Pat Robertson gets a difficult question: a man’s wife is suffering from Alzheimer’s. He thinks he ought to go find a new wife. Pat, what should he do?
Divorce her. She’s gone, so your marriage vows don’t apply any more. How sweet!
I’m going to have to have a talk with my wife, though: if I go senile in a few years, I don’t think I’d like to be thrown out of the house while she goes looking for a date, and so no taking advice from fundamentalist kooks.
(via Right Wing Watch.)
Don’t be silly, PZ. Wives can’t divorce husbands, they need to stay subservient.
Til death or natural sickness do us part.
Conservatives also allow divorce if the original wife isn’t pretty anymore — you know, like McCain’s first wife, who waited for him while he was a PoW in Vietnam.
What’s love got to do with it, indeed. For all that christians talk a good game about love, sacrifice, the seriousness of marriage and vows, they aren’t too interested in any of those things. Hypocrisy, all the way down.
He says it’s a kind of death, but if she had a living will made in which she asked for euthanasia after her condition gets to a certain point, he would probably be against it.
.. Oh, no probably about it (link)
What a hypocritical asshole.
That’s kind of ironic given the obvious state of Robinson’s neural endowment.
I was just going to post about this!
My mother threw my dad out of the bedroom about 3 years into Alzheimer’s. They had been married nearly 55 years. He spent the last 5 years of is life just following her around turning off range tops and closing refrigerator doors.
He didn’t divorce her; his own health was declining from cancer.
But he should have. Trying to take of her ruining the few years of life he had left.
Unless you’ve taken care of an advanced Alzheimer’s patient, who constantly calls 911 to report an intruder in her house, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
It’s a crummy excuse to chase other women, but for your own mental health, you have to get away from them.
BTW, my mother is still alive, 12 years later, in a nursing home. My father had left me enough money to retire on (I’m disabled and cannot work), but the nursing home has 90% of it now.
In an attempt to avoid thinking about how cruel and heartless that motherfucking sonofabitch is, let me simply ponder the theological aspect of this.
Specifically, what does Alzheimer’s do to a person’s soul?
Or is Robertson not sophisticated enough a theologian to have thought through those sorts of problems?
And can we as a society stop pretending that religion makes a person compassionate now? Especially the faithiests out there?
Cheers,
b&
Hey, Newt! Pat’s got your back! Divorcing your cancer-striken wife while she’s in her hosipital bed is just fine.
Leaving someone because of sickness is sick, but if I go senile, I’ll refuse all treatment (if euthanasia isn’t an option) and free my wife of the burden as quickly as possible.
And to my wife I say: Be happy.
Yeah. Fuck commitment and love.
Acrually, I don’t think many people would fault someone for seeing other people in this situation while remaining married to and caring for your spouse.
What a sad perspective you have.
I didn’t mean to imply that everyone needs to be taken care of in the home or that a spouse has to be the sole caretaker.
Robertson is against gays marrying and against sick people staying married. Tell us again, Pat, about how much you care about the institution of marriage.
I love my wife. I’m with her to the END, even if she can’t perform her wifely “duties”.
That’s why the sky daddy gave me a right hand.
little john, I think you missed the point. Whether you should divorce, or put in a nursing home, a partner with altzheimers is a personal choice to a skeptic/ atheist or humanist.
Its not for the fundie. Pat Robertson is the kind of theocrat that is against divorce for everyone, in any circumstance. Especially if youre a woman, who is expected to submit to abuse, not leave. He is always bashing humanists and others for our high divorce rates (among other things). This is a guy who pushes “to death do us part” relentlessly, even going so far to promote marriages that are harder to break legally. (I forget what they are called) He also yaps about so called xtian compassion and love and such.
But this response of his is not loving at all. if it was the wife asking, you bet he would tell her to submit until her man died. So much for al, those things he thinks he stands for: family values, selflessness, charity, love, marriage until death, etx.
The last paragraph makes me wonder…
Does reading the words of loonies like Robinson day after day cause and/or hasten senility?
Nice one, Pat. There’s an iceberg with your name on it just waiting to be shoved off.
Wait…Pat Robertson DOESN’T have Alzheimer’s? What’s wrong with him then?
That’s fine, Pat, but you really need to shut the fuck up about abortion now.
As the woman says to Roberts, the marriage vow says “in sickness and in health … till death do us part”, and he just blows her off. Apparently, marriage vows are not that important to Roberts.
My father had senile dementia, and my mother took care of him as long as she could. Then she reluctantly put him in a nursing home and visited him at least once a day until he died. My mother told me that she had vowed to stay with him “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health … all the days of [her] life”, and she wasn’t going to break that vow. She felt it was the only path she could take, not just as a Christian, but as a human being.
If Alzheimer’s or something similar happens to my wife, I intend to do the same thing as my mother. I may no longer be a Christian, but when I take a vow, I keep it.
The hypocracy! It BURNS!
I’d be curious to know what his answer would be if a woman asked the same question.
I’ve had eternal vows vs divorce debates with my religious uncle before and I got to say I’m not on PZ’s side this time. Not necessarily at least.
I think it’s terrible to abandon someone in their time of need and I can feel a visceral sense of revulsion of cutting a wife (or husband) lose because they have a disease. However, brain disorders raise some troubling questions. Are we married to the body or to the person? I think most of us see there are arguments for cutting life support to comatose patients with severe brain damage and some would see an argument for leaving a spouse who (through injury or choice) changed values and personality so they became sufficiently different from the person we wed.
I have seen Alzheimer’s patients and I do think they become different people inhabiting the body of someone we used to love. It’s tempting to think that the person we love is still in there somewhere, trapped by this disease but I think that’s a mistake. Their personality, memories and even values really have changed; they aren’t a disembodied soul that’s somehow trapped inside this malfunctioning body & brain.
If our mind and personality really is our brain, what do we do when that brain changes dramatically?
As callous as it sounds, I really do think it’s reasonable to consider divorce. I think we should be compassionate and try to do what’s best for our spouse and not treat them like they’re already dead, but I don’t think we should act like they haven’t become a very different person or like they are going to snap out if it.
Good luck, Ben. You should know by now the faitheists would jump all over you for using Pat Robertson as an example of a religious person.
Remember, the majority of Christians, according to the faitheists, are like them: they cherry pick the parts of the Bible they like, act in accordance with their own morality, and aren’t even really sure Jesus was the son of God, other than that he was a really good, good, good, terribly good person—except for the bad things he said and did which were probably misinterpretations or transcription errors by later bible writers.
That’s why faith is good.
Confused?
If in doubt, simply say this: “I believe in spirituality rather than organised religion”, preferably while dosing yourself with patchouli, dreading your hair, putting in those saucer-sized earrings, or whatever New Agey hipsters do these days to show their affinity for the tribe.
I don’t believe it is always immoral or wrong to divorce a patient who has Alzheimer’s. It all depends on the circumstances and the type of relationship that the couple had. If the person who has Alzheimer’s cannot be emotionally hurt by the divorce because he/she cannot remember, then why it is morally required for the partner to stay by his/her side? (maybe my understanding of Alzheimer’s is fucked up though).
She’s gone? So is Robertson finally admitting that human consciousness is product of material processes and NOT due to a magical ghost living inside of us and driving the body around like a tractor trailer?
I had to watch my paternal grandfather quickly go from an active, intelligent man to an emaciated infant how could not walk, speak coherently, or remember who his grand kids were. It was more of a relief than a sadness when he eventually died from Alzheimer’s-related pneumonia, but the process was very painful to watch. It’s part of the reason why I think euthanasia needs to be legalized, despite the insistence from my father’s side of family (mostly hard-core Catholics) that dying a semi-vegetable in a nursing home is somehow ” dignified.”
Personaly, I would not want my partner to forfeit all the possible happyness he might still experience in his life because a hollow shell of what used to be me remains.
If the person doesn’t even recognize you anymore (permanently), are you doing them any good be “keeping” them in your home?
We once got a call from my aunt’s father in the middle of the night. He needed help urgently because there was a strange woman who’d broken into his house and was lying in his bed.
She was his wife for over 20 years. The next morning he offered her to take her on a trip in a car they didn’t own anymore.
His body died faster than his brain, so this was a one-time occurence, but would this be a situation you’d want the person you love the most to cope with for years?
Oh, and Robertson is a hypocritical asshole.
It’s something to consider, all right. And Alzheimer’s isn’t the only one to worry about. A spouse with frontotemporal dementia can significantly drain your emotional and financial resources.
Robertson is, and always will be, a despicable douchenozzle. And people who look to him for advice, even if he is accidentally right, probably don’t have the mental capacity to either marry or divorce.
Can a person with Alzheimer’s get married? Is divorce even possible? Maybe we need a new way of looking at the relationships we have with those whose mind is gone, but their body endures.
