Youth-in-asia

Euthanasia; a controversial issue, a misunderstood sentiment and a concept I have strongly supported throughout my short life, more passionately now than ever.

On the surface such an idea might seem to be outrageous, the very thought of aiding someone end their existence is beyond comprehension to some. I would argue that such people may not have seen those they love in excruciating and debilitating pain, an experience that would transform anyone into a vessel intended to carry out all wishes of those consciously rotting into nothingness.

As we age, those around us, parents, siblings, spouses and friends alike get older, sicker and eventually die. That is the most devastating truth about aging, a fact that is ignored until it is impossible to do so.

All who care deeply for those around them that suffer long and painful deaths should understand that the only thing some pray for is deliverance. A release from an agonizing existence with a grim prognosis and an entrance into whatever they believe to be laid out before them. If nothing else, an escape from what has become of their lives.

Illegal in most states, this issue has, slowly over time, gained more support in California. Bills have traveled through state legislature, most recently losing by a hairline vote.

The L.A. Weekly termed the bill as a “right-to-die measure for terminally ill patients,” which differs from a pro-euthanasia proposition.

Technically the term “euthanasia” would legalize the action of one person administering lethal doses of drugs to another, which is not the case of such attempted measures.

Instead, what is proposed is the legality of a terminally ill patient, in sound mind, expected to die within the next 6 months, to request lethal doses of medication to be able to die painlessly and in some schools of thought, with their pride in tact when broaching an appropriate time. The difference being that the patients would administer the medication to themselves in pill form.

This same article featured a man who had promised his wife, of many years, on her deathbed, that he would do all that he could to ensure she died peacefully and painlessly. The woman had been diagnosed with cancer and after surgery and intensive chemotherapy, it was decided that his wife was incurable.

Once her discomfort had become unbearable, her husband asked the doctor to administer drugs to his dying wife, allowing her to die peacefully as she had requested; the doctor refused.

Shortly afterwards, the woman was medically induced into a coma. Her husband noticed a wheezing sound exuding from her lungs and questioned the doctor about the odd noise. The reply this man received about his comatose dying wife was that he was hearing the liquid in her lungs that would eventually drown her to death; the very thing he witnessed while sleeping at her side that final night.

This is not some fabricated story to beg an emotion from any reader; it is a clarification of reality.

I, myself, have watched such a passing. I stood by my father’s side as he died of cancer. By the time it was diagnosed, the mass had metastasized so extensively barring him from candidacy of a liver transplant.

My father was finally sent home from the hospital after being told there was nothing else the doctors could do. Equipped with a bottle of morphine pills to “alleviate discomfort,” it would be proven that, once an illness has progressed so aggressively there is little to comfort the body, the mental anguish being excruciating.

After his death I forced myself to consider the option of euthanasia and my reaction to such a proposal that would have spared him from much pain.

Though he never put forth a request for such relief, I felt obligated to determine what I would have done had he asked.

I am confident, morally and ethically comfortable in the fact that, without a doubt, I would have granted him such a demand, irrespective of any legal implications that might have resulted for me. I am bound to my morals first; a foundation I believe is, at times, more ethical than written law.

It is not merely a question of a moral agreement with the notion of what is requested of you by those you love, those who are in an excruciatingly terminal state of illness. Instead, it is a necessity to honor their desires, their dying wishes.

The analogy I can best explain this is concept is that with the choice of abortion. Just because I am pro-choice does not by any means conclude that I am pro-abortion. Would I undergo such a procedure? Such a question is left to dispute and is circumstantial.

Irrespective, such a decision should be based on my personal morals and ethical standards, answering solely to myself, independent from governmental restriction and its apparently tied religious castigation.

As an adult, of sound mind, I should be awarded the freedom to make decisions concerning the status of my person, free from legal consequence.

All that remains in my memory, in my thought, pertaining to this issue is that, at times, it is more difficult to witness others in pain than to experience it yourself. As you stand by their side you promise to do all that they wish, knowing, all the while, that something they may request may be beyond your means. Powerless, you make empty promises all the same; to provide hope, reassurance and what is left of a gesture of love and compassion.

There is nothing more I can reveal than my hope that not many more have to endure such a painful process before some legislative progress is made on this issue, benefiting our families, friends and who knows, possibly, in the future, ourselves.