Apologists for assisted suicide, such as the Los Angeles Times editorial board, pretend that the Final Exit Network is a fringe group that does not reflect mainstream assisted suicide advocacy, rather than, as I have clearly demonstrated here, at SHS, within the very heart of the assisted suicide movement. FEN activists have been arrested in one case, and new deaths undertaken with their participation are coming out all the time.
Here’s the latest, of a depressed elderly man tired of living. From the story:
Max Lom was depressed. His eyesight had failed. Simple tasks, like reading the newspaper, had become an exercise in futility.The 88-year-old Sarasota man wanted to die, although physically, he was healthy, according to his daughter.
Last May, he swallowed a handful of pills in the hope of never waking. It didn’t work, but the suicidal thoughts lingered, his daughter said.Shortly after, Lom began communicating with Final Exit Network, a national organization whose members provide support to those seeking a “peaceful end.” Lom was found dead Jan. 4 from breathing helium gas with a plastic bag over his head, a Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office report said. Family members are outraged at the group, as Lom wasn’t terminally ill or suffering…
Lom’s daughter, Helen Lom, believes the group essentially convinced him to take his life. Final Exit Network officials have denied any involvement in Lom’s death.”They might not have put the hood over his head, but they basically gave him the recipe book,” said Helen Lom, who lives in Switzerland.
How is this facilitated suicide any different than what happens in Oregon, Washington, and now Montana? Lom used helium and a bag, in Oregon death doctors prescribe intentional overdoses of drugs. Different medium, same result.
Don’t give me that nonsense about Lom not being terminally ill. That limitation is a stage managed pretense to get people to accept the principle that having doctors (or others) assist the suicides of people based on “choice” and killing as an acceptable answer to human suffering. As a logical species, once that principle is swallowed by the population, the pretense of terminal illness is quickly forgotten and you get the Netherlands and Switzerland—in which the depressed and mentally ill people are allowed assisted suicide, and doctors even give out a book teaching patients how to kill themselves when they don’t technically qualify for euthanasia.
The real debate we should be having is whether suicide clinics should be legalized help anyone with a non transitory desire to be made dead. Everything else—as so much of our corrupted public discourse these days—is disingenuous and a premeditated act of intentional misdirection.
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