Sierra's+Letter

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Dear Mr. Smith,

First and foremost I would like to express my gratitude to you for taking the time to correspond with my class. I have read and reviewed your post on the class blog site as well as your article in The Weekly Standard titled “Million Dollar Missed Opportunity.” I respect your well-articulated opinions but I must be honest and say that I whole heartedly disagree with them. First I will summarize the writings of the Catholic Church, a journalist who suffered a hang-gliding accident that renders him a paraplegic, a doctor who participates in active voluntary euthanasia, and a disabled rights activist on the matter. I will get to my opinion later.

The Catholic “Declaration on Euthanasia” written by Cardinal Franjo Seper and adopted at the ordinary meeting of the sacred congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is very clear in its affirmation that “nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant, an old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying.” The Cardinal also writes intentionally causing one’s own death is akin to the sin of murder. To top the argument off, no one really wants to end their life; “The pleas of gravely ill people who sometimes ask for death are not to be understood as implying true desire for euthanasia; in fact it is almost always a case of an anguished plea for help and love. To the Catholic Church, the right to life is the most fundamental right of the human person. However, no matter how staunch their view on the matter, they still permit passive euthanasia as morally okay, saying “when inevitable death is imminent in spite of the means used, it is permitted in conscience to take the decisions to refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted.” They then declare the suffering involved in passive euthanasia is recognized as having a “special place in God’s saving plan; it is in fact a sharing in Christ’s passion and a union with the redeeming sacrifice which he offered in obedience to the Father’s will.”

On the complete opposite of the spectrum, journalist and paraplegic Chris Hill writes in “The Note” explaining his will to die after a hang-gliding incident. He begins by explaining the nearly unbelievably adventurous and fulfilling life he had led before his accident. He writes of a life filled to the brim with adventures and romantic trysts on exotic beaches, riding motorcycles to the tops of volcanoes, as well as an abundance of caring family and good friends. His writing powerfully projects sentimentality which makes his description of his life after the accident so heart breaking. His first lines include comparing himself to “a talking head mounted on a bloody wheelchair.” He continues: “I lost my dignity and self-respect. I would forever be a burden on those around me and I didn’t want that no matter how willingly and unthinkingly family and friends assumed that burden. Every time I had to ask someone to do something for me, every time I was dragged up a damn step, was like thrusting a hot blade into the place where my pride used to be.” And yet through all of this Chris describes himself as having a powerful incentive to persevere. He says he went out to shops, theatres, restaurants, concerts. He learned how to drive again. He even continued to work and had a girlfriend. But he writes: “I hated every second of it with a passion I’d never felt before” and refuses to use the word life when he explains his new “existence” as “painful, frustrating, and completely unsatisfying.” Not only was his condition unbearably emotionally painful, but he also describes his physical pain in gruesome detail followed by “I never imagined anyone could hurt so bad and cry so much. 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.” “The Note” ends with Chris saying he wishes it didn’t have to end this way and he asks his loved ones to find it in their hearts to forgive him. He ends his own life.

Next there is Pieter Admiraal, a Dutch doctor who writes “listening and Helping to Die: The Dutch Way,” saying he practices active voluntary euthanasia “unashamedly because I regard it as sometimes morally right, as not only compatible with the properly understood responsibilities of a doctor, but as an act sometimes required by them.” He then compares failing to practice voluntary euthanasia in some cases to failing the patient. Next Admiraal weighs the differences and similarities of passive and active euthanasia, finally reaching the conclusion that passive is in fact morally worse because it very often inflicts “on a patient a way of dying that he or she does not want, and finds unacceptable and undignified.” His most frequently mentioned point is the importance of a patient’s autonomy and respecting the patient as a “self-determining person” able to accurately evaluate their own pain and suffering and decide on the measures to control their situation. Passionately against euthanasia is activist, Alison Davis who writes in “Right to Life of Handicapped” a protest to “the bill drafted by Mr. and Mrs. Brahams permitting doctors to withhold treatment from newborn handicapped babies” before they are twenty-eight days old. Alison Davis was born with severe myelomeningocele spina bifida, which renders her doubly incontinent and wheelchair bound. When she was born “in more tolerant times” the doctors still encouraged her parents to leave her in their care and ‘go home to have another.’ Davis affirms that rather than ending an infant’s suffering so hastily, it is important to give them a chance to fight for their lives as she did. She continues in saying “Legislation of the type proposed could well also lead to //de facto// decriminalization of the act of killing a handicapped person of any age, just as it did in Hitler’s Germany.”

