If you have ever watched a loved one die a slow and painful death, then you would have an idea why assisted suicide should be decriminalized in certain circumstances. After watching an aunt die slowly from lung cancer, it seems that something is wrong.
Veterinarians euthanize our animals so that they don’t suffer. In fact, people are chastised when they don’t do so. People don’t understand letting an animal suffer, so why do they let people do so? People can suffer horribly for months and months with diseases that incurable and hospitals will pump them full of drugs in an attempt to merely ‘keep them comfortable’.
Cancer is one of the many diseases that rob people of their bodies, their health and their lives. Slowly but surely, all is taken away. It starts off as sickness, then it becomes devastating and painful. You can no longer work. You can no longer participate in the things that used to comprise your everyday life. The illness takes over and there are fewer and fewer good days. Eventually there are only a few good moments. At some point, there are no more good moments. Your quality of life is completely gone, you are confined to a hospital bed and fighting for each and every breath. This is suffering. When you can no longer eat without help, spend most of your time in a drug-induced sleep and have to have breathing treatments over and over, all day long, to help keep you from drowning in the fluid building in your lungs…it just may be that you are ready to die?
Why would you want to sit and watch someone that you love suffer like this? It is horrible to watch someone that you care about waste away to skin and bone and find themselves so ill that they can’t even breath, or keep food down. When they are praying to die, why do people pray that they will live? Shouldn’t they want to keep them as comfortable as possible while they have a life to enjoy and then when all that is taken away from them, help them pass on with some dignity? Shouldn’t they want to lessen the time that their loved ones are hurting and sick?
When it is merely a matter of time and there is nothing much worth living for, assisted suicide should be an alternative that is offered to patients who no longer wish to suffer. If they are not of a sound mind to make the decision, then the next of kin should be able to make this choice for them. People do it for their dogs; they should do it for people.