You know how adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up? When I was a kid -- as young as 6 years old -- I wanted to answer "dead" but knew better. My life circumstances were so bad at home and at school that my death was all I thought about; it was that way until I was 29...the only hope & comfort in this world I had. I have had people I knew who made that choice and had to resort to desperate measures to exercise it. I also know people whose lives were destroyed because someone's desire for death was so desperate their paths crossed for a brief moment in time. As such, the right to die is one I have thought of a great deal since that time, about my own opinions about it, my beliefs regarding suicide and personal freedoms.
Life is a personal freedom. Each day we have a choice of whether or not to live it and how. It's easy enough to choose not to; heaven knows I know. Some people are fortunate to never consciously be aware of that. For others it is a fact of life.
I think people do have a right to end their life, but as with anything there are conditions: 1. They have to be psychologically sound and able to make that decision; 2. The choice to die does not deprive others of their choice to live; 3. The method of death doesn't involve anyone who doesn't want to be involved; 4. The individual making the decision is fully aware of all ramifications not only to themselves but also to all in their lives; 5. There are no doubts as to the decision because all decisions are final. In addition, I believe that someone who is unwilling to end their life by their own hand when capable of doing so (i.e. trying to get police to shoot them) clearly don't want to die.
Personally at this point in my life I'd only choose to end my life if my quality of life were to be poor (i.e. terminal illness/DNR [do not resuscitate order]); I love being alive with all it's triumphs and challenges. Would I have had any regrets had I been successful way back when? According to my beliefs, kinda difficult to have regrets in the absence of conscious thought.
I think the right to die is something that each person has to make for themselves and that it is fluid, can change over time as we do. When it comes down to it, choosing to die is a personal freedom. I would no more impose my beliefs on the right to die on another human being as I would my political or religious beliefs. I also know from experience that those who have a true need to die will do whatever they have to in order to exercise it, and this often leads to involvement of a completely innocent person (i.e. jump in front of a car) and great psychological distress to the innocent.
Death in our culture is an anxiety-provoking one...we have no real, clear definitions of what death means nor rituals for the living to find peace with it. As such, any issues regarding it are examples of when the personal becomes political. Hope and life and living it are luxuries; why should I impose my beliefs on someone else from the privileged position I now inhabit (one of hope, living)?
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