…wait.
I thought Robertson is a Catholic?
So what really matters is sentience, personality, the capacity to relate to you …. ? Why all the fuss about embryos then, Pat?
Hypocritical bastard. Someone with Alzheimers still has (depending on what stage they’re at) some capacity for pleasure and for fear and suffering – which embryos most certainly do not.
I think Terry Pratchett has probably said pretty much everything worth saying on the Alzheimers front.
@23
Exactly. If a woman asked him if she should leave her husband because he had Alzheimer’s, surely Robertson would say “Yes”, right???
Magic 8 ball says, “Not likely”.
David,
You’re probably thinking of Bill Donahue. Robertson is a Protestant.
What would be the point of divorce in this situation? What do you mean by “stay by his/her side”?
And since when was this the question?
Okay, one day old fetus=alive; Glen Campbell=dead. Got it.
Yep. You can have someone else be the primary caretaker and have them in a facility that is designed to care well for them, but still remain married and visit. In fact, I don’t see any reason to divorce the person. What that would generally mean in the US is an immediate plunge of the Alzheimer patient into poverty and a huge clusterfuckastrophe for their health care. And for what? So the spouse can date without worrying about cheating on their spouse, who doesn’t even remember being married? That’s cutting off the patient’s nose to spite their face if anything is. Most elderly people don’t remarry that late anyway to keep inheritances from getting all messed up, so there’s no benefit to getting divorced but a lot of potential harm. You can say look, my spouse is effectively gone and I need my own support relationships, but I’m going to stay married, keep all of the financial and legal supports for my spouse intact, and keep visiting and making sure they’re being taken care of. I honestly don’t see how that’s less moral or ethical than divorcing them and leaving them to founder entirely on their own and at the mercy of the state.
@Brownian: My sympathies. My mother nursed her husband (not my father) through frontotemporal dementia, with a lot of help from paid carers, funded in large part by the local council. It was difficult enough that plenty of people were telling her she should put him in a nursing home, and her sister told me “Your mother is a saint.” The point is, it was her choice, partly for herself, because she didn’t want to lose him, and partly for his sake (for a while, she and their familiar home were among his few remaining anchors to reality). I have no idea if I would do the same thing in her shoes. Nor do I know how, if at all, she would have coped if they’d lived in New York rather than London (he was English).
I’d vote for euthanasia over divorce. As Tyro points out, we’re not talking about a spirit trapped in a body that might one day recover. We’re talking about a brain that has deteriorated to the point that self-awareness and personhood are compromised. It’s not much different from someone in a vegetative state from that point of view. Only someone who can wander around, leave dangers for other people, and get violent because they’re afraid and don’t recognise people is in even more dire straits. Pouring money into a care facility robs the living to pay for the dead. Who would want to live that way?
My mother’s Alzheimer’s Disease killed my father. And then it almost killed me. That’s what being a caretaker for an Alzheimer’s Disease patients is like. That’s how it works.
A huge team of specialists, nurses, and hospice workers is required to prevent an Alzheimer’s Diseased patient from taking down everyone around them.
When the situation gets that bad, euthanasia is the only humane recourse.
Unfortunately, I live in the USA where poor people don’t have equal access to healthcare, and where cruelty toward dying patients and their caregivers is a given.
It is totally the question if we talk about love, compassion and commitment.
It is the question when you jump at people who say that yes, to leave would probably be a good choice.
Because it probably was the wish of the person suffering from Alzheimer’s, too, before their brain gave up on them.
If you ask yourself the question what would be the right thing to do, maybe ask yourself what the other one would have wanted you to do.
Or even better, talk about it while you still have two brain-cells that can huddle together for warmth. And talk about all the other medical decisions that you may have to make one day, from organ donation to feeding tubes.
That is why “I would not want my partner to make this sacrifice” is very much the question.
Such cases are too individual to make a blanket statement. For the love of the octopus, that’s why we’re atheists and humanists, because we don’t believe in easy answers à la “thou shalt (not) divorce thy spouse ridden with Alzheimer’s”.
There are many aspects that need to be condidered, like health care, like daily care, like property, like inheritence and so on, and so on. But if the result is that the one suffering from Alzheimer’s (or a similar disease, or some other brain damage) won’t notice much and isn’t disadvantaged by this, while the other one would lose a lot, then why not go for a divorce?
And fighting for something different – institutionally and culturally – is an option Robertson ignores.
That’s specifically different than what Jesus says, which is that no one should divorce except in cases of unfaithfulness. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen Pat Robertson choose his own prejudices over the actual Bible.
I think a person always has a responsibility to continue to love and care for a spouse with Alzheimer’s. But also, there does come a point at which the person is a caretaker, not a husband or wife. I can imagine divorcing if that would be financially advantageous in paying for care, or if the person has been without a functional spouse long enough to have met and fallen in love with someone else… but in either case, he or she still is responsible for caring for the person at home while that is practical, then moving the person to a good nursing home and visiting regularly.
It’s okay if you disagree, or if you wouldn’t do that. But if one of my parents divorced the other in this situation, that is something that I could cope with, I think.
See my questions @ #35.
Robertson’s argument was that the person isn’t sick but already “dead.” That is false.
Oh, really? “Probably”? To be abandoned?
What sacrifice, specifically? If you have talked about these situations, that’s a different thing.
While I’m heartily in favor of Oregon’s Death with Dignity law and advanced health care directives, I think you need to be very clear that these options are only acceptable if they were the wish of the individual being discussed.
And since dementia type disorders are generally gradual, you still have scattered moments of awareness, so we’re not tuly talking about someone who is essentially dead in all but body (e.g. Terry Schaivo). They may no longer be the person you married, but they are still generally human beings, even confused and forgetful ones. I feel that real human beings (as in not potential human beings like fetuses) have value inherently. Perhaps divorce can be acceptable but only if there is someone to care for that person during the last sputterings of life.
Your argument also opens up all sorts of distasteful applications, such as if it’s acceptable to euthanize those suffering from Alzheimer’s, is it also acceptable to do the same to those with encephalitis lethargica? At what point of mental deterioration is someone no longer human enough to warrant care from others?
Perhaps instead of speaking about putting these people to death, we should talk about the importance of overhauling health care systems to actually support what our society needs. Maybe we could ensure major corporations and creative rich people could no longer escape paying taxes, and put into place a single payer health system that responsibly cares for everyone. It beats discussing putting old confused people to death because they’re a burden on their families.
Carlie wrote – “In fact, I don’t see any reason to divorce the person. ”
There may be financial considerations. In the US it may be the only way to get health care for them.
This question is more subtle than it seems, as pointed out by others above, but Pat Robertson has a proven track record of being an asshole. (Citations provided upon request.)
What would be the point of divorce in this situation? What do you mean by “stay by his/her side”?
The point of divorce would be for the healthy part to date, marry, or start a relationship with another person. Of course I was trying to look at the situation from a religious or conservative point of view. (I assume many religious folks believe it is wrong to start another relationship if they are still officially married to someone else.)
SC, I would argue that in a sense a person that has lost the majority of their higher functions and memory is in a sense dead. That is, the person who they were no longer exists. It’s been destroyed. A broken clock is right twice a day, and so I think this is one time where Robertson is not incorrect (even if he might be a hypocrite about it if this was a wife asking).
As a thought experiment, let’s suppose in the future we have the capability to completely regrow brain tissue that has been damaged. Of course, memories and functions that were present before will no longer exist in the regrown tissue. If someone suffered severe brain damage, losing the vast, vast majority of their abilities and memories, then had this procedure done, there’d be good reason to argue this is a different person. The vast majority of who they were is just GONE.
Now, I don’t think anyone thinks you should abandon such a person. However, this is a difference between abandonment and divorce. Neither one implies the other.
SC, have you never cared for someone in a situation like this? I have with my grandfather (who died over 10 years ago). My grandmother has thankfully not suffered in this manner, but she did break her hip and has had a number of other health conditions crop up in the last two years. Taking care of her and rehabilitating her is pretty much a full time job. Alzheimer’s is similar to this, with no hope of rehabilitation and immense psychological trauma for loved ones (when they no longer recognize you, accuse of ridiculous things, etc, etc). It is a great sacrifice and huge burden.
Personally, I think I’d stay in there, because I’m a stubborn, self-sacrificing bastard. That said, I can’t really say that’s the morally necessary thing to do. Visiting them regularly and ensuring the necessary support definitely is ethically required behavior though.
Which were:
Well, I can’t answer the last one, obviously, but purely speculating on the first one, I can imagine several ones.
For example in countries with public healthcare you might be able to ensure that the money you have goes to the college education of your kids and not to the nursing home.
If this happens early in life, you might want to marry again.