As you write that the most precious commodity is time, to me, the absolute most beautiful thing in this world next to human compassion is free will. Free will is not something to be taken advantage of, but it should never be taken for granted. Every single moment of every one of our lives involves a choice. Sometimes an action we choose does not reap the desired effect. Sometimes our choices are subconscious as we float through life on autopilot. And sometimes our choices hurt others. Other times they simply make them uncomfortable, but we were born with this essential capacity to choose and face consequences. However, when it comes to an individual’s choice to go out of this world, people tend to reject the idea because it is too uncomfortable. Life is the only thing any of us know for sure, and of course is something to be held onto and cherished. But when such a huge part of our lives is free will, I find it difficult to justify the choice to take the choice of to be or not to be away from someone. Coming from a purely scientific point of view, every single one of us is in some stage of decay, until we finally reach that pivotal moment when we can no longer be defined as alive. Although plenty of reasons for death are terrible and untimely, I do not believe euthanasia should carry this stigma.

I disagree with activist groups who believe that the legalization of euthanasia will cause society to value disabled persons' lives less. Euthanasia in no way means that we have given up on a person or pushed them out of life, it should simply mean that we respected an individual's choice and autonomy. However, in the cases of those who cannot give their consent to be euthanized, I do not believe that it is morally justifiable to end someone’s life no matter if they are in a vegetative state, or an infant. I recently read in the December 2, 2011 issue of The Week that researchers are beginning to be able to communicate with patients deemed “brain dead” through EEG Machines and measurements of the electrical activity in the brains of sixteen comatose patients who are unable to move and speak. Previous studies have shown up to forty percent of vegetative patients may be partially aware, but testing previously required expensive MRI scans. Since EEG sensors are much cheaper researchers are hoping that patients can learn to answer by imagining scenarios that activate different brain regions for “yes” and “no.” The article quotes University of Western Ontario neuroscientist Damian Cruse who told //The Washington Post,// “We can ask them what it’s like to be in this condition. What do they need?” It is easy to cast aside those who are in a vegetative state as unconscious and less human but they may be very much alive within their own mind so I do not believe ‘pulling the plug’ in cases where there is not an advanced directive is right. Consent must be given in order to give the assertion that euthanasia will cause society to give up on people less basis.

Two years ago, after 60 years of a full and happy life, my great aunt Pam passed away. Hear me out when I say that this is not a tragic story of suicide or euthanasia, but rather one of care and compassion. Pam, who was my great grandmother's third out of five children, was born mentally disabled in a time when most families would have given her away to a care facility. She had no definitive diagnosis that might have given her parents hope for rehabilitation and had limited speech and mobility. Pam often had outbursts of spontaneous anger and was difficult to take care of. My great grandmother devoted much of her life to caring for Pam up until the day she passed away, never giving up on her. Because she had love in her heart, Pam's outbursts were few and I remember happy times with Pam, one giggling as we watched Snow White together at a Christmas gathering. There are many disabled people that are not as fortunate as Pam was to have an individual like my great grandmother as her mother and caregiver. It makes me sad when those against euthanasia say individuals who are disabled and have lost the will to live just need love and care. This is absurd. Of course they do! But how many people will volunteer time out of their day to care for the elderly, the terminally ill, or the disabled? These days, nurses and doctors are spread too thin to offer enough of the love and care these people need. Although I do believe in the right to choose, I wish we cared for each other more as a society in order to make everyone's life worth living. I hope we can prevent our disabled and elderly from “merely being warehoused in a nursing home” as you said so many are. This is why I volunteer some of my time every week to visit one of my local nursing homes with my pet and certified therapy animal. Not only is the benefit to the residents plainly seen in the smiles on their faces, but I have not found much else that is as fulfilling and I hope to get more people involved.

Now I must jump right in and express my biggest problem with your argument that “depression rates after 5 years equal that of the normal population.” I fail to understand why this is okay. Why is this something that we should settle for? I sincerely hope that I am misinterpreting your point. I would be extremely insulted and further upset if someone tried to comfort me with “Don’t worry; you’re just one among many who are suffering.” Of course we may not be able to cure every person of their depression, disabled or not, but where is the compassion on giving up on them because they are a statistic?

I also do not believe that the script writers of Million Dollar Baby manipulate the audience emotionally into thinking, “of course she wants to die. Given the same situation who wouldn’t?” First of all I do not believe that manipulation was their intent at all but had it been, they would not have succeeded. As I have seen, most people are pretty set in their opinion on life, death, and where euthanasia comes in, and I don’t think the movie altered too many opinions. The script writer’s intent was simple: to entertain. I also disagree with the hypotheticals of Maggie becoming a teacher, opening a business managing boxers, or receiving a standing ovation as an inspirational teacher and I think they are unnecessary. I agree with my English teacher who says it is pointless to imagine what could have happened in literature because it completely goes against the authority of the author as a story teller; they simply did not want the story to happen that way because it would not hold the same entertainment value.

I will end my letter to you, Mr. Smith, by saying that despite our differing opinions I also whole heartedly agree with you when you say “How we respond to their distress tells us a lot about ourselves and whether we have the capacity to be truly “compassionate,” the root meaning of which is to “suffer with,” and I hope you use your status to help more people find their capacity for compassion to give further support to the many who so desperately need and deserve it.

Sincerely, Sierra McAvoy Foothill Technology High School Senior