In 1969, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross outlined the 5 stages of the dying process -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. She believes that suicide is wrong for terminally ill patients. She explains that "Lots of my dying patients say they grow in bounds and leaps, and finish all the unfinished business. [But assisting a suicide is] cheating them of these lessons, like taking a student out of school before final exams. That's not love, it's projecting your own unfinished business." Giving up too soon for these patients would give up the healthy process that sometimes brings the ultimate meaning to one's life.
I have always thought of the families' emotional battle with a terminally ill person, not necessarily the patients themselves. It makes sense to me that suicide would cut this emotional process short and I believe it is necessary but I also think prolonging a life could bring a great amount of suffering. I wonder which is more important.
are we really going to force people to have a meaning to their life and to learn it's lessons? we wouldnt dare force homeless people to work in order that they learn a work ethic how is this any different?
ReplyDeleteThe fact of the matter is that we already force society as a whole to do certain things that could be viewed as inessential for survival. Take education, for instance. A person could argue (and rightly so) that they can live a complete and healthy life without spending a day in school. What society (or at least the government) has decided, however, is that a person's life will be even fuller and have more opportunity if they're educated, whether or not they wanted to be taught in the first place. Likewise, the question with euthanasia isn't so much about if we are going to force people to do unnecessary, even painful things that could lead to greater meaning in life... that already happens. The question is, where should the line be drawn? Is the choice of whether or not to end one's own life really a right, or merely a desire that shouldn't ultimately be satisfied for that person's own good?
ReplyDeleteChosing death for a loved one is a difficult decision and not really one that people should have to make, but it comes around and such decisions need to be made because of the advances in medicine that allow someone to stay "alive" long after they are say brain dead. This i think could either make the ultimate death easier or more difficult, whether lacking the ability to let go and holding on to something that is already gone, or by being able to say the goodbyes that many people wish they could give. Either way, death is painful, but whether or not we should decide when that death takes place...I don't know.
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