It should be clear, as we argued in the first part of this two-part post, that the word “suicide” is not always appropriate. In this second part of our post, we offer a candidate word.
The distress and pain that surrounds the suicide of a healthy person is different in kind and in degree from the distress and pain of the hastened death of a dying person. Vocabularies need to account for the difference between a killing and a death.
I hope others might be inspired to hold frank and open conversations about fundamental questions most of us will face. It would be so much less lonely for us all.
Patients may not be aware that their health care system is faith-based, and rarely understand the restrictions that their health systems have implemented — until they need this care.
“We have a long way to go to educate the public about choices in dying, about defining ‘life’, and about making the end less agonizing for patients and their families.”
When a friend once confessed, “Jim, I don’t think I could do what you’re doing,” I immediately blurted, “I don’t think I could not do what I’m doing!”
I know well Judaism’s ban on euthanasia. But when I understood that my father would take his own life, I knew without a doubt that I would be by his side.
An iconic philosopher rationalized suicide long before it became a contemporary academic concept.
Managing dying and death is difficult enough. But if you do nothing, you’ll be a pawn in a profit-driven medical system.
With all the ways to improve MAiD, should RTD advocates be concerned about healthy seniors who say, “I’ve lived long enough?”