Talking about death is sad.

So this has been a really interesting (if sad) week of posts. I think everyone has brought up fascinating and informative ideas and I'm glad to be here to share my opinions.

First off, I agree wholeheartedly with Pendleton when she says that it's not up to us to legislate morality and personal opinions on morality are not bases for laws. On the flip side, laws are meant to protect the people. Personally though, I believe that there isn't any reason to make a law protecting us from ourselves. Laws are to protect us from other people (or other people from us, as the case may be).

That said, there are lots of factors to assisted suicide. A family member on life support can be a huge drain on a families resources, both financial and mental, and one might argue that if there is just about no chance of the person ever recovering (or recovering with serious brain damage), it would be more worth it to pull the plug. Others might argue that doctors can be wrong and if there is any chance then they should continue as long as they are able. I think that falls squarely into the category of personal choice. The person can't stay alive on their own so allowing the person to die naturally is not really assisted suicide. The same (in my opinion) goes for a Do Not Resuscitate order. If the person's body is already self-destructing, letting it do that is just the natural cycle of life and death.

Of course, one could argue that it's the doctor's job to mess with the natural cycle of life and death. Their job is to prolong life, which has led to an increase of a slew of diseases affecting the elderly. Obviously, this doesn't mean we should stop letting people practice medicine, but it does mean there are more things to consider than someone's body self-destructing.

For example, Brandon brought up the idea of Alzheimer's and how he'd hate to life as a shell of his former self. I fully agree. It must be terrible to live that way and I can say first hand how terrible it is to be around. They aren't the person they used to be, and that's terrifying, but at the same time...I don't think I'd want to die. I think life could still hold happiness. I personally really wouldn't want anyone to have to take care of me and deal with me like that but I don't think I'd want to die.

There was an episode of SVU that brought up the idea that "there is no such thing as a terminal mental illness" and that's both true and sad. If your body is working fine, your brain can be wreaking havoc and there just isn't a quantitative way to measure that. You can't measure quality of life and you can't say "Well, this is bad enough where you are eligible for assisted suicide but you just have to suck it up." There is no way to draw that line. I think if there are diseases where the person suffering has no effective treatment and desires assisted suicide, then it should be an available option after a certain waiting period. Obviously, this seems like a wide net, but I really mean this for only serious comprehensively life-affecting diseases. This is not for people with depression that can be treated.

As far as physical diseases go, I think the body really has its own way of dealing with things, but a slow, painful death is not something anyone should have to endure if it's the only future ahead of them. And even in situations where it might not be terminal, if it's not treatable (and I mean treatable, not curable), then it really seems like the person's choice as to whether or not they would like to endure it.

Health care is expensive and it seems almost immoral to me to force someone to pay for what I can only assume is ridiculously expensive health care (for such a presumably serious disease) just to prolong a life they don't want to live. If someone really wants to end their life, they can probably find a way, and I think giving them a humane option (after serious counseling and various other screening procedures) is the best thing to do.