Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2009-09-21 12:15
When medicine provides no relief from an unbearable disease, assisted suicide makes a lot more sense than the barbaric methods that comprise the common means of voluntary death available to people in England and in most of the USA.
It's difficult, and should be difficult, to pass legislation permitting assisted suicide, because without careful writing and implementation, there's such an obvious potential for abuse, including pressure and undue influence from would-be heirs. Also, those of us who want to support such legislation are reluctant to do so in public, because we have families and friends of our own, including elderly and gravely ill people who might worry, "Does that mean s/he wishes I would die soon?" Of course not. I don't want to hurt these people I love.
But, I'm thinking much more selfishly than that: Someday, the end of my own life should be my own business. Now, I'm healthy and I love my life. But someday, if develop some unbearable, terminal disease and I need to choose to get it over with, I want that choice available. I don't want to get stuck with some disgusting, amateurish method, such as jumping in front of a train (and traumatizing the conductor and everybody else on board) or shooting myself (victimizing the person who discovers the mutilated corpse). By then, I might not be physically capable of joining the do-it-yourself club anyway. I wouldn't ask someone else to assist me in what's now a criminal act in my jurisdiction.
Instead, it's likely no legislation will have passed here by then. No merciful alternative will be available. More likely I'll get trapped into weeks, months, even years of suffering hell on earth, while the prescription drug and equipment cartels and the greedy doctors they co-opt as their street pushers conspire to ignore my written directive and enrich themselves by keeping me technically alive on machines and drugs, against my will. Think of all the people in your own lives who've ended up that way while well-intentioned but helpless relatives at bedside have blathered on, defensively, with all the usual triteness: so courageous, such a fighter, hanging on until the end, we're doing everything we can, never give up hope, blah blah blah blah blah, while whatever's left of a human being lies there unable to move or speak while wishing someone would just reach over and pull the damn plug.
I admire Pamela Weston for having the courage to make her private choice public, and thereby endure the scrutiny of many preachy busybodies during the last weeks of her life, in order to bring much-needed focus to this difficult situation. Clarinet players are good at details, and it's clear that she had to be, because the present system made navigating the minutiae of the application process bizarrely difficult for her. I'm sorry she got Myalgic Encephalomyelitis at all. I hope the idiot who did that to her by going around "social-kissing" while sick comes down with a double dose of guilt. And I'm sorry she had to go through so much extra hassle at the end.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
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