away to Switzerland without saying goodbye to anyone, to get help with her death. She could not risk meddling Harperites getting wind of what she was doing and interfering.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Euthanasia in Québec

Physicians in Québec opposed to euthanasia, members of The Physicians’ Alliance for Total Refusal of Euthanasia, have claimed Québec’s bill would legalise murder. This is logically impossible since murder is defined as illegally taking someone’s life. The bill takes some acts to aid a person who requests death from illegal to legal status. It does not, in any way, make mowing someone down with a machine gun legal. Physicians destroy their authority when they resort to such silly, shrill, irrational and fallacious arguments.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Euthanasia Laws

The supreme court of Canada gave parliament until 2016-06 to come up with a new euthanasia law. Here are some of the principles I think should be embodied in the new legislation:

• It should be completely secular. It should not be influenced by religious thinking such as the existence of a soul, that god owns you, that there is an afterlife, that you will be tortured for eternity… Of course patients are free to take such considerations into their private deliberations but such superstitions should not be imposed on all Canadians. Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion.
• Clergy from a different religion should not be permitted to try to influence a patient’s decision. Terminally ill patients have low sales resistance.
• The patient, not the doctor, not the family, should be the final decider. Even if the patient has become demented, their written instructions should prevail. Only the patient can adequately judge his subjective experience and quality of life.
• It should be possible for the patient to change his mind at any time.
• When authorities are having difficulty deciding whether to give permission to die, they should simply delay deciding for yet another month.
• Terminal illness is just one possible criterion. I would give permission to die to someone trapped in a paralysed body unable to move, someone both deaf and blind, someone in pain or someone with Alzheimer’s.
• Assisted suicide should be available in all parts of Canada.
• Catholic hospitals receiving public funding must offer euthanasia, even if it means bringing in non-Catholic physicians to do it.
• There should be a simple binding checkbox form to express your wished. All you need are witnesses to make it binding. All you have to do is fill in a later dated new form to override previous ones. You should not need a lawyer unless you have unusual requests.
• It should be illegal for a physician to withhold how to get basic information about the new law.
• If all goes well, many young people seeking suicide for emotional trauma will apply. This is a wonderful opportunity to steer them to therapy. This is true for all people applying for trivial reasons.
• Currently, we are far kinder to our pets than our parents. We force parents to suffer far more than our pets by starving or thirsting to death with passive euthanasia. We must allow our parents to choose to avoid similar suffering.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Euthanasia Safeguard

The euthanasia safeguard of most interest to me is one protecting me from the likes of Dr. Will Johnston interfering with my end of life decisions. Ditto for the Catholics at Providential who run various BC hospitals.

These people are convinced they know infinitely better about my end-of-life decisions than I do. All they are doing is shoving Catholic superstition (heaven, hell, souls and vengeful, sadistic Yahweh god) down my throat disguised as legitimate medicine. What is worse, they feel completely justified in bullying and overriding non-believers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Euthanasia Should be Private

Why is there even a euthanasia debate? What would give someone the idea they had the right to override someone else’s end-of-life decisions? What would give strangers the notion they were in a better position to decide than the terminally ill patients?

The anti-euthanasia forces are fueled by religious fanaticism. They think they have a god-given right to impose their religious superstitions on others. They imagine there is merciful, perfect god, like a cosmic hotelier, who will be horrendously offended if you check out a couple of weeks early from Hotel Misery, who will then torture you for eternity for insulting him.

Further, they assert that their cosmic slave master god owns all humans (Christian and otherwise) and therefore any sort of euthanasia is illegally destroying their god’s property.

They think they have a right to force others to act out their fear.

They say this crap with a straight face. There is no evidence for this paranoia, but that does not stop these fruitcakes being 100% certain it is so. They are like adults terrified of bogeymen hiding under the bed.

