Euthanasia - assisted suicide

[JohnL]

A No Politics -No AI thread.

What is the Biblical teaching on euthanasia or assisted suicide?

What about the teaching on those who are the assistants?

[temporal1]

(i believe) it goes against God’s will and design.
Some related topics:

2016 boot / Bloom where you are planted
https://forum.mennonet.com/viewtopic.php?t=81

2018 me / The will to live
https://forum.mennonet.com/viewtopic.php?t=1509

2021 Wayne in Maine / Why do we obey the Lord?
https://forum.mennonet.com/viewtopic.php?t=3773

2024 JohnL / Assisted Suicide
https://forum.mennonet.com/viewtopic.php?t=7419

The mysterious God-created will to live.

To me, witnessing a stubborn dandelion thrive, unwanted, with all odds against, is a great analogy for God-breathed life.
All of it is inexplicable and extra-human.

[ohio jones]

What is the Biblical teaching on euthanasia or assisted suicide?

What about the teaching on those who are the assistants?

"Thou shalt not kill."

[barnhart]

What about refusing simple treatments or intervention because death is preferred.

[temporal1]

What about refusing simple treatments or intervention because death is preferred.

Preferred by whom? is a valid question.

If a person decides to refuse treatments, it might not be a death wish, but a prayer to put it in God’s hands.
Interesting enough, “sure death” doesn’t always follow according to doctors’ best guesses.

Putting it in God’s hands suggests willingness to accept God’s decisions, regardless.

Euthanasia, like abortion, is a decision for involuntary (not natural) planned death.
There have been lawsuits when death didn’t happen.

[JohnH]

What about refusing simple treatments or intervention because death is preferred.

I guess it depends on who decides what "simple treatments" are. Sometimes someone in their 80s or 90s simply doesn't want to go to a hospital and be hooked up to machines in a cold room with bright lights, LEDs flashing, equipment beeping, and so on.

[JimFoxvog]

I lean on the "shalt not kill" side, but have respect for the view that assisted suicide is sometimes the most loving thing to do if there is severe pain and very little chance for recovery.

Hospice can offer palliative care, offering pain medicine that is likely to shorten the patient's life. I can accept that.

[Grace]

Some time back a close friend of mine's mother had a stroke. The still somewhat cognitive mother was a resident in a well-known nursing facility here in Lancaster County. It was determined this very elderly lady's swallowing was to poor the avoid expiration while eating. So, food and water were denied until she died. I fully understand the rational for denying food and water for the elderly when their swallowing reflexes are greatly diminished. However, my question is, where is the line between assisted suicide and denying food and water until one dies ?

[JohnL]

Some time back a close friend of mine's mother had a stroke. The still somewhat cognitive mother was a resident in a well-known nursing facility here in Lancaster County. It was determined this very elderly lady's swallowing was to poor the avoid expiration while eating. So, food and water were denied until she died. I fully understand the rational for denying food and water for the elderly when their swallowing reflexes are greatly diminished. However, my question is, where is the line between assisted suicide and denying food and water until one dies ?

Good question. I’m wondering why they didn’t put her on a stomach feeding tube and IV. That’s been an option for 30 years that I know of.

[mike]

Some time back a close friend of mine's mother had a stroke. The still somewhat cognitive mother was a resident in a well-known nursing facility here in Lancaster County. It was determined this very elderly lady's swallowing was to poor the avoid expiration while eating. So, food and water were denied until she died. I fully understand the rational for denying food and water for the elderly when their swallowing reflexes are greatly diminished. However, my question is, where is the line between assisted suicide and denying food and water until one dies ?

Good question. I’m wondering why they didn’t put her on a stomach feeding tube and IV. That’s been an option for 30 years that I know of.

It's a very hard question and one that my family had to deal with this year.

My mother passed away of cancer this year. Toward the end of her treatment plan, she had cardiac arrest at home and had to be resuscitated. She was on a ventilator, and later a trache tube, and attempts to wean her off did not work as she could never breathe on her own for more than a few hours. She was being treated for blood clots, which had caused the cardiac arrest, and eventually developed major internal bleeding as a result of that treatment. They ended up in a corner where treatments were counteracting other treatments and there was no way forward. We were given the choice of stopping all life-saving treatment and placing her on comfort care only.

We finally chose this path. It was a very difficult time to say the least. The ventilator was removed, and all nutrition and medication stopped other than meds to keep her mostly sedated and comfortable. She had not been able to breathe on her own for more than a few hours before this, so we did not expect her to live more than a few hours. However, she breathed on her own nearly a whole week. During this time, she occasionally showed signs of being slightly aware, but was mostly asleep and seemed comfortable until she finally breathed her last.

In theory, she could have been kept on IV nutrition, oxygen, and ventilator assist and lived for an indefinite period of time. In reality, you just can't do that forever. In all this time, her cancer was not being treated, and the likelihood of her body being able to tolerate the treatments at any point in the near future was slim to none. It was an extremely hard decision to make, but there were no good options left.

In my opinion, this kind of end-of-life decision, which is essentially a decision to stop using life saving technology to delay the inevitable, including the delivery of nutrition by IV, is vastly different from the decision to assist a person in committing suicide. It is not even close. It is allowing nature to take its course, and allowing God to determine when life ends. Assisted suicide is intervening in the natural process by taking a life. Choosing to not prolong a person's physical suffering is not in the same category, even though technology often lets us decide when that point will be.

A week ago, a friend of mine had a sudden stroke and inoperable brain bleed, and was kept alive on a ventilator until all the family could be there, and passed away a few hours after machines were removed. This kind of thing is in a different category from assisting a person in killing themselves. I think it is crucial to keep a line between the two, but the decisions one has to make at times feel closer to that line than one would like.