(no subject)

[rivka]

I'm going to be preaching at my church on July 11. In fact, with the help of a Worship Associate (who presumably will know what he or she is doing, one hopes - because I don't), I'll be doing the whole service.

I kind of can't believe I got myself into this.

The title of my sermon is "Life Or Death Situations." I'm going to talk about my experiences working with people who are terminally ill and and people who are suicidal. The scary part, for me, is that I am going to talk about why assisted suicide is problematic and why I believe that endorsement of assisted suicide is contrary to UU religious values. I don't think that will be a popular opinion in my church.

I met with our minister yesterday to talk about it. He is very encouraging, and has promised me any support I need. But it's still going to come down to me writing a sermon and then standing up to deliver it, in front of a whole bunch of people who probably don't want to hear what I have to say.

I know there are several ministers and lay religious leaders who read my LJ; any advice you have would be incredibly helpful.

Comments

[janetl.livejournal.com]

If you haven't had the opportunity to talk to people who've used physician assisted suicide, I could ask a friend of mine if she could talk to you on the phone. She volunteers with Compassion and Choices of Oregon, which provides "emotional, social and spiritual support to terminally ill Oregonians" who want use our physician assisted suicide law. She's (obviously) convinced that it's a good option to have.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

If you haven't had the opportunity to talk to people who've used physician assisted suicide

Um. No, I haven't, because they're dead.

[janetl.livejournal.com]

Excellent point. Since I don't believe in an afterlife, it gives me a very large blind-spot in any discussion of mortality. She only know what they think of it up until they become unconscious.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I am curious about whether she's ever had contact with suicidal people in other contexts.

In my line of work I have met many people who clearly expressed their desire and intent to die. Some of them have tried to kill themselves, and have been foiled by an insufficiently lethal method or a rescuer that comes along at precisely the right/wrong time. It doesn't seem unusual or notable to me that a suicidal person would speak positively of suicide, right up until the end.

I think that assisted suicide supporters typically haven't had broad exposure to suicidal people, and so they think that suicidal people who have a profound disability or a terminal illness are somehow different from people who are suicidal for other reasons. But to my knowledge there is no psychological research to back up that claim.

[janetl.livejournal.com]

I don't believe that she'd had any contact with suicidal people prior to this volunteer work. The Oregon law on assisted suicide requires anyone using it to be quite close to death, and I believe they must also be evaluated for depression. One person she met had cancer blocking their colon, causing them to vomit feces. They were pretty motivated to die immediately, on purely physical grounds.

When the law was proposed, I was nervous that people would opt for it out of financial worries. The immediate result of the law was that pain management and hospice care improved dramatically in the state, which is a sad commentary on how things were done prior to the law passing. I volunteered at a hospice for 5 years, and have seen that hospice is a great help for many people and their families, but not for all.

There has been much analysis of the Oregon experience over the past decade, and the worry about people choosing suicide for financial reasons hasn't been substantiated. The people who apply are typically financially secure and have good insurance. Most people who apply don't actually use the pills -- it appears that having that option, that control, is what they needed.

[ailbhe]

Over here, the main pro side of the debate is that some people are annoyed because they have to commit suicide while they are still physically capable of doing it effectively themselves, when actually they'd rather live longer, knowing that someone else would do it for them when they decided it was time even if they weren't physically capable of it themselves.