The Good Death Society Blog

Oct 01

1

Mental health, suffering, and a “Good Death”

By Lamar Hankins | Final Exit Network, Suffering and Death | One Comment

Usually, when we talk about suffering, we are thinking of physical suffering. But there are many people with severe, unresolved, debilitating mental illness who can find no relief from their suffering – suffering that is just as real (though its cause is different) as that experienced, for instance, by a patient at the end stages of pancreatic cancer, or a patient dying of metastasized prostate cancer. And none of the existing programs and services can help those with unrelenting mental illness die a peaceful death – a good death – to put an end to their suffering.

Sep 25

1

A response to disability rights activists’ opposition to the right to die, PART 2

By Lamar Hankins | Disability, Disability Rights, Not Dead Yet | One Comment

In Part 1, I began explaining why the disability rights group Not Dead Yet opposes Death With Dignity laws and the right to die. I also provided the most recent data from Oregon’s experience with its DWDA to refute some of the claims of Not Dead Yet.

All of the arguments made against the DWD laws by Not Dead Yet are false or misleading.

Sep 17

2

A response to disability rights activists’ opposition to the right to die, PART 1

By Lamar Hankins | Choice, Death With Dignity Act, Disability, Disability Rights, Not Dead Yet | No Comments

Five years ago in Massachusetts, the right to autonomy in one’s body went down to defeat in a vote related to irrational fear by some disability rights advocates working through the activist group Not Dead Yet. Their position was that they would be compelled or coerced into ending their own lives if the initiative passed.

Sep 11

4

A toast “to life” may include the wish for a peaceful death

By Faye Girsh | Advance Directives, Death With Dignity Act, DNR, End-of-life care, Final Exit Network, Hospice | 2 Comments

Nearly everyone hopes for a peaceful death; yet such an end can be elusive. Many of us face both philosophical and practical questions as we do what we can to make our own deaths peaceful.

Some of us may have religious questions. Judaism, like many other religions, is all over the map in its thinking about ways to achieve a peaceful death.

Sep 03

0

I’ll See Myself Out, Thank You: Notes on the Right to Die

By Lamar Hankins | Choice, Death With Dignity Act, Palliative Care, Rational Death | One Comment

Two years ago, a book of thirty essays supporting the right to assisted death edited by Colin Brewer and Michael Irwin, was published by Skyscraper Publications, Ltd. Most of the essays make arguments familiar to Americans involved in the right-to-die movement, but often with a European (and British) take that makes them fresh. Others tell first-person stories that are as riveting as any heard in the US.

Aug 29

1

Dementia and the right to die: No Exit in Oregon

By Fran Schindler, BSN | Dementia | 3 Comments

A recent article in USA Today, relates the story of a 64-year old Oregon woman with early onset Alzheimer’s disease, who is now in an assisted living center. She will eventually die from complications of the disease, but the State of Oregon is doing everything it can to make sure that Nora Harris doesn’t die until she has suffered through the disease until her “natural” death.

Aug 22

1

When free speech is a crime in Minnesota

By Lamar Hankins | Free speech | 3 Comments

In May 2015, the non-profit corporation Final Exit Network, Inc. was convicted of assisting in the 2007 suicide of Doreen Dunn. In that state, “assisting” does not require any physical act. The Minnesota Supreme Court decided that if speaking to another person about how to commit suicide “enables” that person to take her own life, the speech meets the definition of “assist” as found in the Minnesota statute that prohibits “assisting suicide.”