Whose life is it anyway?

“If I cannot give consent to my own death, whose body is this? Who owns my life?”

That is one tough question.

If I give consent to my own death, then I won't even be here after a while to find out what happened; after all, I will be dead!

On the other hand, when the person is "Sue Rodriguez, a 42-year-old suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S." it is not merely a theoretical thought experiment.

 The NIH fact-sheet on ALS is an awfully depressing read.  What a curse to be afflicted with that disease.  Which is why Rodriguez wanted to have a doctor-assisted-suicide. And it was in that Canadian legal battle in 1993 that she said, “If I cannot give consent to my own death, whose body is this? Who owns my life?”

The NY Times piece reports that she lost the case, which was taken up later by other patients and lawyers.  Now, this has become legal in Canada, and "the Canadian system puts doctors and nurse practitioners at its center."

The legal victory made possible 78-year old John Shields to schedule his death well into an incurable and terminal heart disease.  The report can be emotionally challenging to read; imagine then how intensely emotional it would be to watch a loved one die.  Right?

Here in Oregon, it is "20 years since Oregon voters passed the nation’s first death-with-dignity law."

Washington became the second state to adopt a death with dignity law, followed by Colorado, Vermont and the District of Columbia. Montana joined the list by court order. What may prove to be the turning point came in 2015, when the California Assembly approved a death with dignity law, tripling the number of Americans who can choose to end their lives on their own terms. More than 20 other states are now considering their own death-with-dignity laws.
Other states, including California, have patterned their laws on Oregon’s, which allows a patient with a terminal illness who is expected to die within six months or less to request life-ending prescription drugs. The request must be witnessed by two people and approved by two physicians, and the patient must be determined to be mentally sound. Last year, 204 people in Oregon requested the drugs and 133 people used them. That’s less than 0.5 percent of all deaths.

Of course, in Oregon (and in the other states too) patients have to self-administer the life-ending chemical cocktail.  Physicians are not allowed to press the syringe, unlike in the Canadian or Dutch euthanasia procedures.

The letters to the editor reflect the typical concerns and worries that we might have on this extremely difficult topic.  As one letter-writer notes there even when disagreeing with such an exit, "The growing discussion of dying well is a welcome and needed one."  Yes.

Only in America!

Lemme give you the response to the title of this post right away before you read further: NOT!

When JFK became a presidential candidate, as a Roman Catholic in a country where Protestants viewed Catholics with a great deal of suspicion, he had to go out of his ways to make sure that voters understood that he would not be a Vatican candidate.  In a stirring speech about the separation of church and state, and his Catholicism, JFK said:

contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic.

An Irish-Catholic-American was elected president.  And JFK happens to be the only Catholic ever to have been elected to the White House.

In that ancestral home of his--in Ireland--an "American" history is being created: The son of a Hindu immigrant is all set to be the next prime minister of Ireland.  He is only 38--younger than JFK's age when he was elected president.  And, oh, this young man is gay:

A gay son of an Indian immigrant is now all but certain to become the next prime minister of Ireland, a country that has rapidly been leaving its conservative Roman Catholic social traditions behind.
Leo Varadkar, who was chosen on Friday by the Fine Gael party to be its leader, and therefore the head of the center-right governing coalition, will be the first openly gay taoiseach (as Ireland’s prime minister is called), and, at 38, the youngest.

The kind of a story that we normally associate only with the US.

Who were/are his parents?

Mr. Varadkar was born in Dublin in 1979, the son of an Irish Catholic nurse from County Waterford and a Hindu doctor from Mumbai, India. His parents met in England in the 1960s and lived in India for a time before moving to Ireland.
Growing up in a country where religious divisions have historically run deep, he attended a Catholic elementary school and a Protestant high school that followed the Church of Ireland tradition. He told The Irish Times in 2015 that he was raised Catholic but was “not a particularly religious person.”

How fascinating!  Almost a made-for-movie story!

Varadkar reminds us:

“If my election today shows anything, it is that prejudice has no hold in this Republic,” Varadkar said at Dublin’s Mansion House after the results were announced, adding: “Around the world people look to Ireland as a country where it doesn't matter where you come from, only where you want to go.”

I needed such a positive news to offset the bleakness here in the land of the free.

June 1, 2017: A date which will live in infamy

So, ... it finally happened.

President Trump announced Thursday that he will withdraw the United States from participation in the Paris climate accord

The asshole did it.

Source

I bet his 63 million voters, including two frequent commenters in the pre-election years, are orgasmic with this premature withdrawal.

It is not only the global climate change, about which I have blogged enough, that worries me.  This decision by the worst ever human being will mean that in the international politics of give and take, well, most of the rest of world will begin to work around the US.  And when we go knocking on their doors, they will flash their middle fingers to reciprocate trump's gesture.

The US as the "leader of the free world" no more.

Fareed Zakaria on Trump and climate accord: This could be the day the US resigns as leader of the free world https://t.co/TTwMoMjqEn

— CNN (@CNN) June 1, 2017

I wish people would understand something that many serious people, and the insignificant me, have been saying ever since trump became a candidate: most of his policies are in tune with what most of the GOP is all about.  In this context, it is not merely trump who denies global climate change and the human causation of it--that is pretty much the mainstream GOP position.  trump just happens to speak crudely and plainly, whereas the "establishment" leaders use appropriate euphemisms!

Oh well ... I feel so exhausted. It is not even five months into the asshole's presidency.