I mostly agree with you. Nevertheless, there’s some point at which that person is no more, but a walking breathing shell that once hosted a person.
Abandoned? You mean like a dog at the side of the highway?
That’s a strawman.
It’s no argument I (or as far as I am aware of anybody else here) made.
You seem to presuppose that care at home is automatically the best. NUmbers about abuse of patients by their domestic caretakers speak a different language.
You also don’t ask the question whether this care at home (even if undertaken with all the love and compassion and never any abuse) has a substantial benefit for the patient. If not, why would it be moral to demand from somebody else to do this? If no good comes from it, and only bad comes from it, why do it?
The sacrifice of current and future happyness. To sacrifice one’s job, friends, hobbies, to live in a situation in which the weekly grocery-shopping is something that needs careful planning.
Yes, we have talked about this and that’s why I adviced people to do this in #42. No, it’s not nice to talk about “when I’m brain-dead”, about something you hope never happens and if it happens only when you’re 87.
But I think it’s cruel and selfish not to do it and add that burden to your partner’s woes that will be great in that situation anyway.
[OT I’m going to bed, no more replies from me tonight]
I agree with those saying that there is no point in divorcing in cases such as this one. It seems that it would cause much more problems than just staying married and getting involved with someone else anyway.
I don’t have much sympathy for religious folks who would want a divorce from a terminally ill spouse just because dating would otherwise be cheating, and their faith forbids cheating. That’s a bullshit excuse. If they were really all that concerned about their faith, they wouldn’t be looking for the loopholes, they would stay married and care for their spouse, not even thinking about looking for someone else.
Lotharloo, I think many non-religious folks probably think it is generally not ok to start a relationship while still married. It’s not like marriage vows have no meaning to the non-religious.
The Sailor, we should remember that Pat Robertson probably wants people to brush their teeth too. Just because the guy is a jerk doesn’t mean that everything he ever says is wrong.
Carlie, in the U.S. they’d have health care after a divorce. Our system does cover that in situations like Alzheimer’s, as I understand it (I’m 99% sure). In fact, this would ensure that you don’t have to potentially bankrupt the whole family to keep them in a nursing home. Hmm, honestly I am not sure on the Medicare parameters for married couples here. I know that for my grandmother, she’d have to liquidate all of her assets if she wanted to be in a nursing home (since her income isn’t enough to pay for one of any worth), and this would allow her to opt into some version of Medicare that would cover all costs.
Beatrice, what about divorcing because you feel it is disrespectful to the vow you made to your spouse, your spouse his/herself and to anyone you might date?
Or to turn it the other way around, what’s the reason to stay married if you plan on getting emotionally and physically involved with another person?
First, the big problem is
1. No univeral healthcare
2. No home health care, as Robert Wood Johnson foundation has supported lots of research on home based community living being more cost effective and safer than an institution.
3. The increditable biasis to put people in nursing homes or monestaries that farm people.
4. Our funding policy such as Medicare which makes it a retired couple owning their home living on social security to wealthy for home care but just alright to make money for a nursing home. Almost all religions, including Unitarians support institutional segregation and billing for it.
Robertson again showed himself to be a spiritual mastabater again and again.
Atheisium, more comforting than religion which takes away your freedom for your own good.
You know, on further reading, I was not precisely clear on what I said about divorce specifically. Here is what I meant.
I believe that when a marriage becomes a cruelty to either partner, it ceases to be a marriage. I am not a person who thinks that marriage has to last forever because it’s sacred or something.
So divorce is most certainly an option. I was more particularly concerned about the idea of divorcing someone to remove any responsibility to ensure that human being is cared for properly. And since we’re a bit fucked up here in the states that only a spouse or the closest relative can make medical decisions, divorcing someone who needs decisions made about their care by someone else becomes a thornier question.
Slignot, you can get a Medical Power of Attorney before any divorce, I would think. That should allow you to continue to care for the person fully afterwards. If you go that route.
Well, obviously that’s what they believe. That’s the problem. Divorce is not necessary for a new relationship. It, as Robertson presents it, is a sign of abandonment.
But, again, Robertson’s argument was that the spouse was already “dead,” so it doesn’t matter.
Sigh.
As opposed to what? Once again, Robertson’s point was not “Divorce the person but continue to act fully committed to them” but “Divorce the person because she’s already dead to you.”
Pat Robertson is not in such a country.
Yes, well, there’s that pesky commitment thing.
What about Robertson?
You haven’t read my comments.
Again. Try to understand the point of view PZ and I are disputing. Part of the problem might be that some people responding aren’t in the US and don’t understand tghe meaning of Robertson’s statements in this cultural or institutional context. (By the way, weekly grocery shopping regularly requires careful planning.)
Conservatives also allow divorce if the original wife isn’t pretty anymore — you know, like McCain’s first wife, who waited for him while he was a PoW in Vietnam.
The truly despicable part of this: Mrs. McCain #1, a model and TV presenter, was also in a car accident while her scumbag husband was a POW that left her body mangled, and she had to use crutches to get around. And the ultimate irony? Her husband didn’t come back in the greatest of shape himself.
She should have dumped the fucker the second it was known for a fact that he was a traitor. Which was about two months after he was captured. Fucking scumbag traitor.
Drachasor,
I think the question of divorce very much depends on the situation. I’m thinking from the point where I might want to have a relationship with another person, but still be able to care for the ill spouse and make decisions about their well-being. Especially if they don’t have any other family left to make important decisions or if I knew they would want me to take care of them. So, I think I’m taking a position of someone who wants to move on, but still has an emotional attachment to their ill spouse and also wants be practical. I doubt making decisions like that is easy, but I would like to believe that I could make a decision that would include what is best for both me and my spouse (if I ever have one and end up in such a position). Also, I would be honest with anyone else I dated and then it would be up to them to decide if they can accept the situation or not.
Disclaimer : That’s just my speculation about what I would do. I don’t think it’s an easy decision or a situation with a ready made response that fits everyone.
Drachasor, I’m skeptical that it would be enough protection. A number of states (mine included) that passed anti-gay bans on equal rights to marriage had the side effect of doing more. A lot of the arguments I heard made prior to the election by the “No on 3” folks didn’t have anything to do with same-sex marriages, but pointed out that it had far reaching effects for others (for example invalidating current common-law marriages). The anti-gay hysteria that led to bans had some side effects that make me worry about the likelihood of a medical power of attorney would in fact be treated as the superior authority.
Isn’t this marriage (with a somewhat invested notion of “care for”)? Is this caring even debatable in marriage? I think some of us might be arguing past one another because people aren’t necessarily appreciating what Robertson is suggesting.
No wonder right wing Christians and libertarians go together so well. They’re all just assholes inventing fancy philosophical justifications for selfishness.
@Vicki #39:
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that I was dealing with that situation, just that I’ve recently become aware of FTD and the difficulties it can bring.
Difficulties you well know, I’m sure. Thanks for sharing that story.
Well, all I know is that we haven’t had any problems with a medical power of attorney for my grandmother, Slignot. Do you know of any instances where this wasn’t respected? There’s a huge difference between such a document and anything related to marriage.
I mean, a Power of Attorney can be made to give power to one’s children or even just a friend.
SC, to be fair to Robertson he didn’t talk about how one should treat one’s former wife in the above clip. I’d be very hesitant to conclude that he’d say you should just act like she doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe he would, but that’s a pretty awful remark to foist upon someone when they haven’t said that. There’s a big difference between saying “the person who was your wife is essentially dead so a divorce is ok” and “you should drop and ignore what remains of her.”
I am not saying Robertson hasn’t said many horrible and awful things. However, I think people are potentially reading more into it than currently exists.
More to the point, I AM saying the divorce is acceptable here. And despite our lack of universal health care, someone that debilitated WILL have their medical expenses covered by the State.
Beatrice, one thing you can do is get a medical power of attorney and a divorce. You can still care for your spouse and move on. No need to maintain a marriage.
I agree it is a personal decision, but there’s no pressing need to stay married as I understand things.
I’m with comment 59.
Oh. Thanks.
What did he do? Talk under torture?
SC (Salty Current), OM
Well, Robertson suggests that the spouse is as good as dead, so better get a divorce and find some greener pastures. I might not appreciate the full evilness of his stance because of not being from US (as you noted the problem in 57).
I find his opinion hypocritical, especially coming from a person who is against assisted suicide. On one hand, he says that a person in an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s is “kind of” dead. On the other hand, he would say that that same person shouldn’t be allowed to get euthanasia (if, for example, they stated in a living will that they would want it when their illness passes a certain point). That’s one side of it.
The other is, as I think you have been saying, that he claims to be against divorce but is perfectly willing to leave an ill person because he considers them dead anyway. Coming from a supposedly loving and compassionate Christian, it’s terrible. His stance is that divorce is abandonment and a sin, but a person suffering from Alzheimer’s “doesn’t count”, so it’s all acceptable. Sounds very cruel.
