Former Governor Booth Gardner’s Death with Dignity Initiative (I-1000) officially qualified for the November ballot this week. Carla Axtman from Blue Oregon reflects on the campaign to bring the original Death with Dignity law to Oregon ten years ago.
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After November, it’ll be legal for wingnuts to put themselves out of their misery, so they’ll have no excuse for still being here.
I wish that Dino Rossi’s campaign would take advantage of this initiative, but it looks like we’ll have to do the job ourselves and kill this loon’s political aspirations for good.
@1
No, it still won’t be legal for them. The law requires that you be mentally competent.
So if a person doesn’t end their life by committing suicide, it isn’t a dignified death?
4. Troll spews:
So if a person doesn’t end their life by committing suicide, it isn’t a dignified death?
It’s all on a case by case basis. In your case, you won’t achieve in death what you have never achieved in life, so you may as well copy and paste comments on another subject.
It’ll never pass. To have a good Republican (and Christian) death, one needs overwhelming, wracking, controlling, mind-bending pain for a few weeks or months.
Without pain killing stuff, of course. Otherwise one might die a morphine addict.
The government needs to protect this time-honored form of death. Must be painful and slow and overwhelming.
The name Death with Dignity implies that the only way to have a dignified death is commit suicide, so if a person doesn’t want to commit suicide, are they not dying with dignity?
By the way, can anyone name the Dem. ex-gov who was threatened (with divorce) to not seek another term because his wife found he was having an affair with the then sup. of pub. instr? (Because she wanted him to move the fuck out of Oly, where his mistress lived).
Can anyone name the horse and the pig that fucked and spawned the Troll?
PLEASE Troll test this law by trying to kill yourself. It’s the best for everyone. Especially your wife who constantly calls me and begs me to fuck her in the ass.
@8,
Hey, easy guy. I’m one of you. We’re on the same team. We Dems have to stick together.
Mr. Troll:
“The name Death with Dignity implies”
No you wrongfully infer…..
“that the only way to have a dignified death is commit suicide,”
No, it doesn’t. You are making up bullshit. If it implies anything it imlies that you should have a choice as to how you die under certain limited circumstances …… rather than you, being competent, and facing death ANYWAY, not having a choice.
Like the folks who jumped off the World Trade Center on 9-11. Like when you are condmened to death and they offer you firing squad or take this pill.
This is why it’s not a right to suicide. Suicide implies you set in motion a voluntary death that would not occur otherwise, but the only people this law will cover are those who are going to die anyway. Stop being stupid and ignoring this obvious distinction.
You don’t have a choice to die or not die when you are certified as dying within 6 months by two doctors. You will have a choice as to how you die. So it’s not a general right for all people to end their lives, and the only people covered are going to die anyway, so it’s not like suicide.
“so if a person doesn’t want to commit suicide,”
it’s not suicide as dicussed above
“are they not dying with dignity?”
No. If you don’t want to end it yourself when it is going to end anyway, you are dying with the dignity of having a choice and not being treated like a baby and having control taken from you. If you choose to use your rights udner this law you are dying with dignity. If you are not covered by this law you are dying with dignity or not depending on varous circumstances and subjective interpretations.
What is not dying with dignity is where you know you are terminal and you just want to end it and laws (i.e., the rest of us, in a democracy) take away your right to control your own body and treat you like a baby or an incompetnet person and make you suffer when you don’t want to and don’t have to. That not dignity douchebag.
@7:
It’s about the opposite of what you suggest, it’s giving choice to certain terminally ill people: http://itsmydecision.org/
After Goldy’s post a couple weeks back taking issue with the AP’s use of “assisted suicide,” I was interested to see an AP story yesterday that seemed to try to find more neutral language to describe the measure, but they go with “physician-assisted dying“, which sounds awkward.
In today’s AP story they are back to using “assisted suicide.”
@10
Thanks for the good reply. You might be new here, so you may not have been aware that Troll is mentally disabled:
http://effinunsound.com/?p=748
Roger Rabbit said:
“After November, it’ll be legal for wingnuts to put themselves out of their misery, so they’ll have no excuse for still being here.”
Why don’t you do us all a favor and do the same as the wingnuts, Rog? Only don’t wait until November: today’s a nice day for a little hemlock cocktail.
@14 You first, pal. I’ll meet you there by-and-by.
Now since even that evil old witch Nancy Raygun would have voted for this bill I can’t see why the ass-licks on the right wouldn’t also.
By the way – I think it’s too funny that even with the coordinated campaign by the right to mislead people with the word suicide – this thing still got on the ballot. Doesn’t bode well for the pro-life idiots – you know, the ones who are pro-life except when it comes to the death penalty, war and paying for health care for dying innocent children.
You mean the kind that Mother Teresa was so fond of? The people in her Homes for the Dying suffered cancer-type pain without benefit of any painkillers whatsoever. She, of course, went to the Mayo Clinic when she wasn’t off cavorting with “Baby Doc” Duvalier and convicted S&L fraudster Charles Keating.
The people in her homes for the dying never even got basic medical care.
Voting Republican is an offense against national security and domestic tranquillity.
@ 10. diogenes
Thanks for your input! VERY well said.
That was also an interesting insight that I’ve never before considered. At the time of 9-11, I remember seeing a tape or Youtube of a number of the people falling, taken by someone in a hotel from just across the street. Close enough that you could see the terror and despair on their faces while they were falling. Still gives me nightmares to think of all these years later.
So I think you make an excellent comparison here. The people who request assistance in dying with dignity don’t take it lightly. There are many hoops to overcome before they can even GET assistance. I think for the most part it gives comfort that they know they have an “exit plan” or an “insurance plan” if dying becomes too horrific – according to the Individual’s perception of what they can endure.
Off topic, I know Lee, but when I went read that Politicker article on I-1000, I noticed that they have a requirement before posting a comment:
I don’t know if Goldy has escaped the mob/spammers that tried to close down HA. Just wanted to point this feature out, in case HA gets further troubles.
Roger @ 15,
No, “pal,” you’ll be there long before me.