We have freedom of religion in Canada and the USA. This should give us constitutional protection from religious interference from these nitwits.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Euthanasia Superstition

Religious people think physician-assisted suicide is extremely wicked because they believe in the soul. They falsely believe that science has confirmed the existence of the soul. It is purely imaginary. Without the soul, there is no particular reason to avoid physician-assisted suicide. Christians believe Yahweh owns all souls — including those of non-believers. Yahweh decides how much suffering you will endure at life’s end and at what time Yahweh will extract the soul from the body. Nobody is allowed to interfere in this holy task. Yahweh forbids suicide and physician-assisted suicide is a form of suicide. (It is a form of queue jumping?) Christians think the legal system should enforce this belief in Yahweh and his sadistic imposition of suffering at life’s end. I think delusional Christians should be allowed to impose maximal suffering at death on fellow Christians, but they have no right to impose this superstition on non-believers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Euthanasia Tradeoffs

Dr. Will Johnston frets that a mentally ill patient might elect to die to avoid the suffering of a temporary condition. He considers this fear sufficient justification to deny physician assisted suicide to all mentally ill patients. Further, it can be rational to elect death rather than go through a year of chemotherapy. Those are the patient’s decisions. He does not give a hoot about the thousands he would force to endure endless unendurable suffering. All that matters is conforming with his religion.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Euthanasia ≠ Murder

Christians like to end their euthanasia debates with But it is murder. No it is not murder. It is physician assisted suicide. The motive is different. The means is different. What it seeks to avoid is different. The consent is different. The legality is different. Who initiates it is different. The amount of life it cuts is different. Murder is unlawfully killing someone. As soon as physician assisted suicide is made legal, it ceases to become murder in the eyes of the law. Christians are deliberately trying to mislead people, much the way they try to mislead in abortion debates by referring to single cells as babies and third term abortions as partial birth abortions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Extreme Pain

I know of three ways do deal with the extreme pain of the last weeks of life:

1. Grit your teeth.
2. Become an opiate addict and die babbling.
3. Use physician assisted suicide for a planned and coherent farewell.

I find Christians highly peculiar for restricting themselves to only methods (1) and (2), however, when they try to impose that choice on me, it makes me want to wring their bloody necks.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Forced Conversion to Christianity

Christians who managed to impose their religion on the general population by making physician-assisted suicide illegal, end up forcing people into premature suicide. When someone is dying of a degenerative disease like ALS or Huntingtons, they have to be careful not to postpone their suicide too late, or they could not do it without assistance. So they must err on the side of doing it too early.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Forced To Endure

The general public seems to imagine that pain can always be controlled, so it is reasonable to force people to stay alive to conform with Christian values.

In my experience even the strongest pain killers do nothing for an infected tooth. Morphine has no effect at all on kidney stones. Medicine can do nothing for the pain of gallstones, but thankfully they can remove your gall bladder. It can do nothing for back pain once your discs are worn down.

Think of your own experiences with pain and having to live with equivalent level pain week after week. That is torture. Christians have no right to force their beliefs on non-Christians.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Forced Euthanasia

The argument that physician assisted suicide must not be legal to protect people from being forced into it is bogus. The way things are now everyone does a nudge nudge wink wink. If it were legal a counselor and a couple of doctors would interview the patient. They could detect coercion. Further, there would be a waiting period. It would not be possible to rush things through as now. Christians use this argument as a smokescreen to disguise their real motivation — to force Christian superstitions about euthanasia on non-Christians.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Freedom From Religious Euthanasia Dogma

Nearly everyone who opposes euthanasia does so because of their religious beliefs. I am an atheist and I reject all such beliefs as superstition. Freedom of religion normally gives me freedom from being bound by such beliefs. However, with euthanasia, the religious have the power to impose their religious beliefs on me.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Freedom To Ignore

Free speech includes the freedom not to listen. Free speech does not guarantee a spot on the Tonight Show. Christians imagine they are entitled to a seat at the table any time homosexuality, abortion or euthanasia is discussed even though they never contribute any useful information, just their faith-based beliefs for which they can offer no rational justification.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Freedom of Religion

In Canada, religiously-affiliated nursing homes have done all they could to block physician-assisted suicide.

1. They refuse to offer the service.
2. They refuse to refer the patient to a doctor who offers the service.
3. They refuse to assist the patient in contacting the Right to Die society.
4. They refuse to allow doctors who administer the procedure onto the premises.

These patients are typically on death’s door. (They have to be to quality for physician assisted suicide.) They can’t leave the nursing home to chase down euthanasia services.

The nursing home is violating the patient’s constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion by forcing their religion on him.

