Although it might sound a little morbid, I feel that if someone you love is in excruciating pain and wants to be put out of his/her misery she/he should have the choice. Doctors now days should have the right to help a sane person who is slowly dying and in need of 24 medical care put an end to their own misery. We live in a society where people have a right to do just about anything. They have the right to vote, they have the right to remain silent, they have the right to speech, they have the right to be gay or straight or whatever other gender they decide, so why shouldn’t they have the right to end their lives if they see they can no longer take the pain. Moreover, why can’t a doctor, who has been by your side through all your diseases or maybe through the worst disease of your life, have the right to help you? We put our trusted pets to sleep when we see they are suffering too much, why cannot we do the same for ourselves.

A few years ago my great-grandmother was dying of Alzheimer; it was not a disease that couldn’t be managed between family members, but it was a disease that no one should have to go through. Towards the end of my great grandmother’s life every day, she had to be bathed, she had to be fed, her diaper had to be changed and she had to be rolled over to this side of the bed and that side to avoid sores, etc. It was an everyday battle to help keep her alive so that she could have what type of life exactly, I do not know. I remember seeing her there in a wheel chair just staring at the ceiling. One time I asked my mom why was she like that. That is when my mom had to explain to me about Alzheimer’s. She explained that she was not always like that, that at one time in her life she loved to dance and joke and tell stories, but that now she had gotten a terrible disease that left her life less. During the whole time I watched her I would think to myself, “man I would HATE to live like this!” Her life was not a life at all, yet she had to live like that for almost 10 years, bedridden. And although, that was not a reason to help her die slowly, I can only image how it would have been like to sit there and watch her go through cancer, or renal failure, or any other life threatening disease that sucks the life right out of you and makes you turn into a vegetable!

People have should have the right to say enough, I have had enough and be able to, if struck with a deadly disease, to say enough is enough and have a doctor that they trust and people around them that they trust, help them end what could be years and years of slow torture. That is why God gave us a brain, to understand and make critical decisions in our lives and we should have the right to make them just as we have the right to do everything else.