Dana's+Letter

media type="file" key="danab-wesleysmith-euthanasia.mp3"

Dear Mr. Smith,

First and foremost thank you for taking the time out of your busy life to participate in my Bioethics class. Your articles and feedback have undoubtedly enhanced the experience, and I truly respect you. Secondly, I do not agree with anything you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.

I apologize for any offence you might take from my letter, but here it goes:

A man by the name of Cardinal Franjo Seper once said, “Everyone has the duty to lead his or her life in accordance with God’s plan” and to alter it will surely be sinful. To build a life governed by a book that is thousands of years old, in my humble opinion, is absurd. We live in the 21st century. We live in a country where individualism is embraced and the power to make our own choices and then deal with the consequences later on is accepted. To live is one of our individual decisions. To die is one of our individual decisions. If someone wants to end their life it is not up to us to interfere or tell them differently. Another one of my favorite quotes from this article was: “Pleas of gravely ill people who sometimes ask for Death are not to be understood as implying a true desire for euthanasia; in fact it is almost always a case of an anguished plea for help and love.” Usually when someone expresses the wish to die, I am almost positive they really mean it. Just some food for thought. Surely we can try to send them to therapy and prescribe anti-depressants, love and a hug, but at the end of the day the will to die will passionately burn within a majority of people. It will burn brightly until it is snuffed out and those souls may finally taste death’s sweet release. The idea that suicide is …”considered to be a rejection of God’s sovereignty and loving plan,” is something I will never understand. A God who denies someone’s plea to end the pain is no God I could ever devote my life to.

Another article in which I so adamantly disagree with is “// Right to Life of Handicapped //” by Alison Davis. Yet again I respect the opinion that has been so eloquently expressed, but the offense this woman took with regards to her disability was excessive. “Who could say I have no worthwhile quality of life?” asks Ms. Davis. The answer to her question? NO ONE. She states in the article that her quality of life is fine, for she is happily married, writes articles and stands up for her beliefs. Alison takes offense to the fact that some people, such as myself, would not want to live like her. It’s these types of responses that allow Alison to go on to say that “Legislation of the type proposed could also lead to the de facto decriminalization of the act of killing a handicapped person of any age, just as it did in Hitler’s Germany.” First of all, this is not a Neo-Nazi, Eugenics situation. This is a personal choice. No man is ruling this country and telling all parents to euthanize their handicapped children. In fact, it has proven to be quite the opposite. Today there are handicapped Olympics and fields that cater to those with disabilities. I do not undermine their lives and think of them as second-class citizens. I do not deny them the right of ‘person-hood’. My veneration for people like Ms. Davis is immense. They face obstacles most of us would never dream of encountering and overcome them with grace and the will to keep on fighting.

I should have been born in the Netherlands. The Dutch people embrace the idea of autonomy and realize that “to fail to practice voluntary euthanasia under some circumstances is to fail the patient.” Doctors take the Hippocratic oath so that they may practice medicine ethically. But who is to determine what situations are ethical or not? Pieter Admiraal, author of “// Listening and Helping to Die: The Dutch Way,” //believes that “letting a patient die of her disease may be anything but a good death”. I could not agree more. Arguments that doctors “play God” when they end the lives of those who wish to die is ludicrous. Anyone who takes medication for a severe illness is interfering with God’s plan. Anyone who is hooked up to a ventilator to aid them in what was once an automatic response is interfering with God’s plan. I am fully aware that these approaches preserve life while assistance in suicide quite obviously does not. However, why not take advantage of all that modern medicine has to offer? If I am ever to be diagnosed with something as painful as bone cancer, (knock on wood), I take comfort in knowing that there is an escape when the inevitable suffering ensues. Euthanasia is clearly not for everyone. But for those who believe it is an act of abandonment, such as you Mr. Smith, I respectfully ask you to not deny someone’s personal choice. “It is the patient’s view which must ultimately be the determinative one” in the complex decision between life and death, not God’s. You are not them, never will be, and never can be. Live your life the way you want to, and let others do the same.

The final article called “// The Note //,” written by Chris Hill is yet again a viewpoint I agree with. Mr. Hill was a paraplegic. He had lived a full life. He had known what it was like to ride a motorcycle recklessly, make love to a woman he loved, taste the sweet air of a far away land and had watched the sun rise over the Himalayas. And just like that, all that he could once do so easily was snatched away. Left incontinent and dependent on loved ones, he was depressed. “I guarantee that anybody who thinks it can’t have been too bad would change their mind if they lived in my body for a day.” Chris tried the antidepressants, and the love and a hug approach to his situation, and guess what? It did not work. His pleas for death were not pleas for more love; they were pleas for an escape from the body that had become a prison. “I thank you for making my last months as happy as they were, for your optimism and support, for the rays of light with which you pierced my gloom. My condition was permanent; I can only hope your grief fades quickly with the healing passage of time.” Chris Hill was ready to leave, and his family respected that. He was ready for the next adventure: death.

We can speculate, analyze, discuss every “what if,” but when all is said and done, suicide will forever exist amongst our society. It is a constant. To say that assisted suicide is an act of abandonment for all cases is narrow-minded. For some of us, quadriplegia, cancer, disabling diseases, etc are no conditions we wish to live with, and for others, they are simply obstacles we can overcome. Whether we choose to live or to die in situations like those is a decision we can only make once placed in them. It is unfair to dictate what is right and what is wrong when we have never experienced it ourselves, therefore, to each his own.

Sincerely, Dana Beuttler