The good news is the supreme courts of BC and Ontario have ruled the nursing homes must offer a referral. This may mildly infringe on the religious rights of the nursing home staff, but the needs of the patient predominate. I don’t think the courts have ruled on blocking outside physicians from the premises.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Healthy Pontificate to the Ill

Religious Nazis who impose their religion on others by opposing euthanasia under all circumstances, have never been sick a day in their lives. They have never held the hand of someone begging to die. They imagine that a pill or a shot can fix any conceivable suffering. If you have ever had a gallstone or a kidney stone or endless nausea from HIV (Human Immuno-deficiency Virus) medication, you know that modern medicine can do almost nothing for the pain. Even the most potent prescription pain pills do almost nothing for a toothache. How then, do these optimistic ninnies expect medicine to deal with the pain of terminal cancer month after month?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

HIV Unpleasantness

There is an Australian jelly fish that if you are unfortunate enough to encounter it, you will vomit every hour for 24 hours. This may give you an idea of how unpleasant some cancer or HIV chemotherapy is. If this happened to you, you might wish somehow you could run your life clock ahead 24 hours and skip this unpleasant segment without experiencing it. This is exactly what someone asking for euthanasia is begging for. The only difference is, the segment they want to skip is the last 24 hours of life.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How You Die

Dying is not so bad. Everybody does it. The problem is how you die. Will Christians be in control and force you to suffer maximally, or will you be in control, with the power to say at any time enough already.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ignorant In Control

Rapid pro-lifers have absolutely no idea what is like to be severely ill or disabled. They harbour romantic notions about the value of all life no matter how painful or constricted based on never having experienced suffering close up. Let us educate them by locking them in iron lungs for a few months, with a nest of army ants, and give them nothing to eat or drink but sea water. They are the people most deserving of being tortured to death. They gain nothing from their meddling. They have no excuse for it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Ignorant Making Decisions for the Informed

Christians, like Stephen Harper, imagine they are qualified to make end-of-life decisions for others, even when those others would rather make them for themselves. There are two serious problem with this:

• These Christians have never been seriously ill. They have not the faintest inkling of what unbearable means.
• Their rules are based not on compassion or common sense, but remnants of delusions of a vengeful deity from iron age myths.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ignorant Making the Rules on Euthanasia

I get so furious with busybodies who think they have a right to interfere with other people’s end-of-life decisions. Usually they are religious zealots, a modern day Spanish Inquisition, who imagine that imposing their crazy religious superstitions on others is good for them, even if they suffer intolerably as a result. Invariably, these busybodies are unusually robust people who have not a clue what it is like to be terminally ill or to deal with untreatable pain or nausea that goes on and on without a break.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Imposing Christianity

A nursing home refused to a allow a physician onto the premises to help a patient die in a perfectly legal procedure. The media falsely accused the doctor of sneaking in and murdering the patient. The nursing home should be prosecuted for imposing their religion on the patient and for interfering with the patient’s constitutional rights. The doctor was a hero, rescuing the patient from the suffering maliciously imposed on the patient.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Imposing Religion

A woman called into the CBC 180 show to explain that if people were given the option of end-of-life physician assisted suicide, millions of people would be immediately at risk for being murdered by being coerced into signing up for suicide by their relatives, their doctors or the government. Then she uttered three incomprehensible sentences about God and Jesus. This let us know the first argument was a smokescreen and her real motivation was she wanted everyone to adopt her religious superstitions.

But does her paranoid argument have any merit? The way things are now, there is no formal procedure for physician assisted suicide. However, it goes on all the time under the table. Fellow physicians look the other way. It seems to me, an improper physician assisted suicide is far more likely today, than it would be with a formal procedure with mandatory review by several experts to make absolutely sure there was no coercion and that all alternatives had been exhausted.

The formal procedure would also force sober second thought. The suicide could not be rushed through as it can today. Further, someone rashly considering suicide, might apply for physician assisted suicide and in the process be given treatment for depression, illness or whatever temporary problem triggered the suicidal thoughts.

It is goofy to discount the real suffering of the terminally ill in order to prevent imaginary potential harm to people who would not even use the service.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Imposing Religious Beliefs

The anti-euthanasia people are primarily motivated by a desire to impose their religious beliefs on others. They discovered such arguments would not fly, so are now pushing a bogus argument that legal euthanasia leads to increased elder abuse. Nonsense! Obviously there is much more unbiased scrutiny of legal euthanasia than illegal. People rashly attempting suicide will be much less likely to carry through if they go the legal euthanasia route which would necessitate reevaluation and talking it over with a trained counselor.

What it boils down to is, who is in a better position to make wise decisions about my end-of-life, me or Dr Will Johnston, (the B.C. spokesman for the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Canada). Who has more at skin in the game? Dr Johnson or me? Whose business is it anyway? How arrogant he is to claim he knows better than I just how bearable my suffering is. Suffering is multi-dimensional and subjective. Nobody else can possibly know as well as I how bearable my existence is.

