Anna's+Letter

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 Dear Mr. Wesley J. Smith,

 Thank you tremendously for personally addressing our high school class and enriching our educational experience of the world of ethics. The blog post you composed brought to light several valid points, but with all due respect, failed to value one fundamental concept. With our high levels of intelligence, creativity, and capability to feel and express emotions, humans are an extremely high-functioning species compared to other creatures. Human life is indeed precious, but isn't free will equally as precious? As a movie, Million Dollar Baby is nothing more than a piece of fiction, and to accuse it of devaluing the lives of all handicap individuals is terribly drastic. Maggie is but one fictional individual with a unique situation of her own, as well as possesses a personal mindset. In my humble opinion, I believe one cannot accomplish anything without effort, and if Maggie had no desire to continue on living, then unfortunately, all hope for her is more or less lost, and understandably so.

 You mentioned how society's “job should not be to kill people when their own families fail them.” You also stated that even as a quadriplegic, Maggie's “potentials are endless.” Firstly, in a perfect world, society wouldn't do a lot of things, like make homosexual individuals feel uncomfortable or normal girls feel fat. But society is vastly flawed, with its numerous, often ridiculous laws and capability to judge. However, human society, for the most part, allows for personal motivations to progress to a certain degree. For example, someone can drop out of school and stay out of school if they really wished to. Or that someone has the ability to become a painter and live their life as a struggling artist, all to their fancy. Thus, society has no control over this person's wants and desires, nor does it really have the control to regulate these wants and desires, and rightly so. Society did not kill Maggie, nor does society want to eliminate all other handicap individuals. Society is simply free enough to allow for Maggie to choose for herself. This free will in itself is a form of humanity, as well as the most satisfying liberty of life and we are lucky to possess it. Without choice and free will, what purpose does anything really possess? Without passion, is keeping a heartbeat going really worth it? What “potentials” matter when Maggie had no intentions of carrying them out? Granted, the world will never know if these “potentials” might indeed be incredibly priceless, but to her, further hours filled with pain and self-hatred were not worth enduring to become some temporary inspirational figure.

 Similarly, the late Chris Hill was once in the situation the fictional character of Maggie found herself in, except Hill was a real human being. He fell from having an exhilarating and athletic lifestyle to finding himself nearly completely restricted from enjoying any pleasures of life that he previously had. In “The Note,” Hill describes the degrading and truly tragic routine that was his life after his hang-gliding accident with words such as “unbearable” and “humiliating.” To Hill, it was more than just the pain; it was the brutal truth of “the mere sight of someone standing up, a child skipping, a bicyclist's flexing leg muscles, [being] enough to reduce me to tears.” But unlike Maggie, Hill followed something close to your advice and, “went out to shops, theatres and restaurants, even a concert” and “learnt to drive.” If these are not whole-hearted attempts to assimilate back into society, then I don't know what are. However, the attempts were utterly futile in changing Hill's outlook on his condition. “What good is a picnic when you can't play with the kids and dogs and throw a frisbee? What the point of going to a gig if you can't dance when the music grips you?” To Chris Hill, his life wasn't worth living anymore, and he found no happiness nor dignity in the way he was “living,” if he would even call it that. He wished to exercise free will and end his own life, yet because of the medical community in the United States, he couldn't opt for assisted suicide because his condition is not labeled as terminal. How he managed to actually commit suicide is beyond me, and not only a brave act, but an act that magnifies the ridiculous aspect of American medicine that prohibits conscious and educated individuals to choose the humane path of euthanasia.

 An organization that promotes a regulated process for assisted euthanasia is the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. Their volunteer-run program, in a country where assisted suicide is legal when no profit is earned, is visited by a significant number of people each year. This clinic is a last resort, please remember that, yet it is so frequented upon because most people's home country does not allow euthanasia if one is not terminally ill. In my opinion, this is a ridiculous law that doesn't nearly cover all the bases for end-of-life care. The law, along with the generic suicide-prevention law, clearly doesn't hinder any individual from dying if they really wish to. An example of this course of action is the story of Daniel James, which is a tale of lost hope and will, similar to both Chris Hill's and Maggie's. After being paralyzed from the neck down and attempting suicide on his own several times, the former rugby player received assistance from his parents to travel to Dignitas and mercifully have his life ended there. The fact that Daniel James had to go through so much just to exercise his own personal will and make a personal decision that would ultimately only affect himself is absolutely blasphemous. No parent wants their child to pass away, but no parent wants their child to suffer constantly before their eyes either. It's also equally insane that the police questioned and investigated this incident when the the choice Daniel James' parents made was incredibly brave and considerate, as well as legal in the nation they were in.