So, I think I got his opinion right. I wasn’t really arguing about it, just adding to the general conversation about divorcing vs. not divorcing.
not in the US it isn’t. Or what do you imagine will happen to the now supportless patient?
incorrect, and she stated that already. you forget that in the US, “care at home” is sometimes the only option, and sometimes you need to stay married in order for the person to get hospice/nursing home care instead of being kicked out and made homeless.
again, what we’re discussing is the need for staying married so the person isn’t made homeless by lack of funding due to a divorce. You’re imagining that people are insisting on home care.
yep; so much better to just divorce them and let them rot. wtf?
because the ill person depends on the non-ill person’s healthcare. duh?
There are many cases in the US where power of attorney was over ridden by the hospital or the courts. Even Congress gets involved.
I’m done with this thread, I just can’t take the memories it evokes.
Doktor, divorce thyself!
We live in times so Chinese-interesting that we have living Platonic ideals of just about every ugliness human beings manifest – sort of a demonology, save that these are walking, breathing, thin…, talking masses of living human flesh.
The only answer to evil, stupid people like this is to remember, as was said of Mr. Burns, “he’s evil but he’ll die soon.”
And not be remembered, save as an unfunny joke from the period the Republic was smothered for hatred and greed of people like this.
Would that hell existed.
I might be cynical, but I’m assuming someone is going to fuck me up and tell me that I can’t be involved with the health care of someone who is not my close relation or spouse (no matter the power of attorney), and besides I just don’t see that one paper saying that I’m divorced so much more important than making sure I am able to help my spouse and maybe have some other relationships. Symbolic gestures are great, but I’m more of a practical person.
Again, no pressure on anyone else. I just think that one would have to think about all the ramifications of any decision they make.
I thought it was implied that he meant basically that, as PZ and the people at RWW also gathered (he jumped right to it). The minimum of physical care, perhaps, provided by others, and that’s it.
As several of us have pointed out, there’s no reason for a divorce here. The advice of divorce from Robertson as I heard it amounts to the latter, as did the comment by littlejohn to which I was responding. Abandonment is strongly implied.
OK – off to dinner.
Me:
Ok, that sounds silly. Obviously not all ramifications of any decision… That wouldn’t be possible. Just the most obvious or important consequences. Or in this case, those that could be most harmful.
If a body with no cognitive faculties and no memory is no longer a person, then neither is an unborn fetus. Abortion should be fine, then.
Took me some time to put this into words… why do you mention the vow? You don’t mean “disrespectful to […] your spouse” by “disrespectful to the vow”, or you wouldn’t have mentioned it separately; so, how is one disrespectful to a vow? Is it possible to be disrespectful to something other than a person? It sounds like religious language to me. :-/
Robertson is essentially admitting that a person’s individuality resides in the brain rather than some ethereal “soul”. By saying that “she is gone” once her brain is gone, he completely dismisses the concept of a soul. Well done Paddy!
I have, fwiw. It pretty much drained one person and left the rest of us bitter and afraid of inheriting it.
Yes, it’s probably a good idea to try to get them into a home where professionals can deal with them. Yes, they aren’t in a condition to fuck you anymore. Yes, they take a long time to die.
Yes, it’s hard on everybody. Yes, sometimes you have to divorce them in order to get them into an assisted living center due to the fucked-up nature of insurance and property law.
But it’s never seemed hard to remember that they are being so difficult because they are slowly losing everything and experiencing utter terror all of the time due to a truly horrifying disease.
By the way, uncared for mentally ill account for most of the homeless in my state. Every once in a while you see a corpse under a bridge or some such.
Life’s shitty, ya’ know?
Me, I don’t see the point of getting married if you aren’t trying to offset that kind of bad fortune. Though, frankly, I don’t see the point of getting married except for property inheritance, taxes, or insurance.
As far as seeing other people? Why not?
@slignot
Surely, that would be the ideal. But I’m not sold completely on the idea that it be absolutely necessary. Remember that Alzheimer’s is a one way trip. Our loved ones are not going to get better. They are dying a very long, very torturous death. If doctors and next of kin or holder of a medical POA agree on the prognosis, euthanasia seems to me to be the most compassionate option. If a person no longer has the wherewithal to make rational, competent medical decisions, how is that any different from pulling the plug or signing a DNR for a family member injured all of a sudden in a serious accident?
I’m sure there are many cases of people newly diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s who are already incapable of making a decision they would have made in advance of symptoms.*
I don’t think we should sacralise human life. Yes, we should try to uphold the rights and dignity of real human beings, but sometimes that might mean putting a quick and merciful end to a very bad, degenerating situation. We do this with our pets, right? We don’t have their consent to euthanise. And we don’t wait months while they waste away or while they suffer just because they might have a few scattered moments of feeling a little better than usual remaining to them.
Apart from a spurious slippery slope argument, give a good reason why we should treat our dogs and cats better than our spouses or parents.
So we spend resources and man hours and exhaust and traumatise both family members & the terminally ill person for the sake of a few last sputterings. For why?
I’m not familiar enough with that disease to answer your question. Every person’s condition is unique. I believe that next of kin/POA along with advice from a person’s physician(s) should, *in the absence of clear directives by the person themselves*, be the one to decide. Just as in emergency medical decisions where the person is incapable of deciding themselves. In effect, what I’m advocating is the option of euthanasia be added to the options of DNR or terminating life support in cases where a person is rendered permanently mentally (i.e. neurologically) incapacitated.
I live in a country with universal healthcare (at least so far). But that doesn’t necessarily cover long term care in a nursing home. I think that we need to provide options to people.
Please don’t make it sound like I’m talking about enforced euthanasia or state death panels.
—
*I have in mind an aunt who has early onset dementia who is already almost impossible to reason with, almost like an unruly toddler. I don’t think she’s in a position in which she’s competent even now to make fully considered decisions about her health care.
I have a childhood friend whose husband was severely brain damaged in a motorcycle accident when she was 27 and he was 28. He’s in a wheelchair, incontinent, no ability to form new memories, feed himself, or do any other activities of daily living. She took care of him for 15 years, all by herself, no help from the church across the street (which ran a school where her husband had taught!), no help even from his family, who live in the area. When she began seeing a wonderful local man, who helped her care for her husband, the amazing Christians around here took it upon themselves to contact his boss to ask him to intervene and prevent the adultery. Then they contacted higher-ups at the employer and try to get him fired for being an adulterer. That’s what Christian charity really is – trying to keep sexy-time from happening even when the sexy-time participants are acting as full-time caregivers for a severely brain-damaged man. Oh, and did I mention that my friend had no health insurance because her husband’s SSI made her “too wealthy” for medicaid?
Finally she got a divorce, got her ex admitted to a very good nursing home (she stuck out quite a waiting list for one she selected), and got married to her wonderful new husband. She still visits her ex twice a week.
THOSE are family values, regardless of what the Local Christian Virtue Patrol™ thinks.
Medical Power of Attorney is frequently not as acknowledged as one would wish.
My father-in-law gave me his medical POA while he was dying of liver cancer – very specifically to me, rather than to either of his sons, because I had been his primary caretaker for nearly six months, and I had some significant medical background and knowledge that they lacked. Nonetheless, my having that POA was largely ignored by both the hospital and the nursing home in favor of seeking the opinions of his sons.
In our particular instance it wasn’t a problem, because my husband and his brother simply backed my decisions, or deferred to me if asked first, but if I had had a significant disagreement with them, I would likely have had to go to court to get the nursing home to actually follow my decisions instead of theirs.
If it were my spouse, I don’t know that I would trust a medical POA to cover the need. Much safer to stay married.
You don’t abandon a spouse because they’re ill. What form “not abandoning” takes though, can vary wildly depending on the exact circumstances and people. Sometimes it may involve a divorce, other times not, sometimes home care, sometimes institutional care. The principle is what matters, and the people, not the “sanctity” of marriage vows, or disrespecting an abstract.
Remind me again why anyone believes Pat Robertson when he talks about family values.
Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease, and while I don’t fault the person for seeing another woman, I think the right thing to do is take care of the ill spouse as well. (It would be a personal decision, based on each person’s situation, as to whether the person should live with the spouse, with a different person, be in a nursing home, etc. but either way, I think abandoning them isn’t the right thing to do.) My grandmother had Alzheimer’s. Her husband was no longer alive, so other family members took care of her.
Also, was it just me or did anyone else suspect that Robertson’s willingness to tell him to end the marriage may have something to do with the fact that the person who wrote in said that his friend was bitter at God?
@Mattir (#79): Sorry to hear that your friend had to go through all that, and yes, those do sound like real family values, instead of the fake kind put forth by people like Robertson.