This notion that all pain is manageable is ridiculous. Have these meddlesome busybodies never had an infected tooth, a kidney stone or HIV-induced nausea? In my experience, pain laughs at any analgesic modern medicine can throw at them. They may work for some people, but not for me.

Religious fanatics like Dr Johnston intimidated the Liberal government to disallow physician assisted suicide in cases of unbearable suffering. You must be on death’s door as well. However, death is imminent, you don’t particularly need deliverance because the suffering is limited. People whose suffering is protracted most need help. Dr Johnson enjoys seeing people writhe in interminable pain because he believes his god likes it that way and it his duty to make everyone bow down to his god. If he were not doing this for religious reasons we would call him criminally mentally ill. He reminds me of Paul Bettany as Silas in The Da Vinci Code.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Imposing Yahweh Worship on Everyone

The anti-euthanasia groups are clear on their reason for opposition. The want their god Yahweh to determine the time of everyone’s death. In other words, they want to impose their religious beliefs on everyone. If they want to impose unnecessary suffering on themselves for religious reasons, that is their right, but they have absolutely no business imposing them on me. The constitution forbids the government from enforcing majority religious superstitions through law.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Indirect Suicide

If someone refuses to eat, or to take necessary medications, they die, fairly slowly and painfully. Oddly, the religious have little problem with this form of suicide. I suppose because it is protracted and sufficiently painful that it satisfies their desire to see others suffer.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Invalid Arguments

The arguments against euthanasia are invariably based on religious beliefs and beliefs about the nature of god, for which no one can present any evidence.

These are religious/moral arguments for deciding to suffer at the end-of-life, but they should not be considered valid legal arguments binding on atheists like myself who dismiss such arguments as superstition. This violates my freedom of religion. I should not be forced to conform to Christian superstitions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Irony of Meddling

Meddlers block people from getting assistance with suicide when life becomes unbearable. Ironically, this forces them to kill themselves without help much sooner than they otherwise would choose.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Life Support for the Dead

The courts have made an idiotic ruling that a family can force a hospital to keep a brain dead person on life support indefinitely even though they have absolutely no chance of regaining consciousness. This ties up extremely expensive equipment and an extremely expensive intensive care bed. We the taxpayers are stuck with the bill for this emotional indulgence. It means others who actually can be helped will be denied. We cannot have medical treatments decided based on emotions of relatives who have no medical training.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lifetime Healthcare Budget

You will spend most of your lifetime budget of health care in your last year of life. The care in that year will be the most expensive and the least effective. As we invent ever more sophisticated and expensive ways to keep a moribund patients alive just a little longer, geriatric care absorbs more and more of the total health budget, depriving younger people of quality care they might otherwise get. Here are some ideas to reduce the costs of geriatric care without harming the elderly:

• Don’t push (possibly or even suggest) painful/expensive procedures on the elderly unless they will provide significantly improved quality of life or longevity.
• Allow physician-assisted suicide as a routine option for those in the last year of life, neither pushed nor discouraged.
• Allow a do-not-resuscitate option on hospital admittance forms so it can be requested without fuss.
• Provide education to the public to discourage them from demanding treatments (such as continued life support for a brain dead patient) that have no hope.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Meaning without God

Christians ask atheists How can life have meaning without God?. In euthanasia debates, I discovered the essence of the Christian argument was you did not have the right to escape suffering because Yahweh owns you and he does not like people vandalising his property. This applies to Christians and non Christians alike. So life with god is like living with an imaginary slavemaster. You create your own suffering to placate him. I would think then the notion of life without god would be as pleasant as any other emancipation or deliverance from delusion.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Meddling Lunatics

Christians are like crazy people who won’t let you get off the bus, as if it were any of their concern.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Misunderstanding Suicide

If you have ever got close to suicide yourself, you realise there is a gigantic wall that separates you from it. It is like having to dive off a 60.96 metres (66.67 yards) high diving board. Then when you think about the people who actually did suicide, you realise the incredible pain that must have shoved them over that wall. Nobody pays any attention to the suffering of the person who commits suicide. They think only of their own relative micro-pain of the loss. It is so arrogant to think you know what pains others bear, and what is bearable. People think about the pain they would have felt in the imagined situation and how easy it would be to bear, not the actual pain that person felt.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

