Videos
You don’t discourage suicide by assisting suicide.
“Every suicide is tragic – whether you’re old or young, healthy or sick, your life is worth living,” says Luke Maxwell, 19, who survived an attempt to take his own life.
John’s Story: Beyond Independence
Born without arms, John Foppe speaks to a way of life beyond independence, namely inter-dependence: Together we are more. Assisted suicide sells everyone short, so in times of illness or disability, he encourages us to “step into life!”
Dr Brescia
Dr. Brescia is a kidney doctor with decades of experience with treating life-threatening illness. He has developed breakthough technologies that took “terminal” out of thousands of people’s diagnosis. With assisted suicide laws relying heavily on correct diagnosis and prognosis, which are so often wrong, how can we risk a person’s life on a guess?
Man of Steel
JJ’s family moto is “You can’t hurt steel.” When he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most aggresive form of brain cancer, he fights for his wife, his son, and his life.
The Scooter
Because of his illness, Bill had lost his mobility and, therefore, his connection with family and community. Not being able to go to his grandson’s baseball games was more than he could bear. He no longer had the zest for life and requested assisted suicide from his doctor. His doctor, however, had an alternate solution, one that “made him fun again;” and all it took was a scooter….
Jeanette’s Story: 15 Years Later
In 2000, when Oregon resident, Jeanette Hall, had less than a year to live, she asked her cancer doctor for the pills to commit suicide. Dr. Kenneth Stevens got to know her better and inspired her to consider treatment. The tumor just “melted away” and now — 15 years later — Jeanette says: “It’s great to be alive!”
Pulling Back the Curtain on Assisted Suicide
In 2000, when Oregon resident, Jeanette Hall, had less than a year to live, she asked her cancer doctor for the pills to commit suicide. Dr. Kenneth Stevens got to know her better and inspired her to consider treatment. The tumor just “melted away” and now — 15 years later — Jeanette says: “It’s great to be alive!”
The Death Penalty
The same drug being used on death row, is being used in assisted suicide.
And these Barbiturates are not always a peaceful death…They have been termed “cruel and unusual” punishment by the courts for the worst criminals.
Barbiturates are the most common substances used for assisted suicide in Oregon and Washington. Overdoses of barbiturates are known to cause distress and have associated issues: extreme gasping and muscle spasms can occur, while losing consciousness, a person can vomit and then inhale the vomit, panic, feelings of terror, and assaultive behavior take place from the drug-induced confusion, failure of the drugs to induce, unconsciousness, a number of days elapsing before death occurs or death does not occur.
Maggie’s Story
Maggie was diagnosed with brain cancer and strongly opposes assisted suicide. Hear this story of a strong woman with much left to give to her family and society. She has a powerful story of hope and courage – and that no doctor can put a timetable on anyone’s life.
Hope
Hope was diagnosed with Glioblastoma, a potentially deadly form of brain cancer and told she only had a short time to live…that was 8 years ago. She wants to get married, see her son grow up, and someday see her grandchildren. If assisted suicide were normalized as part of health care, it would have an impact on what thousands like Hope, in seemingly dire circumstances, decide to do. Assisted suicide advocates have romanticized deaths like Brittany Maynard, but there is a different side of the assisted suicide story that particularly impacts those living with a disability, serious illness, without access to top medical care or depression.
As Aaron Keriaty M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Program of Medical Ethics at UC Irvine has noted, “Once we adopt the principle that suicide is acceptable, then the fences erected around it—having six months to live, or having mental capacity, for example—are inevitably arbitrary. These restrictions will eventually be abandoned, as the situation with assisted suicide in Belgium and the Netherlands demonstrates: to cite just a few examples, in Belgium assisted suicide has been granted to a man with ‘untreatable depression’ and to a prisoner suffering ‘psychological anguish’; in the Netherlands, assisted suicide has been granted to a woman because she did not want to live in a nursing home.”
Barbara Wagner
Barbara was sick. She had terminal cancer and was told she had less than six months to live. Instead of providing treatment and doing everything they could to help, her HMO offered something else … they agreed to pay to kill her. Click the short video to hear Barbara’s story.