Still a Passionate Advocate for Assisted Suicide read the New York Times today. Dr. Kevorkian was jailed for 8 years, for doing something that should have, in my personal opinion, been made into a federal law decades ago. He assisten 130 terminally ill patients in taking their own lives. Some were in their last stages of various forms of Cancer. Others had untreatable and un-curable diseases and ailments. All of them were within a few months of death (if any of them had that long to live at all), and all of them only wanted what most people want. A painless and eventless death.
For helping to provide this safely to 130 people, Dr. Kevorkian spent 8 years in jail. Oregon already has a law allowing terminally ill patients to legally take their lives. To me, the ultimate epitome of control in one's life would be to make the conscious choice to end it. California is due to pass a similar law to Oregon's this week, as it is currently going through the state legislative process at the time of this article being written. According to Dr. Kevorkian, the laws are not complete. Why? Basic reasoning, and with a well grounded common-sense based point.
According to Dr. Kevorkian, the laws only allow patients to take their own lives so long as they administer the lethal drugs themselves. This would therefore exclude people who are physically unable to move or swallow on their own, and would require the aide of a physician in order to end their lives. Well I can only think of one word at this point, and that would be "duh".
Suicide, in and of itself, is illegal for only one reason. So that in case the person who is attempting to end his or her own life fails, they can be arrested and forced into programs that will help them through their problems, so that they continue to live on as normally as possible. Here's the common sense question however: What if a person is successful, and does end his or her own life. Is suicide then illegal? If so, who gets charged with the crime? Seriously think about this for a moment.
Here we have a 79 year old doctor, who helped 130 terminally ill patients end their lives peacefully, with no pain, no anguish and no side effects. And in another realm, we have law enforcement officers who are wanting to arrest someone and force them into rehabilitation, because it is against the law to take your own life. WHY?!? It's your life!!
Any psychologist will tell you, if a person wants to end his or her own life, NO ONE is going to stop them from doing so at some point. You can stop a person only so many times before that person conjurs up a means by which to voluntarilly and quite consciously end their life. No law enforcement officers. No doctors. No paddy wagons. Just that person, and the means by which they chose to end their life.
It's bad enough that we have our government telling us what we can read, watch on television, listen to on the radio, read in the newspapers, learn in our schools and do before, during and after work. Now we have the government telling us that we no longer have the right to end our own lives if we're going to die anyway?!? How pathetic is this going to get?
Seriously think about this following point for a moment:
What is anyone going to do about it when you're dead? I mean, well, you're DEAD. Gone. Permanently retired. 6 feet under or burnt into ash. Sitting on someone's mantle or laid up in a box wearing an old decaying set of clothing. Gonzo. Went to meet the head honcho, the big cheese, the big man upstairs. Also, how many people do you know, that are in hospital beds, with tubes coming out of them, riddled with cancer through out their entire body, bones and tissues decaying while they're still alive, and in so much pain that even the simple act of blinking causes them to wince....so you seriously think that if they were given the opportunity to opt out of living in a peaceful painless means, they'd turn it down? Would you?
Not me. If I was at that stage, and had done everything I possibly could to save my life and live a few more years, give me a good solid dose of Dr. Kevorkian's 'death machine mixture'. I want skid marks next to my grave site, with a big splat mark on my tombstone that reads, 'Wow that was great! Hope I get to do it again real soon! Wheeee!'. Doesn't matter if I choose to take my own life or not at that point. As long as I'm personally satisfied with the life that I had, that's good enough for me. Really, it's far beyond the time to allow people one last dignity in the remainder of their lives. Let's start really thinking about what THEY want, instead of what we want for them.... and from them. How arrogant can people get to be so selfish as to want someone to stay around in such a painful and hopeless world?
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