More Humane To Horses than Humans

A man was charged recently for failing to shoot a horse that was suffering badly from the effects of old age. Yet at the same time the crown charged another man with murder who provided drugs for early exit to an elderly suffering parent. Why do we treat humans less humanely than we treat horses?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

My Own Physician-Assisted Suicide

Even though I strongly support physician assisted suicide, I hope I will not have to use it. It is merely an insurance policy in case things get too horrible. I am not a Christian. I see no value whatsoever in excruciating suffering. I don’t want Christians imposing their sadomasochistic values on me.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Myth Of Perfect Pain Control

To counter physician assisted suicide, Christians perpetuate the myth that medicine can deal with any pain. This is an outrageous lie. I think of my own life with toothaches, kidney stones, crushed vertebral disks and psychotic break where medicines were absolutely useless in alleviating my pain. The only drug that has any effect on the non-stop nausea from AIDS drug side effects is ginger. It certainly does not control it. This is just Christian wishful thinking. Putting people into a coma so they might as well be dead is hardly pain control.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nitwits

The religious fruitcakes who argue against euthanasia argue as if the proposal were to make physician assisted suicide mandatory. If they don’t want it, it does not concern they in the least. They must stop trying to control other people, including strangers. Even mothers are not that intrusive.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Organ Donation

In Canada, ¼ Canadians override the desire of the deceased to donate organs to let others live. In the name of religious superstition, they insist the organs be wasted. The law should be changed. Family members should not be able to revoke the donor’s wishes. One donor can save six lives. It is murder to allow the family to interfere.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Organ Recycling

You can register your wish to have your organs recycled to give life to up to eight people after you die. Unfortunately, in Canada, any relative can override your wishes. In France, by default your organs are recycled.

• BC Canada
• Canada
• USA

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Palliative Care

I went to a meeting where one of the speakers was the head of palliative care for Victoria General hospital here in Victoria BC. He told us that there are 8 patients waiting for every palliative bed. Most parts of Canada do not offer palliative care. So obviously, it is an option you cannot count on.

He also said that nearly all patients beg to die about two days before they croak. These requests are ignored. Instead they sedate the patients without their permission. He seemed to think this was vastly preferable to letting the patient chose his own time of death. He also said that about 80% of his staff agree with him. In contrast, a poll of the general public (including Catholics) shows 80% of people support the option of assisted suicide.

He suggested that in future, you will have to choose either assisted suicide or palliative care. You will not be able to change your mind.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Palliative Care Bullies

Palliative care staff are bullying patients at death’s door who have no energy to resist.

Even trying to talk people out of dying in unwarranted interference. At best staff should explain the options, but not try to push one option down the patient’s throat.

Medical staff are motivated by ancient religious beliefs. They think they are doing the right thing, but in actuality they are violating the patient’s freedom of religion by trying to talk them out of the euthanasia option.

Staff think that they have succeeded if they bully a patient into accepting another couple of months of low-quality life. They don’t care about the patient’s welfare, only obtaining religious brownie points.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Palliative Sedation

Anti-euthanasia folk call for palliative sedation for dealing with end-of-life pain. The idea is to zonk people out on morphine until they die. I object to this treatment on three grounds:

1. I had morphine for a kidney stone. It did almost nothing for the pain.
2. Morphine was like an endless nightmare I could not wake up from, highly unpleasant, almost as bad as the pain it was supposed to treat.
3. Dying like a vegetable is the ultimate indignity.

Damned if I will submit to palliative sedation just to humour the religious superstitions of someone for whom I have infinite contempt.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pointlessly Avoiding Death

Why are Christians so intent on avoiding death, even when they are in unbearable pain and why are they so intent on preventing others from using suicide to avoid the last ghastly weeks of life? Because they believe in a vengeful, crazy god, Yahweh who will torture them for eternity if they do. Further, they are trying to procrastinate the beginning of their torment for other minor sins. They are trying to force this bizarre notion on others, no matter how much pain they cause.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Private Member’s Bills

In debates, anti-euthanasia folk point out that parliament has rejected physician assisted suicide nine times since 1991. What they fail to mention is these were all private member’s bills. Private Member’s bills, except trivial ones, never pass. If the government wants to pass them, they reissue them as government bills.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Promise

Many people promise their loved ones approaching death that they will not have to endure severe pain. However, the only way you can promise that is if you are willing to help arrange physician-assisted suicide.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Protesting Assisted Suicide

I was quite annoyed with a young man at a public meeting who read out an essay protesting assisted suicide. He started out with a slippery slope logical fallacy by saying it would inevitably lead to wholesale slaughter of the mentally retarded, mentally ill, homeless and others who did not want to die. He asserted this was the way things were done in the Netherlands without offering any supporting evidence. I have a friend who works as a nurse in the Netherlands tending to the terminally ill. We have discussed euthanasia, and nothing like this ever came up. In the man reading the essay’s opinion, palliative care was sufficient therefore nobody should be permitted assisted suicide.

