It suggests that the values that one inherits through the experience of dying and dearth are without merit, and do not serve to better humanity. It reduces the human body that holds life to a commodity, and the decision of whether or not the body's continued living is profitable to the bottom line. There are many questions that arise when we talk about death in terms of being better for society as a whole. Questions such as to what extent would a solider feel compelled to fight for the lives of his fellow countrymen if the society in which he lives makes decisions about the value of life being measured by wealth? To what extent would a stranger reach out to save the life of another person if economics becomes the measurement by which a person's right to live is decided?

PAS is a moral turning point of mankind, and one in which mankind ceases to be connected to the humanity within them. It would become rational, although not ethical, to allow the children of third world countries to starve the way that Terri Schiavo did, because of the economic cost of providing them food and healthcare. Certainly assisted suicide would be a solution to many of the world's problems; but would it be an ethical solution? The answer is, of course, no, it would not be an ethical solution.

Medical practitioners have now found the ways to create life without the intimacy and emotional element of human relationships. Taking the intimacy and emotional commitment that creates life out of the life formula has perpetuated the lack of emotion and intimacy in the dying and death process.

As painful as death is to the individual suffering it, it is equally as emotionally painful to the family and loved ones who experience that process with the individual patient. Yet there are new and important lessons learned from the experience, and an awakening of new emotions and feelings that are conducive to humanity, benevolence, kindness, sharing, and giving; many of the things that bind us as a society. If we relegate death to the courts and along socio-economic lines,...

We also lose that very intimate connection with our spirituality, because, according to most faiths, death is the rebirth of the soul. What becomes of us spiritually when we take it upon ourselves to terminate life unnaturally -- although that has of course been done through murder and war -- but that is not what this is about; this is about legally deciding to end a person's life unnaturally without war, and without a criminal act (if we legalize PAS as Oregon did).
Something becomes horribly lost in our humanity when we recreate physicians as the preservers of life and turn them into the terminators of life. And when we concede the right to life to courtroom decisions, and measure its value by socio-economic markers. We become rational, but not moral animals.

Works Cited

Gibbs, David and DeMoss, Bob. Fighting for Dear Life: The Untold Story of Terri

Schiavo and What it Means for All of Us. 2008. New York, Bethany House.

Print.

Humphry, Derek. Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide

for the Dying, 3rd Edition. New York, Dell Publishing. 2002. Print.

Huxtable, Richard. Euthanasia, Ethics, and the Law: From Conflict to Compromise.

New York: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007. Print.

Jones, Robert. Liberalism's Troubled Search for Equality: Religion and Cultural Bias in the Oregon Physician-Assisted Suicide Debates, 2007. Print.

Pence, Gregory. Classic Works in Medical Ethics: Core Philosophical Readings. 1997.

Print.

Sommerville, Margaret. Death Talk: The Case Against Euthanasia and Physician

Assisted Suicide. Montreal, Canada, McGill-Queen's Publishing, 2002. Print.

Kevorkian is a well-known figure to right to die advocates and to right to live advocates (right to live being as regards PAS and not to be confused with the anti-abortion right to life movement and advocates.