I thought I’d respond to some people. Before that though, I have to say, reluctantly, that Robertson seems to be in the right here, at least as far as what he says in the clip. All things being equal, the guy should get a divorce.
Now, it is quite possible Robertson would be in the wrong if the situation was such that divorcing would compromise the medical care of the spouse. We don’t know what he’d say to that though. We do not he often says really horrible things, but that doesn’t mean everything he says is horrible.
David Marjanović, by disrespectful to one’s vow, I was speaking of going back on your word. I don’t think that’s religious, though being a utilitarian it isn’t how I think about things. I was merely positing it as how someone might think.
Jadehawk, in the U.S. or any other first world country, divorce will NOT result in someone with Alzheimer’s being made homeless. Medicare and Medicaid have provisions for this sort of illness unless I’ve missed something. Really, really, really crippling illnesses are handled even in the U.S. It’s the “less” severe stuff that isn’t covered (including a lot of fatal illnesses, ironically).
Beatrice, hmm, it is true as people have said that there are times when a power of attorney perhaps isn’t respected as it should be. Though, Congress I don’t think has ever gotten involved there (I don’t believe a POA existed for the Shiavo case, it was more of the husband vs. parents).
Certainly in a situation where there might be a fight about care, then a divorce isn’t a great idea unless you can hand off care to someone you can really trust (and whether or not this should be done is debatable). Without that though, I think a divorce is the proper step to take if you are going to get involved with someone else.
I agree one should (reluctantly) disrespect something now only symbolic like a marriage or divorce in this case if not doing so results in significant harm.
That said…
Tapetum, of course that’s no guarantee of anything much more than a POA, honestly.
“If you respect that vow ’til death do us part’, this is a kind of death”
I guess that vow is another in a long line of metaphors not intended for literal interpretation?
Holms, it ain’t supposed to be a metaphor.
(If change is death, then the ‘me’ who married my wife lo these many years ago is dead no less than my childhood self (as is ‘she’, for that matter).
Accordingly, we have both ‘died’ many, many times. Yet here we are.)
—
That said, I get your snark. :)
To be fair, John Morales, there’s a huge difference between growing up, growing in general, and some diminished capacity later in life vs. the essential erasure of the vast majority of who someone is by a degenerative disease of the brain.
Drachasor, sure. There is a huge difference.
(My point was ‘death’ has a specific, non-metaphorical meaning. And change, whether for the better or for the worse, ain’t it)
And I’m not talking about Robertson. And neither were you when you jumped at littlejohn in #12.
Well, yes, there’s that pesky judging thing. You don’t know anything about the people actually involved (because we’re talking about a hypothetical case), about their wishes, their relationship, their agreements, yes you judge them by some moral standard you have set up. How very christian of you.
Tell me, is Mattir’s friend a bad person because she decided to still have a life?
So, please, stay out of my marriage.
BTW, I never swore anything and especially not “till death do us part”
As much as a hypocritical scumbag he is, not even he explicitly made that suggestion. He talked about divorce, not kicking her out.
Oh yeah. We are an international community, only not when it would ruin your argument.
So, what is your point actually?
Are you talking about the religious implications, where Robertson showed to be an utter hypocrite?
Are you talking about love and commitment, which is international and not really related to the institution of marriage?
Or are you talking about care and healthcare, which is a completely different issue, where nobody, not even Robertson has suggested that she should be left alone on the street.
Oh, what about the number of USAsians who have so far contradicted your claim that a divorce would leave such a person without care and who have explained that a divorce might actually be the only way to get that person into care?
Yes, but it usually doesn’t require to find somebody who will look after your husband for 2 hours, somebody with very good nerves and a lot of dedication.
It usually doesn’t carry the risk that, because you couldn’t find that person but really had to leave the house, you come back and find it empty, a window open, and some time later a call from the police, that they’ve found your husband. He’s in the morgue because he went to take a walk on the Autobahn and was killed by a car.
Jadehawk
It still is.
Many people more competent in US matters than me have already mentioned and explained. Mattir has given you an example where such a case was resolved without abondoning anybody.
Yikes, this is a tough one. I believe that once I get closer to old age I’ll try to make a will stating that if I were to lose my mind to Alzheimer’s, I’d wish to be taken to Dignitas for assisted suicide. However, if it were my husband who got the disease and he’d made no such statement, I’d stay with him.
Isn’t this the opposite of what they said to do in the Terri Shiavo case?
Internal consistency, not their strong suit…
…About McCain, I think his first marriage is not a good example. Many vets of that war came back greatly changed, and could not continue their relationships or marriages upon returning. My mother had great feelings for her first husband, enough to tell me about him repeatedly as a child (he wasn’t my father) – but when he got back, they just didn’t have anything in common anymore, and parted amicably, but with great sadness.
I don’t think that McCain’s first wife was injured while he was away had as much to do with his divorce as being a POW and being estranged for so long did. He’s no Gingrich, after all.
Pat: “That is a terribly hard thing.”
Man: “Oh yes, that’s what I have here, it’s so HARD!”
(Fill in the rest with your imaginations.)
Algernon
It is indeed, but I don’t think how a discussion about marriage and divorce is going to even tackle that problem.
First of all, not everybody was married before they became homeless. Maybe their medical condition was the thing that prevented them from having a deep lasting relationship.
Secondly, what does this mean? Do you now have to prove that your spouse is only suffering from having become an asshole and not from a mental disease whose early manifestations make them a jerk?
Thirdly, and even if the spouse is suffering from a disease that horribly alters their personality and behaviour, why would it be any kind of compassionate to doom the healthy partner to stay with this other person for the rest of their lives?
Again, I’m not arguing for dumping them at the side of the highway 5 states away.
Where is the respect and compassion for the healthy partner?
My mum is an alcoholic. She is by clinical definition sick. Do you think my dad should be morally obliged to stay married to her and care for her even though she is abusive, manipulative and making everybody’s life hell? Even if she became violent?
Not that he’s planning to do that, but that’s mostly because he is in denial, too.
The way to change that is to fight for propper healthcare and especially mental health care, for decent housing and affordable flats, not by “dumping” the responsibility solely on other individuals instead of society.
I can’t agree enough with what you said here. The way healthcare works in the US, this is the most utilitarian, and the most rational, solution.
I see no point in maintaining some moral hypocrisy of divorce instead of doing what is the best for the happiness of all involved.
the institution of marriage is meaningless. Love endures, it’s all that matters.
So apparently Mr. Robertson believes that a ‘person’ is defined by what’s in their brain and not by a transcendental soul after all.
“Specifically, what does Alzheimer’s do to a person’s soul?”
I thought about that very question while my father-in-law was wasting away from Alzheimer’s, and it was answering that that cemented my belief that there is no soul, life-force, or anything else.
Hahaha, the host asks him “but isn’t that part of the vow; from death do us part?”
He responds “well yes, if you respect that vow”
………………………….
We get to choose what vows we respect after marriage?
Whatta church!
the US is not a first world country.
yes, you have; it’s sometimes ridiculously difficult to become eligible for either of those. As others have said, sometimes a divorce is better; oftentimes it is not. As Algernon said, most of the homeless are mentally ill.
not really. even if you’re lucky enough to actually become eligible for either Medicaid or Medicare, it’s still possible and in some states even likely that instead of being sent to a place where people will actually take care of you, you’ll end up in something more like an “old people disposal site”
bullshit. spousal rights are much more rarely contested and ignored than POA’s
no one is commenting on your marriage.
the argument is about something that’s happening in the US, so that’s just a stupid red herring.
but they carry different burdens depending on where you are, because in the US, the family is still considered primarily responsible for the caretaking of ill people. In Germany and other civilized countries, love and commitment doesn’t require anyone to take on the burden of caretaker, because there are facilities that will do so just as well or even better. In many cases, that is not so in the USA. d’uh?
*sigh*
no. Mattir provided an example of what happens when you have good public facilities nearby and luck out on waiting-lists, and a divorce will not put you in any of America’s famous “doughnut holes”. that happens, but is not typical.
Of course I was. His remarks about this case were what the post was about. littlejohn’s were in the same vein (and included a pretty telling reference to the bedroom). It’s an unfair form of argumentation to refuse to appreciate what people’s posts are about and read them as general statements.
Well, if those details are relevant then they should be included in the hypothetical. But there’s really no point in these vague hypotheticals here, and they’re completely inappropriate, because I asked “What would be the point of divorce in this situation?” I did not ask what the point would be in various vague situations in very different contexts.
No idea what you’re talking about. I remarked on Robertson’s and littlejohn’s comments. Nothing about anyone else’s marriage.
I really don’t care. It can be assumed that a person writing to Robertson took traditional vows with traditional intent.
