“The legal method I suggest most for a dignified and peaceful death is to stop all treatments, especially antibiotics.”
“New legislation and court judgments are further expanding access to MAID, some bringing new and different twists.”
“One facility used the term “provider-hastened death” and stated that it encompasses euthanasia.”
“Having a sense of the possibilities in advance is essential to minimize surprises, make specific requests for end-of-life symptom management, and decide the possible paths available to you.”
“Your mother didn’t choose a terminal illness. She only chose not to let the disease pick when and how she would die.”
“What is fundamentally the difference between a doctor pulling a plug on a machine that provides lifesaving nutrients to a person that could potentially stay ‘alive’ on it for years, and a doctor prescribing pills to a person with mere days or months to live to end their unnecessary suffering?”
“Why would an anti-MAiD activist try to force a patient about whom they know nothing, to live by the activist’s personal values rather than the patient’s own?”
When determining an ethical standard of discussing physician aid in dying (PAD) during medical decision-making, it is important to begin with the caveat that physicians are not ethically obligated to assist a patient in ending his or her life, even if the physician informs the patient of the right to do so.
As more states legalize PAD and the practice becomes more ethically accepted, it is important to determine a standard of care to guide physicians.
Advocates, supporters, and champions (of MAiD) need to decide if it is better to have a law that is less than ideal … or have no law at all? Is something better than nothing?