Euthanasia Zealots Push Starving Patients to Death as “Death With Dignity”
Opinion   Wesley Smith   Dec 11, 2018   |   6:47PM    Washington, DC

https://www.lifenews.com/2018/12/11/euthanasia-zealots-push-starving-patients-to-death-as-death-with-dignity/

It’s getting very dark in euthanasia-land. Not content with legalizing assisted ѕυιcιdє for the terminally ill in six states plus the District of Columbia — with Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Colombia allowing lethal jab euthanasia — and unsatiated with Switzerland’s ѕυιcιdє clinics to which people from around the world attend — the so-called “death with dignity” movement now is pushing self-starvation as a splendid way to die.

Before I explain, two crucial distinctions. First, this essay is not about the common circuмstance when a dying person stops eating as a natural part of the dying process. Nor is this essay about feeding tubes, which are deemed a medical treatment that can be legally refused or withdrawn. Rather, this essay addresses the growing advocacy in the assisted ѕυιcιdє/euthanasia movement and within bioethics to redefine self-starvation — known as “voluntary stop eating and drinking (VSED)” in movement parlance — as a means of attaining “death with dignity” in circuмstances in which assisted ѕυιcιdє is illegal.

Compassion and Choices, formerly known as the Hemlock Society, is the country’s most prominent assisted ѕυιcιdє advocacy organization. Uncoincidentally, is also the country’s prime promoter of VSED. Here’s how its WEB site promotes self-starvation to the elderly:

Many people struggle with the unrelieved suffering of a chronic or incurable and progressive disorder. Others may decide that they are simply “done” after eight or nine decades of a fully lived life. A person may choose to control their own dying by making a conscious decision to refuse foods and fluids of any kind, including artificial nutrition and/or hydration. This option, sometimes known as VSED, can be chosen by a decisionally-capable adult who has the physical ability to eat and drink but consciously refuses foods and fluids in order to advance the time of their death.

Be it noted that “advance the time of their death,” happens every time someone commits ѕυιcιdє. And that’s precisely what VSED is — ѕυιcιdє by self-starvation. But C & C pretends that forcing oneself to starve is a natural death:

Death from VSED is a natural process. As death nears, breathing becomes more shallow and irregular. Moaning or “rattling” breathing may occur, but is not believed to be an indication of pain or distress. The body may change temperature and there can be discoloration in the face (flushed red, or pale with bluish or yellowish tones), as well as purple or bluish mottling in the hands or feet.

Of course, none of that would be happening if the dying person took sustenance.

VSED is agonizing. Starvation and dehydration may take weeks, and in addition to the above symptoms, may involve substantial and painful cracking of delicate membranes, convulsions, and other physical distress that results when a body that wants to live is denied the sustenance necessary to do so. (Again, we are not discussing patients who naturally stop eating as death approaches, a peaceful process because the body is shutting down.) Thus, C & C warns people they will require “24-hour care” from family as well as a doctor or hospice professional willing to assist by palliating agonizing symptoms. And while it is true that the law probably can’t require the suicidal person to be force-fed, it seems to me that a doctor who uses his or her medical skills to help a person stop eating and drinking is immorally helping the person commit ѕυιcιdє.

Pushing VSED as a means of death and/or qualifying for assisted ѕυιcιdє/euthanasia is bad enough. But now activists have started a campaign to force caregivers to starve dementia patients — even when they willingly eat and drink! Here’s the push: If a dementia patient demanded VSED in an advance medical directive to be implemented once they reach a certain stage of incompetence — say, not recognizing a family member — then caregivers must starve and dehydrate them to death. The assisted ѕυιcιdє activist group End of Life Choices New York has already created such a directive for its members with the optional instruction:

If I am suffering from advanced dementia and appear willing to accept food or fluid offered by assisted or hand feeding, my instructions are that I do NOT want to be fed by hand, even if I appear to cooperate with being fed by opening my mouth.

Such directives are not yet legal, but several prominent bioethicists have supported enacting laws or ethical rules requiring such cruel instructions to be binding on caregivers.

Think about the potential consequences: People would be able to order themselves killed — and also require those in the most compassionate professions to do the killing by withholding food and water they willingly accept. And this would be true even if the incompetent patient asked to be fed, since their instructions while competent would prevail over all other considerations. In other words, inaction that is today universally considered elder abuse would be transformed into a twisted form of patient empowerment.

Here’s the thing: Advance directives permit signers to decide ahead of time the kind of medical treatments they want or don’t want. But spoon feeding is not a medical treatment! It is humane care, akin to keeping patients warm and clean. Imagine the brain-drain from the geriatric service sector if caregivers could be required to kill.

Here’s the cynical game being played. VSED is a not a goal but a wrecking ball intended to smash open the door to legalizing lethal injection euthanasia. Should starvation advocates have their way, they would soon start bellowing about the raw cruelty of such slow deaths and urge that euthanasia would be a quicker and less agonizing means of death. Indeed, lethal injections of dementia patients pursuant to advance directives are a part of normal euthanasia practice in Netherlands and Belgium, with Canada likely to soon follow suit.

