Language in today’s right to choose to die debate

THE TERMS  AND  THEIR EUPHEMISMS

(Take your pick!)

Euthanasia: 

Help with a good death – in whichever way is desired, justifiable and appropriate. A broad, generic term for the right to die.

Voluntary Euthanasia:

When a physician administers a lethal dose to a dying person at their request.

For when a doctor prescribes a lethal overdose which the dying patient chooses to drink:

Physician-assisted suicide; Physician-assisted death; Physician-assisted dying; Physician-hastened death; Death With Dignity; Aid in Dying; Medically-assisted dying; Medicide (Kevorkian  book); Physician-managed death; Mercy killing; Terminal sedation.

For when a terminal patient chooses to end his or her own life without medical help:

Self-deliverance; Patient-directed dying (Preston  book); Humane self-chosen death; Auto-euthanasia; Rational suicide; Hastened death; Right to choose to die; Choice in dying; Self-determination; Suicide; Assisted suicide; Final Exit (Humphry book); Managed death; Self-destruction; self-murder; self-directed death; Peaceful Pill (Nitschke book); Drion Pill; stopping eating and drinking.

Common euphemisms to avoid saying dead :

 Passed away; Passed on; Gone to a better place; Departed; Gone to meet the Maker; Gone to meet the majority; Gone to the world of light; Gone to Davy Jones’s locker; Crossed to the other side; Gone to sleep with the fishes; Quietly slipped from our embrace; Succumbed; Called home; Got her/his final reward; Expired; Dearly departed; Gone to Jesus.

The criminal world has its own set of avoidances of the reality of death:

 Whacked, smoked, wasted, rubbed out, deep sixed; given cement overshoes.

Finally, there are the humorous and sardonic terms for death: Croaked, gave up the ghost, put on the wooden overcoat, total goner, kicked the bucket, dead as a doornail, snuffed it, bit the dust, bought the farm, flat-lined, pushing up daisies, celestial discharge, negative patient-care outcome.

Note: It would be useful if we still had Shakespeare around to invent modern new terms, because nobody currently can agree on the foregoing ones.

11.2.14                      -- Derek Humphry (ergo.finalexit.org)  Oregon