THE RIGHT TO DIE
© Copyright 2003 Video Gamer X Publications

Right now, a controversy in a local city to me is making national news and in many ways the senselessness of it sickens me. There's this woman named Teri Shiavo who is under 24-hour care at the Hospice center in Pinellas Park. Teri is clinically brain dead, she can not talk, volintarily move her body, or even swallow. She is being kept alive by a feeding tube that injects nutrients, as well as living on a ventilator. She has been in this state for over 13 years now after suffering a heart attack cut flow of oxygen to the brain. She has no living will however her husband says that there is no way that she would want to continue living like this, and he has been fighting a legal battle with Teri's parents who want to keep her alive on the life support systems, thinking that somehow she can be rehabilitated, even though all previous attempts at rehabiliation have failed. Six days ago a State Judge ordered the feeding tube removed so that she could die naturally and that would be the end of it, however all of these grass roots Christians came out of the woodwork and lobbyed the Republican controlled state senate to create a retroactive moritorium on removal of life support systems in cases where a party contests such action. As well Governer Jeb Bush wrote it into law today and the Hospice people had no choice but the reconnect the introvenus feeding tube.

"Like the tens of thousands of Floridians who have raised their voices in support of Terri Schiavo's right to live, I have been deeply moved by these tragic circumstances," Bush said in a statement issued after he signed the bill. "My thoughts and prayers remain with Terri and those who love her."

The way I see it, let the poor lady just die already, her brain and consciousness is done, there is nothing left, no activity, if there is anything to the notion of afterlife in any of human being's religions even the damn Christains, at least she'll be in a better place if they let her die, and that's not even addressing reincarnation. For crying out loud, if I was in that condition, unable to even be aware of reality I would want to die and figure out what it was I wanted to do after my body was finished, however since she's not conscious but not dead there is a paradox between ethical concerns, and it has created a legal quagmire that just keeps on going, every year I hear something on the news about this lady and the battle to just let her die already. Now the one exception I would accept in this regard is if in fact the information about her being unrehabilitatable is false, and in fact no attempt at doing this was made, then no, she should not be euphanized, rather an unbiased attempt should be made to bring her back to some quality of life. However if after performing everything possible to restore her fails, then the issue should be moot, and essnetially wasted effort to keep a breathing corpse alive.

Actually, now that I think of it, another local issue made national news, and it involved this heavy metal band, Hell on Earth, that wanted to have a live suicide of a terminally ill man during the concert. The venues where the concert might have happened both cancelled the band's performance. The band said that they would still do it at an undisclosed location and broadcast it over the internet on their website. The St. Petersburg city council automatically made it illegal to broadcast a live suicide and also said that they would arrest all the band members if it was found out that the suicide happened and was watching their website. They were to be charged with manslaughter and assisting a suicide. At the date and time the concert was supposed to happen and the suicide take place their website wouldn't function as if sabotaged.

I mean, what common sense is this? The guy wanted to kill himself, the band members weren't murdering him, if he wanted to do it in that atmosphere, who the hell cares? It's not up to our legislature to define personal morality to that level and pry into our most personal of decisions like how we die.

This whole holding on to life for the sake of empty hope and worthless morality is yet another consequence of our inherantly Christian society and it's values based upon antiquated crap from the Bible that doesn't make a lot of sense anymore. It is simply a matter of the government injecting it's own notion of morality in light of protests from conservative devouts who think it's murder. Aren't these inherantly the same guys who put up a stink when doctors and scientists extend life unnaturally against "the will of God?" Each individual has the dignity and personal freedom to kill himself/herself if they choose to, however if they are not under any duress or severe disability or suffering they should be counseled on their decision to see if there is another alternative or discuss the rationality of such thinking. It truly is a personal decision. In the case where the quality of life is so depleated and there is no question whether or not the person is actually conscious anyway, they should just be euphanized. It's the humane thing to do. As well, a severely ill or terminal patient that is undergoing severe pain and suffering should be allowed by law to ask the doctors to just inject them with painless poison and give it up, why endure pain like that if there is no hope of recovery and the eventual result is guaranteed death. I personally would just want to die and forget about this life and start over with the next one or wherever it is I go when I die. And for the atheists, once you're dead that's it, so you won't feel any pain anymore and it won't matter anymore so why bother with it anyway.

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