 There is a hospital in the Netherlands that also allows a similar system of assisted euthanasia. This hospital first treats the patients with palliative care before the option of voluntary euthanasia can be an option. But even then, “the final decision could not be made unilaterally by a patient or her doctor. It had to be agreed to by a team consisting of two doctors, a nurse, and one of the hospital's spiritual caregivers.” On the other hand, because the subject is not “taboo,” the patient has the peace of mind that this option is indeed possible when pain and suffering is simply too much to bear. In Dutch physician Pieter Admiraal's article, “Listening and Helping to Die; The Dutch Way,” he summarizes two incidents and how he handled them. The first involved a patient named Carla, who had terminal cancer. Carla was Catholic, but she requested for voluntary euthanasia, as well as commented about her disease and pain, “God could not have wanted this.” Her husband also accepted her decision with the realization that, “it would be selfish of him not to let his wife go.” The Roman Catholic chaplain from the hospital actually allowed her to undergo voluntary euthanasia. On the other hand, the second patient named Esther did not have a terminal disease, but suffered, “from the incurable and progressively debilitating disease, multiple sclerosis.” In the United States under current laws, Esther would have had to live out the remaining time of her life suffering whatever trauma and pain her illness entitled her to as it progressed to horrendously agonizing stages. But as Pieter Admiraal puts straightforwardly, “As doctors we have two primary duties: to ensure the well-being of our patients, and to respect their autonomy,” which is their autonomy over their bodies, their course of treatment, and their life in general.

 On the other hand, a process of easily ending one's own life is a slippery slope. Where should the line be drawn? Should it continue to include only terminally ill patients, or should the group be enlarged to include those with degenerative diseases with severely crippling symptoms? What about individuals who are suicidal from psychological issues? The Catholic believe that assisted suicide is exactly like murder and is not right, for any individuals, under no circumstances. In the exact words from the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, “No one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted in his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly.” This even implies that the government shouldn't even be able to deem it legal, nor should anyone part of this realm have any say on the issue. What the Catholic do condone, or I suppose what God indirectly condones, is martyrdom, and painkillers. With all due respect, I really hope that's enough for them when the time comes. The Catholic also believe in passive euthanasia, which, for example, is the act of removing a feeding tube from a brain-dead patient. Essentially all extra-means can be removed, such as said feeding tube, or all medications, and the individuals are then left to die. How this is so much more righteous and humane than active euthanasia is beyond me, since in most cases, active euthanasia spares the individual of much pain. In fact, the entire concept of assisted suicide is aimed at ending suffering and pain. Pieter Admiraal believes, as I do, that “there is, in the end, no morally relevant difference between these two forms of euthanasia.” It can even be said that, “active euthanasia is but one more way of delivering humane medical care.” It's not only hardcore Catholics that realize life is precious, but many others also believe that suffering is unnecessary, no matter for what duration. However, I believe that the choice to end one's life is only that person's and that person's alone. Again, it differs from the views of the religious extremists in that they think that everyone must also follow their views and that they know the best for them. This paternalism attitude gets old quickly.

 To view the subject from another point of view would be to acknowledge the opinion of a handicap individual who is against euthanasia. Alison Davis was born handicapped and at the time of her birth, her parents were, “encouraged to leave me in the hospital and 'go home and have another.'” Even I can admit that this is entirely too blunt for my taste, even though I can understand that the physicians were absolutely looking out for the family's happiness. I do agree with Alison Davis when she comments on her life's beginning and says, “I do not doubt that they were 'acting in good faith' when they advised my parents to abandon me, but that does not mean that their advice was correct.” In my opinion, the doctor's advice wasn't helpful and simply too cruel. Voluntary euthanasia cannot be compared to this situation because the former should always be suggested by the patient, not the physician. Alison Davis also comments on the value of a handicap person's life, and how assisted suicide demeans it. But in reality, the individuals who choose voluntary euthanasia as an end do not choose it for other people nor because of peer pressure from society; they make the choice for themselves because the suffering and pain is simply too much to bear. Their personal choice isn't an attack on all handicap people; it's utilizing the free will that comes with existing as a human being.

 For nearly all subjects, voluntary euthanasia was by no means their first choice on how they wished their life to continue on. It wasn't their second choice either. In every situation, the desperate solution was the result of a desperate situation. Carla didn't want to leave, hurt, and scar her children and husband. Chris Hill didn't want to leave the world he had once so dearly loved. Maggie didn't want her boxing dreams to ever die. The fate they were each dealt was not asked for, nor prayed upon, and some tried to make the best of their situations. They all thought and deliberated and reconsidered many times before making that final decision. But a once athletic rugby player can only lay motionless in a hospital bed for so long before reality dawns upon him and whispers into his consciousness, “Never again will you play.” The tragedy of these individuals' lives is something unconceivable by someone who has never experienced it. As Dr. Pieter Admiraal states, “Suffering, loss of control, and physical decline are subjective experiences, and nobody but the patient herself is in the position to decide when enough is enough. It would be quite improper for doctors or other health care professional to impose their values and their understanding of pain or suffering on the patient.” Even if one has been through traumatic events, remember that every individual is different, some more mentally optimistic than others. Life should be left with dignity, and death embraced when it is inevitable, but suffering is never necessary. Thus, the final solution can only come down to the individual and free will, which along with life, has been so graciously given to each and all of us, perhaps by God. To embrace and enjoy life is to embrace and enjoy free will, and to forcefully push one's beliefs upon others is simply rude. In the end, it really is every man for himself, in life and even more in death.

 Sincerely, Anna Shang