Agreed.
And to your point about the Schiavo case, do you think the way they went about it was wrong. I'm not big on the whole starve to death thing. I would like to have seen them be able to give her something so that she could go peaceful and quick.
I don't condone suicide but I am pro-euthanasia and firmly believe that people have the right to choose to end their lives, and that they should have the ability to do so in a humane fashion. Too many people in my extended family have suffered prolonged, painfully agonizing deaths ravaged by different kinds of cancer - intenstinal and colorectal cancer, bone cancer and leukemia to name a few. I've personally seen someone beg for death in brief moments of lucidity between doses of pain medication that doesn't help.
I find the obsession of some people, who have appointed themselves the moral police and seek to impose their morals and beliefs on others beyond offensive. I find it bordering on a mentality of torture. They step up and loudly proclaim that people shouldn't be able to choose to not continue living and that tragic as their case may be, people must take the pain and deal with it until their body just gives out.
On the subject of Terri Schiavo, I don't know to what degree she experienced pain while in PVS. Let's assume she felt some pain: I believe she shouldn't be required to endure pain. And if she didn't feel pain, I don't think she should be required to maintained by a machine against her will.
Of course, we don't know what her will on the topic was. We won't know - not with certainty. But in our society we have rules that allow people to make such decisions ahead of time, and we agree that certain people have the ability and authority to make such decisions for those who are unable to do so themselves and haven't made their wishes kmown. Spouses can – and should. Her husband should have been allowed to make decisions about her care without government interference. I can certainly understand her parents attempting to intervene - even going so far as to take the matter to Court and I would not seek to deprive them of that ability or the neutral arbiter that us the Court. I found the government interference problematic and deeply troubling.
I guess, for me, then case highlights just how important it is to have a written document that explicitly mentions one's wishes and explicitly appoints someone and grants him authority to make decisions in case of incapacity.
As a sidenote, I think that it's ironic that doctors cannot help a patient end his life peacefully and in a humane manner, but can sit by (or even facilitate) people who are starving to death because that's the only way we, as a society, allow people to exercise control over their own lives. I find it doubly ironic that they can seek to help blunt the pain - as if medicating such a person is some greatly compassionate act. And I find it triply ironic that many people who are opposed to euthanasia agree that people have a right to demand that treatment, including feeding, be withdrawn.
It's a fucked up world we live in...
