I definately am in favor of assisted suicide, but only under certain conditions. And I don't know that I could be the one to carry out the act - I don't have the mental capacity to do that.

As some of you guys already know, I am a nurse. The nature of my work causes me to be faced with this very issue. Technically, I deal with the "Living Will" side of the house. For those who don't know (Lady Valar can elaborate on this better, perhaps, or Wonga) a Living Will is a legal document signed by either the patient, legal guardian, or whoever has Power of Attorney over the patient. It allows the patient to make informed, well thought-out choices regarding what steps, if any are to be taken in the event that he should die or be in the final stages of death.

In it, the patient/guardian/POA can elect to maintain a DNR (Do Not Recsusitate (sp?)) status. In other words, if the person begins slipping away, nothing is to be done to stop that from happening or to slow the process.

Would you lable this as suicide? In a society that has the means to possibly save and extend a person's life, is it a form of suicide to choose that nothing be done?

I don't. I respect a person's right to die with dignity.

I would also respect a person's choice to decide not to live out the next unbearably painful weeks or months of life. I can understand why a terminal cancer or AIDS patient would choose assisted suicide over needing someone - a family member or a stranger - to clean up your feces, to bathe and shave you, to brush your teeth, to die in a hospice surrounded by nurses and hard linoleum floor. Or perhaps worse yet, to die a laborious, long drawn-out death at home as your children and spouse watch you suffer. Hell yes, I understand.

It's a shame to me that some people are more concerned with what some Imaginary Sky Pixie might think about it.

But I draw the line at terminal patients. If you're so fed up with your own life, do your homework and figure out a way to do it your damned self, rather than put the burden of ending your life on someone else's hands. I would never find it in me to destroy an otherwise healthy person, simply because he's miserable. It's not that I don't care, but.... enough is enough.

I even have my own "Official Plan C if Things Go Way the Fuck Too Wrong" right to die Contingency SOP. Not that I'd ever use it, but it is in a way strangely comforting thought that I know of a handful of ways to get the job done right. Lord knows (pardon the expression) that I've seen it done wrong enough times...

So, basically, my thought is that if the person has the actual physical capability of carrying it out, he or she should be the one to do so. Be your own executioner, kits will be provided. In the case of someone who's life is so horrible and is so incapacitated that he couldn't take his life if he wanted to, then there are already some legal ways to make that happen.

Point in case: I am a home health nurse for a young man who is a quadraplegic. He is on a ventilator, but cannot move his hands enough to pull himself off the circuit. Technially, while he is up in his wheelchair, he could make it go foreward enough to pull the plug of the ventilator out of the wall...but then he'd have to wait for both the internal and external batteries to die. That would take hours and hours, conceivably ~ 9 hours he'd have to sit there and wait, and wait for the vent to quit. Neither he nor his parents should have to go through that.

His parents have told me that he has the right to take himself off of the vent at any time - someone else would actually have to physically do it, though. Of course, they'd make him undergo some psych evaluation, and talk it over carefully, but in his case, I do believe there is that legal loophole that would count it more or less as an euthanasia, not a suicide or murder. He has already outlived his life expectancy by over a decade now (thanks, in part to good nursing care :) ) but he is a DNR and should he arrest again, he will be allowed to slip away.

Oi, now I am officially bloody well depressed.... :(