With the open advocacy of voluntary and compelled VSED, the radical ultimate agenda of the assisted ѕυιcιdє movement can no longer be denied. Those with eyes to see, let them see.

LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Human Exeptionalism.

This article which I saved back in 2005 gives a picture of the horror of dehydrating a person to death. One day these souls will get their just deserts

June 16, 2005
 
 Atrophy of Compassion
 Fr. Frank comments on Terri Schiavo autopsy
 
 The autopsy of Terri Schiavo has been released to the public, bringing attention once again to this sad and tragic case, and
 reigniting so many of the debates surrounding her life and death. Does the autopsy shed any light on this tragedy? Does it
 change anything?
 
 The autopsy, of course, is a medical docuмent about Terri's physical condition. It is filled with complicated medical terms and
 statistics. In and of itself, it tells us simply the details found upon examining Terri's body. An autopsy is not a crystal ball
 either into the past or the future. Nor is it a moral evaluation of the worth of a human life.
 
 The big temptation is to stretch the autopsy beyond its purposes, and somehow get it to do more than it can do. Some, indeed, wonder whether this autopsy was, from the beginning, a political tool worked out by the euthanasia advocates to advance their agenda regarding Terri. Whether or not that is the case, the autopsy will certainly be used by such advocates to further de-humanize Terri and rob her of her claim to care and protection.
 
 But let's presume that those who conducted this exam did so objectively and honestly. What, then, do we learn?
 
 For one thing, the autopsy shows that all the media reports that so confidently asserted that Terri collapsed because of "an
 eating disorder" or "a heart attack" should not have been so confident. In short, the autopsy does not provide a basis for those claims, and leaves the cause of her initial collapse in 1990 a mystery.
 
 Was Michael Schiavo at all responsible for her collapse? The autopsy does not answer that question. Perhaps Michael should.
 
 What the exam does tell us, however, is that Terri died from dehydration. Of course, we knew that already. She wasn't given
 any water the last two weeks of her life, and we know why. Michael, and those acting in concert with him, insisted on that and got the courts to enforce their wishes. We don't know if Michael was responsible for Terri's injury, but we do know he was responsible for her death.
 
 The autopsy goes on to say that Terri's brain was "profoundly atrophied," and only half the normal size. Fine. If that's what
 the experts tell us, there is no problem believing them. But what does that mean, that she was only half-human, only half a
 person, or that she had only half the rights that the rest of us have? That is the conclusion that we must never accept. That is a conclusion that does not come from an autopsy, but from a callous disregard for human life.
 
 Terri did not die from atrophy of the brain. She died from an atrophy of compassion. Too many people, starting with Michael,
 were unwilling to accept the fact that profoundly injured people require profound compassion and care. Even if this autopsy
 report showed that Terri was ten times more damaged than she was, our moral obligation to respect and protect her life would not change at all. We don't have to pass a test to qualify for our human rights. An autopsy is a measure of physical damage, not of human rights.
 
 The autopsy says Terri was blind. That is not the morally relevant point. The point is that we are blind...Blind all too often to
 the fact that even the disabled and the severely injured have the same dignity and worth as the rest of us, and show forth the image and glory of God, even in their brokenness.
 
 The autopsy says that Terri was beyond repair or rehabilitation. But that does not mean we are supposed to throw her away,
 like we throw away a car that is beyond repair. Again, there is no problem accepting this medical conclusion. But morally
 speaking, our compassion is not beyond repair. We can build a society that respects and protects all our brothers and sisters,
 recognizing that their value does not come from how well they function, perform, or produce.
 
 I will never forget my hours with Terri, both before and after her feeding tube was removed. She responded to me, and she
 responded to others who visited her. She laughed, she tried to speak, she returned her parents' kisses, she followed us with her eyes, she closed her eyes when I prayed with her and opened them when we were finished. Medical examiners can offer their conclusions because of what they saw, but none of that changes what we saw. But both we and the medical examiners were looking in from the outside. Any honest medical expert will admit that there is so much about the human brain we still don't know. What Terri experienced on the inside is a mystery that only she and God know.
 
 The challenge at this moment is simply this. Whatever she experienced, to whatever extent she was damaged, and even if she were totally unresponsive, Terri was one of us. She was our sister, she was a child of God, she was fully in possession of her human rights, and nothing can ever justify what was done to her.
 
 Terri Schiavo was murdered, because she was deprived of food and water. We've done the examination on her body. Maybe
 it's time for an examination of our souls.
 
 

They dehydrate and starve patients every day, probably hundreds of times a day. It's called government (well) funded Hospice. Most  times a patient must be considered terminal to be accepted by Hospice, but these patients don't usually die of their diagnosis, they die of dehydration first.
But that's ok! It's oh-so-compassionate......the patients appear (to the onlooker) to be very comfortable because of the high morphine doses.