He said she’s basically dead already, and implied that the person had the most minimal responsibility for her care.
Huh? My argument was about this situation, and I assumed littlejohn’s was about a parallel situation. If littlejohn’s father’s case was different in significant ways, it was his responsibility to make that clear.
I’m talking about his advice showing a lack of compassion, commitment, and love.
The point is that there would be no reason for this guy to get a divorce and that the woman is not dead, and that divorcing someone in the US in this situation very often leaves them without good, adequate care and advocacy. That was the implication of Robertson’s statements as I read them. When I asked what the reason for divorcing the person in this circumstance was other than to distance yourself from him or her (physically and emotionally) and your responsibility to care for them, someone brought up countries with socialized medicine, which is irrelevant in this case. And really, in any system, a person in care needs at least one advocate to ensure that the care stays good. But in the US, the chances of a person being cared for properly after their spouse divorces them are quite small.
It isn’t a completely different issue, as we’ve tried to explain.
It wouldn’t necessarily leave the person without care (though this appears to have been an afterthought to Robertson). If we were talking about the latter, of course people wouldn’t have found his remarks a problem. There’s zero evidence of that. Again, his suggestion that the person is basically dead already does not suggest that he’s endorsing a continued commitment to her care. You’re reading all sorts of things into his remarks.
Of course. None of this has to do with anything. And as I and others pointed out, in my next post after I responded to littlejohn, I made absolutely clear that I was not saying anything about the spouse or partner caring for the person alone, full time, or in the home, so this is all completely irrelevant, and frustratingly so.
There can be examples that are completely different, and they would have little or nothing to do with Robertson’s remarks. There can be no assumption in the US that divorce would leave the sick spouse with a high level of care.
But people were responding to Robertson’s and littlejohn’s remarks. For the dozenth time, Robertson’s remarks suggested divorce very much in the sense of making some provisions for care and then divorcing oneself emotionally and carewise from a sick person the guy supposedly loves and to whom he made a commitment. It’s also telling that he made thesecomments rather than responding to the gist of the man’s issue, which was that he was “angry with God.” The healthy partner could just as easily have been the wife.
Oh, FFS. I responded to Robertson’s comments about a specific situation – and I’m not the only one who heard them that way – and to littlejohn’s response. I didn’t make a blanket argument about every situation of every problem in every context on earth. How annoying.
So in the meantime, while the US lacks a humane system of healthcare and housing that doesn’t put the burden on family, the people who become sick or homeless are just alone and SOL and that’s perfectly ethical. I don’t think so.
***
On some forums, people are asking whether he would’ve advised Nancy Reagan to just divorce Ronald. Somehow I doubt it.
I thought I remembered something like this.
The question I have is why is PZ surprised that a prominent Christian is a hypocrite. I thought this was a well established fact.
@Ibis3
Here is where you and I fundamentally differ, I think. For euthanasia to be acceptable, it absolutely hinges on informed consent, and anything less than that is totally unacceptable. You may only make decisions that lead to the death of such a person if you know that was their wish and intent, because to do otherwise disrespects their rights of self-determination, regardless of how deteriorated their mental capacities have become.
Allowing anything else opens up too many potential opportunities for abuse of the option. Just as the principle* of “reasonable doubt” in the U.S. criminal system is intended to allow some guilty people to walk free to reduce the odds of convicting someone innocent, I would prefer that we as a society err on the side of extending a mentally degraded person’s life at great expense and inconvenience rather than risk euthanizing someone with some self-awareness (even limited) against their prior wishes.
Because all human beings who do not possess the mental faculties to make medical decisions are still fucking human beings with awareness! There are mentally retarded people unable to do so. Children are unable to do so. And yes, confused people with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia are also unable to do so. My crazy institutionalized grandmother was unable to do so. That does not mean they lack some level of awareness, or that their diminished mental capacity makes them equivalent to someone who is actually braindead or permanently comatose. Is it truly so hard to see the distinction?
That your aunt is currently like an unruly toddler, means that she is still aware. How do you determine what level of mental degradation makes them no longer human beings?
And agree we should have options as well (although I disagree on specifics). My father has long expressed his wish that should his mental capacity be diminished, he does not want to live that way. And as a family, we should have the option of respecting his wishes without having to resort to sending him off into a blizzard. But had he expressed a wish otherwise, or we were in doubt as to his desire, I don’t think I should simply have the option of ending his life against his will.
Medical advancements mean that these questions are becoming more and more common, and end of life care needs to be expanded. I’d prefer more progress here over pushing for greater euthanasia options at the moment.
Such was not my intention. I mean that families should not have the option of euthanizing family members who have become a drain on them simply for that reason. And I fear that if such an option became available without the requirement for consent, we open ourselves up to that kind of abuse. It could be something as simple as another kind of checkbox as we have with driver’s licenses on whether we’d like to be organ donors. Add another option: if your mental capacity is severely damaged and you are unable to care for yourself, do you wish to live on? y/n
*Yes, the current implementation of U.S. judicial system is totally fucking broken and discriminatory, but I still don’t disagree with the rationale behind burden of proof.
@slignot
But this is not the situation we have right now. If you are in an accident and are unable to make medical decisions for yourself, the doctors don’t sit back and do nothing, waiting for you to give them informed consent. They will perform operations, give treatments that could result in death, even abstain from resuscitation or withdraw life support based on the decision of your next of kin.
If euthanasia is an option for mentally competent patients, why should it be denied to patients who are suffering in, arguably, a worse way?
And what of the person’s suffering? To me this sounds like letting someone be tortured because their tongue’s been cut out and can’t tell you to make the torturer stop.
You still haven’t explained what is gained by extending a person’s life in such a state.
I’m not sure I was clear. I’m not saying that as soon as a person is mentally incapacitated they should be euthanised. All of these people you mention have *other people* making medical decisions for them (either in whole or as assistants *depending on the person’s capacity*).
All I’m saying is that euthanasia should be one of the options open to those people, just as every other medical option is. If I have an eight month old baby who is suffering from a terminal illness, as a parent I should be able to choose euthanasia for her, just as I’d be able to choose for her to have any other (medically prescribed) treatment or a DNR order. Just as she’d be able to choose euthanasia for herself if she were 18 years old instead of 8 months old. I shouldn’t have to wait and watch her die a slow agonising death over the course of a year or more because she can’t legally (or physically) make medical decisions for herself.
Who said anything about “degradation making them no longer human beings”?
I don’t believe this is a rational concern.*
1. Most people are good and want to do what’s right. The person who has medical POA or is next-of-kin is the person most likely to know what the ill person themselves would want. (That’s why we have these positions in the first place.)
2. Physicians will have ethical guidelines to follow. They aren’t going to put grandma down because she broke her hip and can’t ask for euthanasia because she’s currently unconscious from the fall.
*I’m assuming for the sake of the discussion that we agree on what a frivolous or self-serving reason would be, though I’m doubtful.
I suspect that there are some (relatively few) people who would choose euthanasia for relatives who had become a burden on them; I base this on the fact that people are occasionally killed for the money the killer hopes to inherit. What I doesn’t tell me is how much difference, if any, a policy allowing euthanasia in these circumstances would make to actual death rates.
Most people may be good and want to do what’s right, but they’re still vulnerable to their own fears and biases and responsibilities, and to pressure from others, even well-meaning others. They’ll say all kinds of things about what a family member would want or would never do and be completely wrong, even when they’ve been directly told differently for years (being queer or atheist, for instance.) Some of us even have to take measures to protect ourselves FROM our next-of-kin. Abusive and neglectful situations are very common… I support euthanasia as an option, and I’d want it to be an option for me, but not as a right that devolves automatically to my family. That power should only go to someone that the person in question decides xe can trust, not someone who’s just assumed to deserve that trust. Physicians’ ethical safeguards won’t help here, because they’ll only address the medical situation and won’t be inclined to doubt a family member’s word without obvious red flags.
(Sorry for the incoherence; mental stability, competence, etc.)
Burdensomeness is as valid a consideration as any other. If someone is a financial, emotional, and temporal burden to their families, those are good reasons to consider euthanasia.
But once you put a physician into the equation, you’re not going to have many cases where, say, people who are likely to recover, or people who have a fairly decent level of health or quality of life are being put to death by a greedy spouse or child.
I agree that if someone has that kind of mercenary intent,* they’re not likely going to go through a doctor.
—
* Though this kind of calculated murder does occur, I think they are relatively rare. We hear about them quite a lot on crime shows and in mystery novels, but most domestic murders are about control or lack thereof (someone wanting to leave a relationship, fights over child custody, partners cheating, children bridling under parental authority, abused family members protecting themselves or others, abusive partner gets so out of control that abuse becomes deadly), and drugs or alcohol are often involved.
