The Right To Die

I was a sophomore in high school. I was at a speech competition, in rural Nebraska, and the topic I pulled out of the hat for improvisational speaking was something like “Do people have a right to die (euthanasia)?” Of course, this was in the 90’s, when Jack Kevorkian was making headlines. I’m pretty sure that the tiny slip of paper was the first time I had read the word ‘euthanasia’. For those of you who didn’t do competitive improvisational speaking, the basic approach is that you get a topic and then have a short period of time to do research from a library of primary materials (books, newspapers), and then you have to give a persuasive speech from one side of the topic while addressing the known opposition. Seems to me knowing these boundaries is important because it frames that the first time I ever knowingly encountered this topic, I had to look at ‘both sides’. I spoke on the side of ‘yes’. I don’t remember if I won that contest (I was okay at speech). Aside, my speech coach *insisted* that I take the short story ‘Shrek’ (you may have heard of it, but at the time, it was not a movie) on for humerous prose. I don’t remember how I was judged, but I do know that speech took me to state. She was right, people loved the ogre story.

A few decades have gone by. I still believe that we have a right to die. I am far more passionate about it than I was as youth, but there is no outlet for this passion. No one wants to talk about it. No one wants to hear about it. Most of us don’t even confront the fact that we are absolutely going to die. Every single one of us will die. The death rate is 1.^[*]

One person dies by suicide an average of every 11 minutes. I don’t think suicide is an abomination. Suicide is emotionally gutting for those left behind, and it is often not the choice that we would make for a person. Yet, it happens…rather a lot. I believe that suicide can be both a devastating way out of what feels like an impossible emotional problem and a last resort for people who are suffering and do not want to anymore. I believe that it is impossible to know what kind of pain any other individual is experiencing and it is impossible to know if it will improve. I believe that people who commit suicide should have had access to a dignified death after reasonable counseling. Suicide is a choice; competent adults should be allowed to make that choice. < I hate that I have to do this but I want the trolls to know I’m not a 100% out of touch ass; the next few pargraphs are just me talking about my experience with suicide. > I have in the past had and overcame suicidal ideation. I have gone through ASIST Pathways for Assisting Life and SafeTalk. I absolutely would not encourage anyone towards suicide. I grieve friends and family members who have chosen suicide.

The Washington State Psychology Association was neutral on I-1000, but found that “patients choose aid in dying because of a desire for autonomy and the wish to avoid loss of dignity and control, not because of a poor mental state, lack of resources or social support,”

Here is a pretty short list of my related opinions that you didn’t ask for:

1. people have a right to die on their own terms
2. not giving people a safe and clean and painless way to die on their own terms is harmful
3. we waste a lot of money and time and resources on tests and procedures that people probably don’t want
4. life quality should not be measured by its length
5. its not ‘brave’ to suffer if you don’t want to

[*] so far