A Rational Conclusion Essay, Research Paper

Imagine your life as it is now. You drudge to work everyday and do not get enough sleep half of the time, but you are reasonably healthy and happy. Now, how would you feel if you are dying from cancer and can no longer feed or bathe yourself, or even speak coherently? What if you can hardly move because you are so weak and you are bedridden? What if you are in a situation where you are constantly suffering from pain, and doctors will not give you adequate pain medications because they fear you will get addicted or fear you will die if they give you enough medication to ease your suffering? What if you have lost all bodily function and your family is hurting to see you in so much distress? What if you have been in the hospital for over a year and your medical bills are soaring and you cannot remember what fresh air smells like? I am sure that you would consider the relief that death would bring. Maybe you wouldn t ask your family to let you die, but some one else will. So don t you think that it is that person s choice to decide their fate?

I cannot imagine anyone who would want to live under those conditions, but I know most people certainly do not want to die. Until you are put in that situation, I think it would be wrong to judge others on their choices. Many people find themselves facing a moral dilemma when they have a loved one in that situation and know they want to end their misery. Christians might say that God gave you life; therefore, it is not yours or any one else s to take away. Yet for those whom religion doesn t have a significant place in their lives, they have a choice, though an illegal one for the time being.

Suicide or assisted suicide, in certain cases, should be allowed. Many doctors and therapists might feel that if a person wants to commit suicide, they must be unstable or insane. If a person is mentally unstable then they are a candidate for drug and psychotherapy. Yet an invalid, who has a strong desire to die and if deemed mentally stable and coherent, should have the right to die with dignity.

Suicide is a common way of ending agony. Yet those who are invalid, or in the hospital, don t have the choice of suicide. It is discriminatory to prevent someone from committing suicide in an institution or hospital. A very ill person would not have the means, or strength to kill his or herself in an institution and if anyone found out what that person was going to do, they would stop them. Assisted suicide presents a humane way of letting a person pass on, and if legalized could be regulated so that before their death they would be evaluated by psychologists and doctors who could prove or disprove their candidacy for assisted suicide.

I am not suggesting that every terminal patient kill his or herself, but merely saying that under the right circumstances a person should have that option open to them. If your pet were in the same situation as an incurably ill person, it would be hard, but you would let them go rather than let their quality of life diminish and watch them suffer.

If you were in these people s positions you would definitely seek all possible means of escaping your fate and one of those ways is death. Death lets the body rest from the pain and suffering that a person and his family have to endure. Is it too much to ask for the victims of terminal illnesses to have a chance to rest? Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for a dying person is to let them go.