Kieran's+Letter

Dear Mr. Smith,

First of all, thank you for taking some of your valuable time to help our class with our euthanasia unit. Hearing a professional’s point of view deepens our understanding of the topic and provides something to think about, and it is more interesting than writing yet another boring essay.

From the Catholic Church to Ramon San Pedro, everyone has a stance on abortion, and many people are not afraid to be vocal about their displeasures. Everyone has a point of view, and those views differ. Before I get to my point of view, however, I am going to show two opposite extremes of this debate. On the one side is the Catholic Church, whose beliefs in life extend from the unborn to the person mere seconds away from death. In the official //Declaration on Euthanasia// released by the Vatican, “no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying.” The Catholic Church even goes so far as to note that a person must be conscious while they die in order to “prepare himself or herself with full consciousness for meeting Christ. Thus Pius XII warns: ‘It is not right to deprive the dying person of consciousness without a serious reason.’”

While the stance has many supporters, it also has many opponents who believe that every person has the right to have someone kill them if they want to. Chris Hill, a paraplegic after a hang-gliding accident, wrote a note to his friends and family telling them why he decided to commit suicide. According to his letter, after he lost the ability to move half of his body he lost many things including his sex life, ability to go to the bathroom, exercise, walk, and he got increasingly shapeless as time passed. His life ceased to mean anything to him and he gets angry at those who believe that it is his cross to bear “It’s a challenge, many of you said. Bullshit. My life was just a miserable existence, an awful parody of normalcy. What’s a challenge without some reward to make it worthwhile?”

After looking at both sides of the argument, I will begin to voice my opinion on this tricky topic. I disagree with getting euthanized myself for the sole reason that I believe that my last decision on this planet should not be the easy way out, especially if I am successful in life. This is my personal view however and I have no desire to push it on anyone else unlike a few of my peers who seem to wish that everyone sides with them. When people decide to be euthanized, that is a decision based on their free will, and I respect their decision. To me it does not matter who does it so long as they have had thought about their decision for many years and they stand by it. I am not insinuating that crippled people and terminally ill people are less human than the rest of us; I am merely giving those that became crippled or terminally ill after a long, healthy life a chance to end with dignity. In fact, I believe that if someone is born handicapped, they should not be allowed the same option to be euthanized as those who became handicapped due to the fact that that is all they know and that something they have never had they can never truly miss. This provides a satisfactory compromise because those who agree with euthanasia and feel like they have nothing left to live for have the fundamental right to choose what they want to do with their life. In Allison Davis’ article, //Right to Life of Handicapped//, she explains that she feels that her value of life is valued at less than a healthy person’s because of the sole fact that she is handicapped. One of her examples is how the doctors encouraged her parents to “go home and have another” instead of trying to raise the daughter that they were already given. She gets heated when she compares the laws that pro-euthanasia people want passed to when Hitler decriminalized euthanizing handicapped people in Nazi Germany because they can be pressured into something that they do not feel like doing. My compromise allows people like Alison, who were born handicapped, to maintain their sovereignty and conversely provides an option for those who were made handicapped due to an unfortunate event to end their life with their dignity. On the other hand is the Spaniard Ramon San Pedro, a quadriplegic who, after over 25 years of arguing with the Spanish government, finally committed suicide with the help of some friends. After this amount of time, it is cruel to require someone to stay alive when they have been wishing for that long to die. It is not fair to their dignity and their humanity that we should keep them like that. Ramon deserved to die a better way than taking a cyanide tablet mixed into his water.

In the Netherlands, euthanasia is legal. The Netherlands is also only fifty-second on the list of yearly suicide rates while the US is thirty-ninth on this same scale. This difference in suicide levels may be caused in part by their stance on euthanasia that does not require people to devise horrendous ways of killing themselves because a government does not allow them free will with their body. Pieter Admiraal is a doctor in the Netherlands, at a hospital in Delft. According to Dr. Admiraal’s article, many institutions in the Netherlands refuse to euthanize their patients because of their religious affiliation. The institution where Dr. Admiraal works goes through a lengthy process before deciding to euthanize a patient and they make sure that it is the patient’s actual desire multiple times throughout the process. This insures that they keep the patient’s best interests at heart and that they weigh them in all of their decisions. They only euthanize terminal patients and they have many consent forms and other legal business. I approve of this method because it lets terminally ill patients know that they have that option if they want it. Not only does this reduce the stress level that they are under, it allows them to be peaceful about their death and they get to know that there is a pain-free option as well as a normal death. This is the way it should be, where the free will to be euthanized is allowed to be moderated by evaluations of mental health, judgmental abilities, and the approximate number of days left.

I completely respect your opinions and your views, but is this not a decent middle ground between the two sides? The Catholic Church gets what they want because they have layers of laws protecting it, and people like Ramon San Pedro gain the ability to end their lives with dignity after proving through a series of tests that they truly want this and it is not out of temporary desperation or grief. And honestly, the Catholic Church doesn’t have the right to tell other countries what to do. If Catholics want to go live in Vatican City and be anti-euthanasia based on religious beliefs that is their business but don’t try to push it on the rest of America. After all, if someone like Chris Hill has lived their entire life to the max, why shouldn’t we give them their own free will to decide their last days? Under the law we have rights as our own person and the free will to do whatever we want so long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone else. This right needs to be expanded all of the way until the last beat of a person’s heart, whether they are handicapped, healthy, or terminally ill when they die.

Thank you again for helping our class and reading our letters, we really appreciate it.

Sincerely, Kieran Giammichele