One of the new laws that took effect yesterday allows terminally ill patients to choose to end their lives with prescription drugs. The story on Hawaii News Now about the law, and online comments about it, got me thinking about it. I mean it’s easy to have a passing opinion on whether it should be allowed or not.
I’m not one to argue and debate. To each his own. I think that choice should be on the table tho. I smoke. I am diabetic. I take meds to control high blood pressure. There’s a good bet that I won’t naturally die a “old age disease” type of passing. So if I’m ever faced with being told I have terminal cancer, if I have a stroke and am incapacitated and given only a certain amount of time to live before succumbing, I want to have that option. It should not be against my will that I’m kept alive as a vegetable who can no longer communicate with my world around me, biding my time in my own internal silence, until I die.
I think of the few medical procedures I’ve had where I’m put under by anesthesia, and awake hours later after the surgery is done, not being conscious of the time that had gone by. If I’m going to die, if I’m going to face horrible pain and anguish at the hands of a disease or illness while waiting to ultimately die, let me do it my way. Let me go into euphoria and mental and emotional bliss, and awaken wherever I’m headed in the afterlife, not knowing how much time has passed and never feeling that transition into the next life.
I don’t think anyone, Hippocratic Oath or otherwise, has the right to determine that for me against my wishes.
On the theological side, there is no religious debate. This is about the legal issue of it. Once the law gives the option, the religious beliefs are what guides the person suffering to make that legal decision. That’s all…
2 thoughts on “Dying on one’s own terms”