“Suicide kits”?
Why would anybody devise a method to help people end their lives? And what in the world drives people to want it?
The culture of death. The message that suffering is an evil to be avoided.
Controversy is brewing over a so-called “suicide kit” you can buy by mail, and a 91-year-old San Diego County woman is at the heart of it.
For the past four years, she has sold “helium hoods”: a service that has generated considerable opposition. That opposition is continuing to grow, following the death of a young man who purchased one of those kits from an El Cajon senior to help take his own life.
But the woman behind this growing business says she is providing a valuable service.
“It is not my intention to hurt anybody, but to offer people comfort when they die,” said the 91-year-old, whose identity News 8 agreed to conceal.
When she first started, she said she sold, on average, two kits every month. Each kit, which essentially consists of a plastic hood and plastic tubing, costs $60 each.
“I’ve created a monster here,” she said, “because it takes so much time. But I’m up to 45 (of the kits) a month.”
One of her customers was 29-year-old Nick Klonoski, an Oregon resident who dealt with depression, but was not terminally ill. Klonoski used the kit three months ago, along with a rented helium tank and instructions obtained from the book “Final Exit,” to take his own life.
His suicide has now sparked a movement to outlaw the sale of these kits in Oregon.
Thank God. We are in dire need of a return to sensibility and humanity.
This story landed in my inbox from a friend, bioethics hero/nurse Nancy Valko, who attached her personal note with it:
In response to the death of a depressed, 29 year old man, note this from the article: “You can not end your life with this kit, so I think it’s totally unenforceable,” said Faye Girsh, president of the Hemlock Society of San Diego, which advocates for the individual’s right to decide when and how one dies. “If I were his mother, I’d be very upset,” Girsh said, “but I don’t think I’d be very upset because somebody provided a peaceful means to end his life.”
This reflects the true agenda and the supreme callousness of the euthanasia movement. I’m the mother of a 30 year old daughter whose suicide death was called “textbook Final Exit” by the medical examiner. I too am “very upset” but not not only by her asphyxia death which was anything but “peaceful” but also with the rabid selfishness of the euthanasia movement which tries to bully everyone – health care professionals, grieving relatives, the unsuspecting public – into accepting their lethal agenda.
This is more than callousness. It’s murderous. And any ‘movement’ that promotes it is dreadfully hopeless and wrong.
