Pass Away From a Lingering

¶ … pass away from a lingering illness, an accident or simple old age, each of us has a private experience of death to look forward to, whether with dread or relief.

Similar to birth, our death experiences are varied and individual, and most often arrive at a moment we cannot exactly predict. Nevertheless, the death belongs to us and is our own personal passage. Should we have the right to control its timing and method?

The universe hands us, for free, only one material thing in life: a body. Our one and only naturally-granted possession is innately ours to destroy or nurture as we choose.

The right to end our own personal lives, and stop the beating of our own hearts is absolutely the one right in which the government cannot, and should not, interfere.

If we are to remain a country dedicated to human rights and civil liberties, we must address the question of assisted suicide without the distractions of religious beliefs and moral judgment, but base our arguments on the original intent of the Constitution. This argument goes far beyond abortion, since it directly affects no other living person, but puts at issue the one and only thing that we truly have control over. If our government exerts control over the moment we choose to end our lives, then we have lost all control, and do not have anything close to a true democracy.

The Supreme Court maintains that we do not, under the constitution, possess the "right to die." (Hess).

If only for humanitarian reasons, we should not prohibit assisted suicide.

Those of us who have never been terminally ill and lived to tell about it cannot possibly judge whether the pain and suffering endured by an ill person justifies ending his or her own life. When the gift of life has become a toxic hell, and the body has become a chamber of torture, we must allow the sufferer to end his suffering peacefully and quickly.

Our laws do not allow us to subject an animal to pain and torture, but we question, shamefully, whether it is appropriate to allow another human to suffer unbearably, and presume that a person in pain does not have the right or wherewithal to make the decision to end his own life.

One of the arguments against assisted suicide as outlined in balancedpolitics.org, is that patients may give up on medical procedures too soon, and that there is always hope that a procedure or medicine might come along that can cure the illness (Messerli). Perhaps, then, we should require a doctor to be involved in a patient's decision for assisted suicide as a measure to prevent unnecessary death. In that case, however, a physician should be expected to contribute only a medical prognosis to the decision, allowing the patient to decide upon the time and means of his death.