Do we have a right to choose our own death? How we die and when we die?
It's a question that always seems to rouse heated debate between everyone in the room. Well, assuming you go to dinner parties where the topic of assisted suicide is a choice subject of discussion. But I digress.
Yesterday on the front page of The Vancouver Sun was an article about a sociology professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, by the name of Russell Ogden. Ogden has been researching underground assisted suicide, often referred to as "Nu Tech deathing", for over 14 years. He is now trying to expand on his research by being witness to an assisted suicide. However, the Kwantlen administration has told him that he cannot "engage in any illegal activity, including attending at an assisted death". Interestingly, it's not illegal in Canada to commit suicide nor is it against the law to witness an illegal event. Ogden and the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) are fighting this decision and could possibly overturn it - it's happened before in Ogden's career.
So do people who are suffering from terminal illnesses (the majority of people engaging in assisted suicide) have a right to end their lives? How about other people who don't have life-threatening diseases? Do they have a right to die at any given point in time?
I think they do. I don't particularly like the idea of suicide, but I believe that if we have the right to live our lives as we please, to make choices about our lives every day that will profoundly affect our future and our state of happiness, then we have the right to make the ultimate choice about our lives: the decision to die. Of course I would hope those who were coming from a place of sadness and depression that might make attempts at suicide would reach out for help, or have people around them that cared enough to try and support them and love them, to help them address their issues and move forward with their lives in a positive way. But that is not always the case. And in general, I think that our lives belong to us, at least on a physical level, and we have the right to end them if that's what we choose to do. I mean, is it really fair for someone to be physically forced to stay alive, against their own will? That doesn't seem right to me.
I think that really, it's all about context. I mean, I don't think it should be legal for people to just commit suicide at any old place they choose (a gelato shop, for example, would be a bad idea), but if you're suffering through life mostly bedridden, barely able to function on a basic level as a terminal illness ravages your body, then by all means, take that leap into the last great adventure and bring an end to your pain. I think assisting someone with their death in that context is probably one of the most courageous and compassionate things someone could do for another person.
However, the Canadian Medical Association begs to differ. According to their website, "The CMA does not support euthanasia and assisted suicide. It urges its members to uphold the principles of palliative care."
The website goes on to state:
"Euthanasia means knowingly and intentionally performing an act that is explicitly intended to end another person's life and that includes the following elements: the subject is a competent, informed person with an incurable illness who has voluntarily asked for his or her life to be ended; the agent knows about the person's condition and desire to die, and commits the act with the primary intention of ending the life of that person; and the act is undertaken with empathy and compassion and without personal gain."
Why all the fuss over this? I mean, even the way they describe it sounds like something that isn't so bad, given the somewhat sad situation. Compassion and empathy? Everyone involved is fully aware of the intent of the actions taken and is a consenting adult? Consider what the CMA's stake in this might be and draw your own conclusions.
All legal schmegal aside, I find this to be a larger reflection of the way our society views the idea of death and dying. What are we so afraid of? I mean, the religious factor weighs in heavily on this issue, as many religions forbid suicide, since it is seen as God's right, and only God's right, to end a human being's life, and to take one's own life without the hand of God is considered a sin. But apart from the religious issues, what else seems to be the problem? I mean, the average person spends a lot of their time trying to avoid death and dying - we wear seatbelts in our cars, we generally try to avoid obviously dangerous and/or life-threatening situations (like dipping ourselves in gravy and locking ourselves in a room with a rabid wolverine that's high on angel dust - George Carlin, R.I.P.). We generally don't care much for the idea of death, especially our own death. And why is that? I mean, no one's ever really reported back from there, so why do we automatically assume that the life we're in right now is somehow better than that great mystery of whatever happens after death?
The great unknown. That is what we fear. There really is no way to tell what comes after death, and that scares the hell out of us. So we try to smother that fear with rules and regulations and safety precautions that might prevent it from happening as much as possible, given the inevitable reality that we're all going to die at some point anyway. But does that get us anywhere? Not really.
To be honest, I think we'd get a lot further in our understanding and appreciation of life AND death if we stopped looking at death as this horrific mortal sin or tragedy, and start to open our minds a bit, to see it as not something we necessarily should actively pursue, but something that is inevitable and can provide amazing insight into the lives that we choose to live now, and really, the nature of the universe as a whole.
Thank you, class. I'll see you next week.