I agree 100%. If your official next of kin is a douchebag, an asshole, or you just can’t trust them because either their beliefs don’t mesh with yours or you think they’ll give in to outside pressure, then you have the right to appoint someone else to make medical decisions for you when you’re not able. But that’s your responsibility whether or not we have euthanasia. Because, as I pointed out, that person (whether next of kin or person you’ve appointed) has similar powers right now.
Wtf? Maybe you should consider rephrasing that.
Quite a lot of conditions could make one fit into those parameters. Some of them not even being illnesses.
SC
You mean like when he mentioned that his father was suffering from cancer at the time?
How can you fucking now? All the information you have is what a friend of that person chose to write to Pat Robertson. You know nothing about that person, their individual circumstances, what his plans for his wife are, how she is cared for now, how she will be cared for after a divorce, how their financial situation is, yet you feel qualified to judge that there is no reason for a divorce and therefore if he did he would be an asshole.
Congratulations.
So are you. And what’s more, you’re not condeming Robertson, but you’re condeming the man in question without knowing shit about him.
Nope, but expecting families to ruin themselves and their own health apparently is.
Jadehawk:
And since you have no actual information about the case that was talked about, you can’t make a judgement about it.
@Ibis3
Euthanasia is not the option you describe in the medical intervention above. You don’t see a difference between allowing/refusing medical intervention during an immediate medical crisis that can result in death and actively ending the life of another?
It’s as large a difference as passively choosing not to save a drowning person and pushing an unconscious person snoozing near the pool underwater. Death is the result of both, but death was not imminent for the sleeping person.
What is gained is reasonable confidence that you have not ended the life of someone who, had they the ability to choose, may have chosen to live on in such a state.
You argued that earlier that we already allow for compassionate euthanization of suffering and dying pets, and asked how we could be so cruel as to deny that to others. The fact is that these two things are not equivalent. We do sometimes offer this option to others in the form of Death With Dignity type laws, but we offer these options to the people themselves because they have the autonomy and cognitive ability to make those kinds of distinctions.
Human beings are indeed animals like other animals, but we legally and ethically treat them differently based on our understanding of self-awareness and traditional ideas of human supremacy, however accurate those really are.
Now I think we’re back to a fundamental disagreement. I do not believe that anyone should have the right to choose euthanasia for a suffering child under any circumstances. There are no happy endings in the situations you describe and I feel nothing but compassion for the horror that must be, but it still does not justify the idea of euthanasia for children. For me it always comes back to never making the decision to end a human life if there is doubt that that human being would have chosen to live. It must be a personal choice.
I don’t think parents should have that option any more than parents should be able to refuse life-saving medical care based on conscience objections. Societally we don’t allow this either; parents who choose to allow their children to die are prosecuted.
I am specifically trying to draw what I see as the distinction between the mentally degraded and someone who is braindead and permanently vegetative, when they are collections of organs and biological systems. It was specifically meant to address the idea you were getting at when you described such confused and emotionally disturbed people as the dead:
Confused, frightened and self destructive people are damaged human beings certainly, but they are still human beings. And I place great value on human life.
@Pteryxx beat me to it to explain why we can’t rely on the general ethicalness or good-intentions of those to whom medical responsibilities fall by default to respect the wishes of the individual.
You can read headline after headline of medical horror stories of decisions of parents, children and spouses. There is no way to know whether you’re dealing with an ordinary family who will honor and respect their loved ones or if you have a Newt Gingrich.
I have known a handful of human beings that have shown they are capable of behaving monstrously when it suited them. My dad’s father was one of these. But the hardest less came about ten years ago. After seeing my cousin watch his lover die, with the man’s entire family cursing him all the while, rejoicing in his death as just punishment for being who he was and loving my cousin for over 25 years, it isn’t good enough. It is not safe to simply hope that the cases of good will outweigh the bad.
Simple fact: In the US, when you divorce, this negates survivor and medical benefits emanating from one spouse to the other. Nearly all health care in the US is through family plans such as this.
In the US, when you try to qualify for medicare or medicaid, the incomes and wealth of your nearest relatives or people who live in your house (even renters!) can be counted against you. So a self-sufficient relative that visits you every day? That would be held against you. (Assumption is they could help) A roomer living in your dormer? That’s held against you. (Assumption is you could pool resources for necessities) A parent or child who has a significant income? Held against you. (Said child or parent is supposed to be responsible for you.)
In the US, medicaid only provides for the least amount of care humanely possible. Republicans are always trying to cut who and what it will provide for.
I don’t know why this is up for debate. You divorce someone, they are no longer on your healthcare. They are no longer assumed to get your inheritance. They do not get survivor benefits. Even if you were to continue paying their healthcare, that would be held against them for getting public assistance.
So yes, divorce is abandonment under current US conditions. Tread lightly.
And you know what? I totally think someone shouldn’t kill themselves caring for even a loved spouse or parent – you can’t do it alone, and you can’t isolate yourself from the world. It’s bad for both caregiver and patient.
Jadehawk,
Whatever problems you have with the US, it IS a first world country.
Essentially, if you have a disease that makes it impossible for you to work, then you can get Medicaid and/or Medicare. Yes, that is really hard to get in general, but not if you have something like Alzheimer’s and it has damaged your brain to the point where a spouse would consider a divorce.
The reason why most mentally ill don’t get coverage is because most of them could theoretically work (if they got the proper treatment). Alzheimer’s isn’t like that.
http://www.alz.org/join_the_cause_medicaid.asp
Of course, you also have to have a LOW INCOME. That means being married to someone can stop you have from getting benefits. (In some cases, if the person with Alzheimer’s itself has worked a lot, it seems to be possible to get Medicare though).
There are a number of ways to handle this. Finding a place and setting them up in it first, would be one of them.
As for a Medical POA, I think people are overstating its problems. Generally it does work, but we naturally hear about problems more than all the times there aren’t any. That causes us to view the problems as more common than they are.
I’ll say this again, in a case where someone’s care would be horribly compromised by a divorce, then one shouldn’t divorce. However, it is far, far more likely in the case of Alzheimer’s that staying married will produce a huge financial burden, and a divorce won’t compromise care. Assuming you know what you are doing, of course.
@Beatrice
No thanks. I don’t think anyone here is either dull enough or snide enough to take it out of context and pretend that I meant something other than what I did. These things are things that are rational to consider when contemplating euthanasia. People go bankrupt, destroy themselves emotionally and sometimes physically caring for relatives who are dying for no other reason than some misguided notion that human life is sacred. It’s valuable. It’s important. It ought to be treasured and defended and protected. But not at all costs no matter what the quality of life is and how it’s expected to degrade.
@slignot
This is a terrible analogy & has no resemblance to my position at all.
Yes, this is where we disagree. You would have a child die a prolonged death in excruciating pain for no other reason than that you think that its mother or father with the help of doctors and other medical professionals can’t make a common sense decision. I don’t think that’s so compassionate.
“if there is doubt that that human being would have chosen to live” I’m not talking about people who have a choice to live or not live. I’m talking about people who are either going to die quickly and painlessly or who are going to die in a long, suffering slide, taking the well-being of their relatives with them.
Why must it be a personal choice? You keep asserting that, but I don’t think you’ve presented a reason for it.
Yet another red herring (from left field, if I may mix my metaphors). How are these two situations in any way comparable?
Hmm. Okay. I was kind of being a little metaphorical so I see why I might have given a misleading impression. Put it this way, if a family member is burning to death in a fire with no hope of rescue, I don’t think it’s rational to dump all of the family’s money and a few other relatives in the middle of the blaze as well. Whether the fire is slow burning or fast burning, the victim still isn’t walking away. This is not a statement about who is or isn’t human.
Not just value, it seems. It seems to me like you’re putting the existence of an individual’s life ahead of every other consideration.
We don’t live in an ideal world where we can always make decisions for ourselves. The only answer we have to this problem is to a) have a default system (i.e. in the absence of other info, one person is designated by law as the decision maker) b) encourage people to make advance legal arrangements if possible should they desire someone other than the default person to make decisions for them. I don’t believe throwing up our hands and doing nothing for medically and/or legally incapacitated people is ethical.
I’m having trouble with this.
If I developed Alzheimer’s to the point that I was no longer myself*, I would be perfectly ok if my spouse found someone else to love. In fact, I support it.
But I wouldn’t want them to abandon me, either, even if they knew/believed they were abandoning me into capable hands. If I had to be put into some kind of facility, I would want them to be checking up on me, visiting me (assuming it didn’t make things worse), overseeing my treatment and so forth. I don’t want them acting like I dead when I’m not. Because isn’t that part of what marriage is? To form a union where we swear to be there for each other, especially when we can’t be there for ourselves.
*Side note: I would want physician assisted suicide to be available in this situation, in case I really wanted to end my life. NOT euthanasia, where someone else decides my life isn’t worth living, but where I decide myself I don’t want to go on in my current state.
