Published April 06, 2006

The right to live or die. It seems like a pretty basic concept, but there are plenty of people who will fight this ideology tooth and nail.

They claim that no such right exists, that people should not be able to make this decision. If this most basic decision is not a right of the individual, then what is it? Why do people insist on creating legislation that will charge such an act as a felony? I am of course referring to euthanasia, or assisted suicide.

It appears that it is the very same people that scorn government policies controlling their lives that will support such laws. The only explanation for this is that they are upset about the creation of laws that they don’t agree with, but as long as they regard topics that will not affect their own lives it is acceptable for the government to pry. This is clearly hypocritical and should be recognized as such.

This is not an issue about society condoning or encouraging the death of any person within it, but instead about the rights of individuals.

Nobody is suggesting that people should be given access to free and hassle-free deaths. Although this is a decision to be made by the individual, it is not one to be made on a whim. There are many countries that have recently passed legislation allowing forms of assisted suicide as long as strict conditions are met.

In fact, evidence suggests that giving people the option to seek medial assistance for their desire to kill themselves will reduce the number of people that actually go through with such an act.

People argue that a slippery slope will form, and any depressed adolescent will be able to go into a clinic and come back the next day to end his life. This is just not the case. No one is going to pass laws allowing minors an easy way to commit suicide; it is simply not a substantiated argument.

The real issues of euthanasia are regarding individuals who have true reason to want to die.

Terminally ill patients and those suffering from extreme pain or degeneration may express the desire to end their lives. Why is it considered criminal to allow this to happen?

If a patient makes a clear and conscious decision to take such an extreme action, then there is no one that should have the power to veto it. Making the assistance of such actions felonies only makes the suffering individuals seek alternatives that will very likely increase their risk of injury.

Another consideration is that of life prolonging equipment, most often used for people in vegetative states. There are people that want to make the discontinuation of such equipment illegal.

Why do they feel they should be able to make these sorts of decisions for others? People need to realize that we have the right to make decisions that will affect us based on our own values.

In most cases, the fighting to ban euthanasia has come from politicians in accordance with religious affiliations that they want to mobilize as a base. To do so they say they are standing up for religious values that can be instilled on the general public. These are not the kinds of issues that should be controlled by legislation. They are individual rights of choice we all have, and not an opportunity for groups to try and impose their own values on others.