{"id":309000,"date":"2024-03-21T10:42:39","date_gmt":"2024-03-21T15:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=309000"},"modified":"2024-03-20T17:30:01","modified_gmt":"2024-03-20T22:30:01","slug":"assisted-suicide-no-fairy-tale-hours-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/assisted-suicide-no-fairy-tale-hours-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Dying by assisted suicide is no ‘fairy tale’… and it can take hours or even days to die"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

A British mother and daughter are campaigning for legalized assisted suicide, and described it as the ideal way to die. The reality, however, is rather different.<\/p>\n

Dame Esther Rantzen, a broadcaster, was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer<\/a>, and though she is currently undergoing treatment, she said she plans to kill herself at Dignitas in Switzerland if treatment isn’t successful. In the meantime, however, she is urging lawmakers to legalize assisted suicide in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

\u201cI explained to them that actually I don\u2019t want their last memories of me to be painful because if you watch someone you love having a bad death, that memory obliterates all the happy times and I don\u2019t want that to happen,” she said of her family. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be that sort of victim in their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most people who choose assisted suicide or euthanasia, contrary to popular belief, are choosing to die, not because they fear a painful death, but because they fear losing autonomy<\/a> and not being able to enjoy life<\/a> as they had before. They also fear<\/a> becoming a burden<\/a> on their loved ones.<\/p>\n

Rantzen’s daughter, Rebecca Wilcox, has joined her mother<\/a> in her assisted suicide advocacy, applauding Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer for promising a vote on the issue in Parliament if Labour wins in the next election. And sadly, Wilcox’s description of what she expects assisted suicide to be like is far from reality.<\/p>\n

READ: Former UK MP says it\u2019s good if certain people feel pressured toward assisted suicide<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

“[B]oth of us have pictured our own versions of good death, as the social care and reform report called it, and it would be a wonderful bubble bath wearing every single diamond that anyone will lend us,” she said. “Possibly quaffing champagne and then taking a cocktail of whatever drugs it is to gently gently slip off with all our loved ones around us. And I mean it sounds like a fairytale, and at the moment it is a fairytale.\u201d<\/p>\n

The drugs in assisted suicide are the same as those used in death penalty executions<\/a>; as Dr. Joel Zivot, an associate professor of anesthesiology and surgery at the Emory School of Medicine, has explained, though the intended use for the drugs is different, the result is still the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe death penalty is not the same as assisted dying, of course. Executions are meant to be punishment; euthanasia is about relief from suffering,\u201d he said in a previous op-ed. \u201cYet for both euthanasia and executions, paralytic drugs are used. These drugs, given in high enough doses, mean that a patient cannot move a muscle, cannot express any outward or visible sign of pain. But that doesn\u2019t mean that he or she is free from suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pentobarbital, which has been used in the majority of assisted suicides in Oregon, is known to cause pulmonary edema, where the lungs fill with fluid, causing the person to essentially drown in their own secretions. Yet the paralytic also<\/em> given means it’s impossible for anyone to tell that the patient is suffering. A study<\/a> in the medical journal Anaesthesia found that long, painful deaths from assisted suicide and euthanasia are alarmingly common; a third of patients took 30 hours to die, while four percent took seven days to die. Additionally, experiments<\/a> with assisted suicide and euthanasia found more suffering; one cocktail was said to be \u201cburning patients\u2019 mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain.\u201d It’s hardly the fairy tale Wilcox described.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdvocates of assisted dying owe a duty to the public to be truthful about the details of killing and dying,\u201d Zivot said. \u201cPeople who want to die deserve to know that they may end up drowning, not just falling asleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

The DOJ put a pro-life grandmother in jail for protesting the killing of preborn children. Please take 30-seconds to TELL CONGRESS: STOP THE DOJ FROM TARGETING PRO-LIFE AMERICANS.<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A British mother and daughter are campaigning for legalized assisted suicide, and described it as the ideal way to die. The reality, however, is rather different. Dame Esther Rantzen, a broadcaster, was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, and though she is currently undergoing treatment, she said she plans to kill herself at Dignitas in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":309061,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[15,3473],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nDying by assisted suicide is no 'fairy tale'... and it can take hours or even days to die<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""[B]oth of us have pictured our own versions of good death... and it would be a wonderful bubble bath wearing every single diamond...."\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/assisted-suicide-no-fairy-tale-hours-days\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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