Right to die: ethical and legal perspectives

Right to die think it is ironic, when we consider history, that in the middle Ages all the most joyful events took place at the cemetery and this scandalized nobody. How different things are today. The attitude of our culture to death, to a large extent, reveals its attitude to life. There is an almost total contradiction of what death means when seen through the eyes of the Religion or seen through the eyes of our world.(Milton D. Heifetz)

Fundamentally, our society sees no meaning in death whatsoever. We live under the idea that the meaning and value of life is within life itself without any reference to anything outside the visible, tangible world. Our gods have become happiness, self-fulfillment, and empowerment. But death is a fact and a fact that even the unbeliever has to face. One reaction has been to cut down on the unpleasantness of death and to minimize its disruptive effects. Society has brought forth the medical practitioner, the funeral director and technology, to make death as painless and unnoticeable as possible.

The medical profession fights death to the limits of its capabilities, sometimes using heroic means to keep the body alive. If this fails, the mortician is called in and carries out what used to be done by the family. A game of pretence takes over as the dying process has moved from the home to the hospital and the funeral parlor. Ironically, in spite of our many achievements in unraveling the mysteries of nature, we are the first civilization in the long history of man to ignore death. What we attempt to do is to humanize death and to make it more palatable, more acceptable as something that is part of the natural process.(Derek Humphry & Mary Clement)

In a sense, the function of all religions is to tame death and to neutralize it. Primitive man was not so much afraid of death as of the dead interfering in his life. The task of religion was to keep the dead separate from the living and to assuage the dead so that they would not intrude.

Because of this, the burial place is separated from the town or city; it is outside the walls. There is a sort of co-existence that arises between the dead and the living with the living offering food to the dead and showing respect to them. Just think of the pyramids of Egypt and what their intentions were. Religion, therefore, in the beginning has to do with the dead and God is a relative latecomer on the scene.

The time before death is very much like the time of troubles or thankfulness. We prepare for this Sacrament by increasing our prayers, by inward concentration and soul-searching repentance, by removing ourselves as much as possible from the ways of the world. In all of this we are guided by the prayers of the Church through which we call to God to give us the sense to weep bitterly over our sins; we recognize our hardheartedness, our lack of tears and our many passions; we acknowledge that we waste too much time thinking of our earthly welfare and that we are unworthy of heaven, of earth, and even of this transient life; we ask forgiveness of one another and try to make peace with our conscience.

When faced with the imminent possibility of death, a human being is struck with a sense of urgency. He develops a sharper focus for what is of lasting value; he tries to make maximum use of the precious time left to him for repentance and amendment. Should we not live every day as though it were our last?

We have all got to die, but there are best possible deaths, when our full time has come, and there are deaths, as in the Iraq war and in Israel, when lives are brutally cut short in conditions of great fear, anger and hatred - often leaving behind a legacy of anger, bitterness and sorrow. Because we all have to die is it possible to describe death in the best possible conditions? Is it possible to describe what ought to be our human rights in relation to our deaths? In this section I argue that this is possible. I then go on to compare this with what has happened in Iraq to draw out the contrast hopefully in a clear way.

If we think about our deaths, or those of your loved ones there are things, which I think that we all ideally want to make our passing easier. These are things like: having made a will, an orderly transition of our affairs, reconciliation's and making our peace with people, making sure that vulnerable survivors like children will be looked after (Herbert Hendin)

In the chaos, and rapid moving situation of war none of these things can be guaranteed. Soldiers may tidy their affairs up before they go into battle. For civilians that may occur - but there again, in the sheer random way in which civilians get killed, there is not the predictability or time for many of those things.

Another dimension is the psychological preparation for dying, as the last stage in life journey, as another opportunity for growth and experience. There is now a considerable literature about the psychological preparation for death, which suggests that one's last days, with one's loved ones around one, may be the most beautiful and poignant of one's life, as one becomes aware of how precious and fleeting life is.