The Right to Die

The international furor and resulting arguments among euthanasia advocates, religious groups, lawyers and ethicists, about where the state’s duty to preserve life truly begins and ends, continues. The right to decide whether one wishes to continue to live must be finally the individual’s. In the absence of a family member or friend who has agreed to make those decisions based on the individual’s instructions, or a Living Will, people who are unfortunate enough to enter a medical facility at the end of their lives will endure much more prolonged pain and suffering than a simple, quick death would cause. Religious groups, fearful that God’s wishes may clash with an individual’s decision to end his/her life, are usually adamant in regard to their opinions against upholding any right of an individual to choose an end to all these machinations. Feeding tubes, artificial breathing apparatuses, drugs, IVs, catheters. The list is endless. No peace, no dignified, quiet cessation of life. It is a frenzied way to go out of this world.

Why are we so fearful of death? It is natural, ordained by the human condition. When we are conditioned to feel fear and aversion, there are many groups, who already do and will continue to profit financially from our desperate desire to avert the end of our lives.

It seems, if we insist that our views as to prolonging or preserving life should be employed in the face of an individual’s opposite wish, that we are dangerously close to playing the diety, dictating to another what they must do based on our framing of the situation. If we have the support and guidance of our religious group, we feel complacently correct . . . God is on our side, we know His will. In fact, we know only what other humans have decided in regard to God’s will, and which we have agreed to adopt as our own idea or opinion.

When any government is granted the legal right to choose life or death for its citizens. . . why would anyone assume that a government, employing this right, will use its esteemed capacity to make decisions always for extending life . . . and could never decide death instead? The sanctity of human life? The condition of woman and men in China and other over-populated countries makes this only too clear. Couples are forbidden, on pain of retribution from the government, to have more than one child. Pregnancies are expected to be terminated if they occur outside these established legal parameters. This is mandated by government. Life, as many on this planet live it each day, is fraught with peril . . . starvation, torture, abuse, poverty, ruin. How many well-meaning zealots, sitting each day in a safe and clean office/home environment, typing out pious tomes about preserving life, actually are
in touch with the life reality of a large portion of the world’s population? How, without experiencing traumatic physical disability firsthand, could any of us make opinions as to someone else’s pain and state of mind? How can we fervently believe that the government should ever have the right to decide life or death?