Ibis3, I’m starting to feel like we’re having a cross-values debate here, which makes it difficult to approach any resolution or consensus. It’s not so much that we disagree on what is good or bad, but that we place fundamental importance differently. From what I can see we’re approaching the issue from two very different starting premises and that leads to very different arguments on the topic*:
At first glance, we don’t seem to disagree by a lot:
1. Euthanasia in cases of terminal illness is not only acceptable but a compassionate thing.
2. The status quo for end-of-life care during terminal or degenerative conditions is unacceptable and a disproportionate drain on the loved ones involved.
3. Family members may under some circumstances give guidance to care and potential euthanasia.
But we differ on specifics because we are approaching the entire concept with different values.
1. Who may ultimately decide that euthanasia is the right option?
2. Is the cost in time and heartache ever enough to warrant prematurely ending the life of a damaged or dying human being without regard to the prior wishes of the individual?
3. Is it better to change laws to allow for compassionate euthanization or do we need to take a harder look at the systemic problems in a medically advanced society where the elderly will live longer with greater problems to come up with a more comprehensive and humane solution?
4. Is choosing death through inaction functionally any different than actively terminating a life consciously?
There are lots of differences and specifics to parse, but unless I’m fundamentally reading the the bare bones approaches we have, I seriously doubt that additional discussion is going to get us anywhere. Particularly because issues like this one are so fraught with personal baggage and experiences that they are often in danger of becoming aggressive or cheap in tone because you’re almost talking past each other. Personally I noticed my gut reactions your most recent reply to be a little pettier than I felt comfortable with, and I wanted to avoid sniping at you. It’s a very important question, weighing the lives of those suffering debilitation and eventual death, and I want to keep it productive and respectful. I hope you don’t mind, but I think I may bow out unless something else pops up.
*The summary I posted for mine is longer and wordier, I grant you, but I hope you forgive that since it’s a little more difficult to articulate reasons for human dignity than a more emotive value like compassion for others.
How about people who absolutely refuse euthanasia, for whatever reason, religion, paranoia, misguided hope, whatever, and choose to die over many years or decades of suffering and burden their families in the process? What if someone chooses to live so they can spend more time with their partner or child, even if the rest of the family hates them for it? What if someone stays alive so they can pursue a dream, say finishing a book, or seeing their team win a championship… something with little value to anyone else? Or even staying alive so they can continue to harass and punish and destroy their kin?
If people choose, they have the right to choose badly, as well.
We also don’t live in an ideal world where default proxies can be trusted; so I admit I don’t think a) is a good answer when the power of ordering or withholding death goes to someone just because they happen to be family. They may not share or even know the patient’s values; and unlike (most) emergency medical treatment, a euthanasia decision has more to do with values than odds and risk. As far as I know, that’s why DNR’s are the exception rather than the rule: because letting a patient die by mistake, by and large, is worse than making them live by mistake, so there had better be really good certainty of that choice. Not that DNR’s don’t get royally screwed up sometimes, either.
And as for “you would have a child die a prolonged/excruciating death” etc, I don’t see why a child’s wishes should be legally worthless where their own life is concerned. Children can be completely aware and communicative while still having no legal say in their own treatment. A two-year-old wouldn’t have much opinion, but a seven- or 12-year-old might, and a 16-year-old certainly should have some say in the matter, depending on their maturity and insight (qualities that many adults also lack, especially when afraid or in pain.)
Basically I think defaulting to family is a quick and overly simplistic answer, tolerable for medical emergencies where speed is paramount, but not necessarily for long-term care, much less a permanent end. If that’s the best we can do with crappy healthcare and no safety nets, then at least we shouldn’t pretend family’s trustworthy just because it’s convenient to trust them.
Makes you wonder if he really believes his own superstition. What happened to that whole “immortal soul” thing if “she is gone?”
There’s a troublesome conundrum here. If you do essentially lose your mind, then you can easily not even really be aware of it after a time. People with disorders like Alzheimer’s easily be limited to only moments of lucidity (if even that). Of course, determining when they are actually lucid vs. when their confusion just happens to appear lucid is, I think, beyond our current capabilities — though I might be wrong there.
Certainly there are many disorders where a person’s “right” to choose isn’t a sensible way to look at things. Essentially this is true where disorders fundamentally screw up your ability to make and/or be aware of decisions.
I will say that often people value a family’s views a bit too much, imho. Heck, even informed consent is an extremely troublesome problem, since there are many times when being informed is essentially impossible without a medical degree due to the complex nature of disease and limited relevant statistics.
I would say this is even MORE problematic in emergencies where the time necessary to grant informed consent can actually be harmful to the patient. Misguided and incorrect views by patients who have years of misconceptions about medicine can’t be readily corrected in such a short time.
The U.S. does have safety nets in health care. They just are quite incomplete. They will cover people who are incapable of working if they have earned sufficient social security credits or have low income, however. To talk about the original conversation in the thread, the latter can make it so a divorce is actually the best move.
Obviously not have Universal Health Care is completely insane in the U.S. As an economic issue alone UHC would be cheaper for essentially everyone than getting health care as we do now. I don’t really see how there can even be a debate on it. It makes ethical sense, it makes fiscal sense, it helps us compete better with other countries, it removes most of the uglier aspects regarding the profit motive in current insurance, etc.
and neither does Pat! sheer statistics say that the divorce is more likely to cause the person to lose care, so a lack of information argues against suggesting divorce.
lol. most certainly not. if you’re lucky that’s how it works out. in reality, it does not, quite often. That’s what I see every day with people around me. One of them is currently working himself to death because of a bleeding kidney, because of the glories of the US healthcare system. In order to get lucky and get government help as an alzheimer patient, you have to be very far gone when you start the application process. in the meantime, you’re fully dependent on a spouse or other family member, because for a long while you still fall under the “theoretically able to work” field. sometimes past the point in which that makes any sane sense.
in fact, the only person who has gotten government aid after becoming incapable of working is the unionized guy; possibly a coincidence, but that’s a lot of disabled people living on other people’s couches or killing themselves in jobs they aren’t physically capable of surviving that haven’t had that luck.
What does that have to do with my point? He presented that as a reason that he didn’t just abandon her: “He didn’t divorce her; his own health was declining from cancer. But he should have. Trying to take of her ruining the few years of life he had left.” My comments were about littlejohn, not his father.
And that’s all Robertson knew. See, I’m responding to Robertson’s remarks based on his knowledge at the time. The letter was about anger and dating. From his point of view, the divorce advice wasn’t for any altruistic reason for the wife. It was a) she’s already basically dead (which isn’t true) so the commitment to personal care from her husband needn’t continue and b) the guy can hook up – “start over” – again without “sinning.” His own comments suggest that he recognized how creepy it is.
What the hell? I’m responding to Robertson’s remarks.
No. He had the same information we do. This really isn’t that complicated.
No clue what you’re talking about.
Yet again.
By what criteria?
And why did you choose those criteria?
…by which point you may have forgotten how to write or suchlike, and by which point you most definitely don’t have any clue that anything is wrong with you. “As long as you still notice you forget things, it’s not Alzheimer’s.”
well, that was shitty phrasing on my part. obviously, by the time you’re eligible, someone else will need to do the application work for you.
My husband has Alzheimer’s. I have posted on several sites and have been cursed at, condemned, and bullied. Pat Robertson was not advocating people to divorce their spouse if they have this disease. He was answering the question of the caller, whose friend had started dating. Pat said that if the man was going to do something (date), he should divorce his wife and start over. He was speaking to that particular situation. Alzheimer’s is a nightmare. I was the sole care giver to my husband at home for 5 years before I had to place him in a nursing home. I visit him very often and he is well taken care of at the home. He no longer recognizes me. I am not going to divorce him, but it is quite painful to walk into the home and see him cuddling with another lady there. It hurt at first, but I’ve accepted it now. Society will accept it too, because he is ill. I, on the other hand, am expected to remain the loyal and faithful wife, and not have any companionship. “Til death us do part”. Alzheimer’s is a “kind of death”. My husband and his lady friend are in their own little world. I don’t know where I am anymore.
Linda, that sounds like a really hard road you’re on.
You have not just my admiration, but my sincere sympathy.
(Were I the type to do so, I’d offer you an internet hug)
—
I encourage you to do what you think is right, not what is expected of you.
Linda,
But that’s exactly what’s so inhuman: Robertson’s view is that sex, or even dating someone else, while you are married is a sin, irrespective of the circumstances, so he tells the guy either to renounce all his duties to his wife by divorcing her, or to deny his own needs.
No-one should make you feel that. You’d be doing no wrong by your husband by looking elsewhere for what you need, since he can no longer meet those needs.