At the meeting, many other people told stories of extreme suffering and how palliative care was not sufficient. Yet his position was My religion opposes assisted suicide, therefore everyone should do as my religion commands. I had to hold myself back from shouting out to tell him to get stuffed and that he was not my mother. He is welcome to suffer as much as he wants, but not to impose it on me.

This man was half the age of most of the people at the meeting. He looked as though a hangnail was the worst pain he had ever experienced, but still he believed himself qualified to dictate everyone else in the room how they must handle their end of life decisions and to override their decisions. Such is the arrogance of Christians.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pulling the Plug

If someone is on life support, they will continue living for the next while, unless you pull the plug. If you pull the plug, you are terminating that person’s life earlier than absolutely necessary. Technically this could be considered a murder. Oddly, religious people accept this, but balk at physician assisted suicide, even though the physician has the consent of the patient.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Putting Humans Down

From the point of view of science, a human is just another animal. It should be no more difficult to put down a human than a kangaroo. It is really no big deal. Leave it to the experts. The trouble comes when no-nothings legislate.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reasonable Advice

A caller to the CBC Cross Country Checkup phone-in show on euthanasia expressed horror that a doctor in the Netherlands would recommend physician assisted suicide as the best option when asked for an opinion. It would never occur to her that a Christian browbeating and guilt-tripping a terminally-ill person to persevere despite unbearable pain to avoid hellfire from her vengeful and petty god was much, much more intrusive unwarranted and unwelcome interference.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reducing Suicides

I think assisted suicide will ironically reduce suicide for three reasons:

1. Potential suicides will seek help. They may not be aware of other options, psychological, medical or counseling. Otherwise, they quietly kill themselves alone.
2. Knowing they can get help, people can procrastinate suicide, perhaps indefinitely. Otherwise they have to commit suicide early while they are still capable of pulling it off on their own.
3. Most people who apply just want the reassurance of the option. They don’t actually take it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Religious Busybodies

The state of the euthanasia debate can be summed up thusly: various religious busybodies want to impose their religious superstitions on the terminally ill and restrict their freedom of choice about end-of-life decisions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Right To Die Misconception

I heard a woman on the radio who was worried that physician assisted suicide could be invoked by accident. That small chance meant nobody should be allowed it no matter what agony they were in. Physician assisted suicide is a legal procedure. You no more likely to invoke it accidentally than you are to get married accidentally or buy a car accidentally. Two experts must judge you competent before you can even request it. It is not something you can do in an Alzheimer’s fog. Further, the way things are now, physician assisted suicide does occur without any safeguards, without paperwork, under the table. You will be much safer from accidental death than you are now.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Right to Interfere

The difference in the atheist and Christian view of euthanasia is simple. Atheists believe they should not interfere in the end-of-life decisions of Christians, no matter how bat-shit-crazy they think they are. Christians believe they are everyone’s mother and as such have the right to override any end-of-life decisions an atheist makes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Right To Life Misnomer

The KRTLS believe in blocking the morning after pill and blocking the right to die when end-of-life suffering has become unbearable. They are motivated by religion and religious sadism. They want to impose their religion on others. In Canada we are supposed to have freedom of religion. The includes freedom from the other guy’s religion.

They believe in souls/ghosts inhabiting eggs at conception. That is why they hold the strange position that a single cell is equivalent to an adult human even though it is less complex at that stage than a microscopic spec of pond scum. Monty Python spoofed them in a song Every Sperm Is Sacred. They believe in a cruel god Yahweh who will torment people for eternity if they escape end-of-life suffering. They believe their superstition justifies torturing strangers for a few weeks or months to stop them from committing suicide or seeking help committing suicide.

