Legalization of Assisted Suici
Anyone who has watched a loved one suffer from a terminal disease or unrecoverable injury for any length of time will tell you after death, "It was time to let her go," or "At least he's not in pain anymore" or "She suffered terribly, for too long." In these instances, death is seen as a blessing, or deliverance. If death is inevitable, and the only obstacle between the patient and death is pain, suffering, and the terrible indignities of being unable to care for one's own body, then assisted suicide becomes a gentle and dignifying option for patients and their families. Terminally ill or irrevocably injured patients should have the right to legally choose assisted suicide. Assisted suicide is defined as the act of killing oneself intentionally with the assistance of another who provides the means, the knowledge, or both. Examples of assisted suicide include the following:* A physician gives the patient information about how to take a lethal dose of a drug and writes a prescription for the drug knowing that it is the intention of the patient to kill oneself with the drug. The patient takes the lethal dose and dies as a result.* A friend of a partially-paralyzed woman goes to the pharmacy to get a prescription for barbi
While hospice addresses the needs of the rapidly dying patient beautifully, it is not a blanket alternative for assisted suicide. Euthanasia differs from physician assisted suicide because the physician actually performs the death-causing act after determining that the patient indeed wishes to end his or her life. Knowing this, he decided to end his life while he was still able to do so himself. However, it took so long to find a sympathetic doctor to prescribe the barbiturates he needed that he had already reached a point where he had to be fed by others. A lawyer advised his friends and family that if they were to help him ingest the pills then they would be subject to criminal prosecution. Another consideration is theological; does suffering ennoble one to higher spiritual ground? Is suffering, and relating to Jesus Christ's suffering on the cross, a part of preparation for meeting God? Or is suffering part of taking on the pain of the world, and is the patient now a tzaddik, a healer or holy one, practicing tikkun olam, the healing of the earth. Palliative care would probably spare him the worst of his final moments, but the months of agonizing pain and suffering would have to be endured. However, those who believe that G-d does not want his children to suffer, who believe that choosing the manner of their death is a part of empowering and dignifying their life, and who believe that forced suffering is a blasphemy against the gift of life, then assisted suicide should be a moral option. They argue that when life-sustaining treatment is withheld or withdrawn, death results from natural causes. And he could have died in the presence of those who loved him or in complete privacy, empowered by his life, his dignity and the right to make his own decisions about his death. Erwin Krickhan would have to suffer the agonizing effect of ALS, gradual paralysis of the entire body and the terror of the inevitable suffocating death awaiting him. "I have been at the center of this along with Jack Kevorkian for the last six years, and I am telling you, I have never heard a rational argument why a mentally competent, sick or dying person does not have an absolute right, under certain controlled circumstances, to end their suffering without government.
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Acceptance Essays
