(NRO) – Imagine your mother is in the hospital. She has written an advance medical directive instructing that her life be maintained even if things look very bleak. She has told you personally in an intense and intimate conversation, that she wants you to make sure everything is done to let her fight for her life.
A year later, your mother has a stroke and is fighting for life in an ICU. You try to do as she wanted, you instruct her doctors to maintain her life. But they say no. She is very unlikely to recover, and even if she does, she will be seriously disabled. Her “time” has come, they say. And then, they unilaterally remove her life support over your strenuous objections.
That kind of authoritarianism already happens in Texas and a few other states. Now, Nevada has a bill pending in the legislature that would permit doctors to push patients off wanted life-extending treatment. CONTINUE