The KRTLS are nuts and they must be prevented from harming others.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

A Rose By Any Other Name

In the USA, when euthanasia renamed physician assisted suicide to aid in dying the polled approval rating jumped up. The ambiguous language confuses people on purpose. I don’t think this technque is ethical.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Seal Euthanasia

If there is nothing medicine can do for a seal, there is no question the compassionate thing to do is euthanasia, not allow the seal to suffer and slowly die in agony. Why does not the same reasoning apply to people, especially when they beg to be delivered from the suffering?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Senility In the Natural World

In the animal kingdom, almost no animals make it to old age and even then, a predator will pick them off once they become weak. Humans, on the other hand, through technology, have come to expect a long period of aged enfeeblement as their natural birthright and something they are obligated to endure as a religious obligation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Slippery Slope

Various groups representing the disabled have reacted in horror to the Canadian supreme court ruling that physician assisted suicide is now legal under certain conditions. They are worried about a Nazi-like slippery slope, when they will be euthanised without their permission, or when they are forced to request euthanasia.

The slippery slope is a paranoid delusion. Nobody wants anybody, abled or disabled, killed against their will. Nearly all Canadians would be horrified at the idea of killing people who did not want to be killed. There is no pressure to slide along this imaginary slope. Nobody wants the state killing people who have not requested it, especially themselves. That is insane! The disabled feel marginalised and unwanted, and have projected this dejection into a delusional plot to kill them.

This is not only nuts, it is selfish. The disabled believe their imagined paranoid worries about the future should trump the actual suffering of the terminally ill. 

Further, a formal procedure to request death offers additional levels of protection from being killed. There will be many lawyers, doctors and bureaucrats to complain to about improprieties. The way things were, all euthanasia (both requested and murder) occurred on the quiet without review, a situation far more prone to abuse.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Slogans

Perhaps we could compose some slogans for the anti-euthanasia folk:
Yahweh gets off on your suffering. You’ll be sorry if he doesn’t ejaculate.
Suffer for Jesus.
Death bed is the best time for conversion. (The johns are too weak to resist. They cannot recant. They cannot take legal action).
Hell Fire works best on children and the elderly.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Terminal Medical Bills

If people want futile medical procedures for themselves or for their children, medical insurance (i.e. the general public) should not foot the bill. If the treatment is expensive and will give only an extra month or two of life, ditto.

On the other hand, once medical science says they have tried their best shot and I have only a limited time to live, I should have the option of a quick death rather than a protracted painful one. From practical experience, I have zero faith in medicine to control pain. For me, the effects of even the most potent painkillers are barely noticeable. Others obviously have had a different experience, but their reaction should not be used to justify making me suffer.

Even children should be given the option of a quick death. They should be able to override the parental wishes. It is outrageous that parents, out of clinging and wishful thinking, impose suffering that would put them in jail if they inflicted it on the family dog.

Withdrawing medical care and letting the patient die slowly creates suffering just to help cover medical ass. It does not benefit the patient. Slow painful death should be an option for masochistic Christians who believe their deity loves watching them suffer, but not the only one.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Terminal Sedation/Coma

Christians often recommend sedation or putting the patient into a coma as an alternative to physician assisted suicide.

• This lets Christians feel safe from retribution from their imaginary sadistic god who reputedly likes people to suffer and disapproves of physician-assisted suicide.

• Putting someone into a coma and waiting for them to die is equivalent to physician assisted suicide without the patient’s consent or even knowledge.
• With a coma, the patient misses his death, and the goodbyes.
• Barring physician-assisted suicide reduces the patient’s choices.
• It very expensive to keep someone alive in a coma. If the patient is not going to recover, there is no point to it.
• It is cowardly appeasement, letting Christians impose their superstitions on non-believers.
• Sedation and coma are almost the same. You might as well be dead. You cannot greet your friends. You cannot have experience.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Terminally Ill Almost Unanimously Want the Right to Suicide

The terminally ill almost all want the right to physician assisted suicide. Religious bigots deny it to them claiming they want to protect them. Should not those affected be the ones to decide what sort of protection they want rather than meddling busybodies who have absolutely nothing to do with the situation, who know nothing about the situation and who are motivated solely by iron age religious superstitions?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Terrible Thing of Leaving People Be

Catholics rail that if euthanasia is permitted, large numbers of people will prefer physician assisted suicide. Why is that a bad thing? Why is letting people get what they prefer terrible? Catholics are insane. They think they have a right to force their superstitions or others, even if it makes them suffer.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unforgivable Sin

Catholics consider suicide the most unforgivable of sins. This view has merit if a man effectively deserts his family as a way out of the shame of financial ruin. But, when someone is terminally ill, no one his harmed by the suicide. The patient escapes pointless suffering. The family is spared having to witness the suffering and spared caring for the deathly ill person and spared bearing the futile and huge medical expenses.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unspeakable Cruelty

I find it hard to believe there are monsters on this earth eager to condemn innocent people to extreme suffering at death, simply to conform with their religious beliefs. Why is it any of their business? What right to they have to impose unbearable suffering on others. If they want to impose suffering, let them impose it on themselves.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Vandalising Yahweh’s Property

Christians teach that suicide is wrong solely because you are vandalising the god Yahweh’s property, namely your body. The real reasons are the emotional pain you inflict on friends and family and the foolishness of applying a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Owned by Yahweh. What sort of perverted idea is that?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

We Know Better

Lets say someone is elderly and too feeble to contribute in any way to society. They require considerable care. Even though they are not in pain, they may prefer not to live that way. Who is to say they have no right to terminate that existence? Christians think they know better than the person living that life.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

What Is It Like to Die?

Most of us have experienced general anaesthesia. You go under and wake up some hours later as if no time had passed. Nothing subjectively happens in the interim. This is close to the experience of death. It is not in the least painful or scary. So why then do people believe fanciful stories concocted by con men about what happens when you die? If you used physician-assisted suicide, the subjective experience is absolutely identical to death since it starts the same way.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Who Should Decide?

Some of the most painful medical conditions of my life were pinched spinal nerves, kidney stones, toothache and gallstones. I found that even the strongest prescribed medicines such as morphine and oxycontin made an unnoticeable difference. There are other people with more goat-like constitutions who firmly believe modern medicine can effectively flatten any conceivable pain. At end-of-life, when pain is not anticipated ever to get any better, who is in a better position, me or one of these goats to decide for me how much pain is too much to endure? Surely, I am the ultimate authority, not some meddling Christian, on what is too much and allow me to end my life peacefully.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Whose Life Is It Anyway?

Canada’s new euthanasia law requires someone who wants to die to apply to a panel. They decide if the petitioner is suffering enough and is close enough to natural death to be worthy of physician assisted suicide. They reject 9 out of 10 people. The panelists base their decision on the law, their religious superstitions and their imaginings of how they would suffer in the petitioner’s circumstances.

Suffering is subjective. The petitioner knows better than anyone else just how intolerable their suffering is. If they are rejected, they can legally starve themselves to death. Why do panelist opinions, based on very incomplete information, trump the petitioner? Whose life is it anyway?

Requiring the petitioner to be close to natural death makes no sense. If you had only 3 days of terrible suffering to endure, you might be willing to suffer. But if you had a year of unbearable suffering, you would demand relief.

The panel should decide if the petitioner is mentally competent, (or has provided written instruction) and is fully informed of the options, and if so, get out the way. Every hour delayed creates needless suffering.

The law is designed to maximise suffering and prolong the end of life process, permitting relief for only the most egregious cases. The only reason for this is Christian superstition. That should be unconstitutional.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Who’s Life Is It Anyway?

Why is euthanasia everyone’s business but the terminally ill’s? Media interview everyone with a strong opinion but the terminally ill — religious cranks, young healthy Catholic doctors, clergymen… Nearly all terminally ill people want it as an option with safeguards. Why does everyone else treat them as if they were incapable of a rational decision? Why do they think they have the right to override the wishes of a terminally ill person, especially when they know nothing at all of the particular circumstances?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Assisted Suicide

I have heard many people say You don’t need assistance. Do it yourself!

I don’t think these people have the tiniest clue what is like to be seriously ill. The thought of making a cup of coffee feels like an Everest expedition. There is no way you can wrestle a helium tank and screw on the tap for a gentle suicide. You could not even open a bottle of ginger beer.

They don’t have the mental energy to make a phone call, even if someone dials for them.

Because they cannot count on help, they must kill themselves way early while they are still both physically and mentally strong enough.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Yahweh’s Property

The reason euthanasia is illegal under all circumstances is that Christians believe that suicide is a sin because humans are the god Yahweh’s property. In their view, suicide under any circumstances is a form of vandalism or robbery. They believe they have a holy right to impose this odd religious belief on others. Because Christians are in the majority and so damn arrogant, they steamroller the constitutional freedom of others to avoid having Christianity imposed on them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Young Pontificate to the Old

The most infuriating feature of the euthanasia debate is the way young, healthy, arrogant experts are so convinced they have the right to override end-of-life decisions of the terminally ill.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

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