Do human beings in pursuit of freedom and dignity have the right to choose their own life and death, even in the face of suffering? Is it right to protect human rights and honor individual choice through death with dignity, or is there a greater risk of human rights violations due to institutional abuse and economic pressure?
‘I have the right to destroy myself,’ said the famous French novelist François Sagan. ‘It is your freedom to kill yourself or make your life miserable, as long as you do not harm others. Human life and liberty are inherent rights that each person must decide for themselves, sometimes even to the point of extreme choice.
What are some examples of human freedoms? Perhaps the most prominent is the right to live as a human being. The right to a decent life includes a minimum standard of living and socialization, which is at the core of human rights and a requirement for everyone in the modern world. More than just material security, every human being also has mental freedom and freedom of choice. To live as a human being is to live life independently through one’s own choices, which can include the choice to die.
That’s what right-to-die advocates argue. Human beings have the freedom to choose their own lives. This means that every human being has the freedom to choose and shape their own death, just as they choose to live and die. Especially for patients suffering from incurable diseases, dignity is not only about the choice to end suffering, but also about giving them the dignity to make their own decisions, even in their last moments. How to die, in what way to die, and when to die is for each individual human being to decide. As long as the choice of death does not violate any of the protected aspects of human rights, human beings have the right to unlimited freedom regarding themselves, as long as they do not harm others.
On the other hand, opponents of aid in dying are concerned that aid in dying will be used as a tool to violate human rights rather than a means to protect them. There is also the potential for the right to choose life to be intertwined with economic logic at some point and distorted in the wrong way. Human life can be weighed against economic principles. In fact, many patients who wish to withdraw treatment cite the financial burden it would place on their families. Dying with dignity can be a situation where a person wants to live but cannot, where money is more important than life. These economic pressures can lead to a situation where a person’s life is sacrificed for financial reasons if the aid-in-dying system is mismanaged, so it is important to consider these concerns.
All people find the meaning of life in happiness. To be human, to be free, and to be happy is the meaning of life. But for most seriously ill people who have no choice but to die with dignity, happiness is a luxury and a mockery. Every day they face pain, endure suffering, bear the burden of their families and the guilt of being a burden. For them, even death is a part of life, and even those last moments are meaningful as an option to relieve suffering. For them, each day alive is not a blessed time, but a prolongation of suffering. It is hard to say that every day spent helplessly awaiting death, with no hope of healing, is a moment of human life. Even basic necessities and freedoms are not fulfilled. If human rights mean the right to live as human beings, then these people are being violated over and over again just by being alive. The logic of the cause is that they shouldn’t die.
Death is an inevitable part of life for every human being born into this world. Like growing up and aging, death is a natural and inevitable part of life. Death is not just the end of life, it is one of the processes of life, and the way we die can be judged by the dignity of our lives. The process varies from person to person, with death sometimes coming suddenly and unexpectedly as a result of an accident, or painfully as a result of a chronic illness or dying. Some will choose to endure the pain, while others may want to give up. But it should all be a free choice. If an individual is causing no harm to others, if they are in fact suffering so much that they are unable to choose their own end of life because of man-made laws, then it is a human rights violation.
Of course, if aid in dying is implemented only with the consent of family members or guardians, it is certainly open to abuse. However, the law’s job is to provide a way for a seriously ill person’s human rights not to be violated at the hands of others, not to prevent them from choosing to die. The law exists to protect and promote human rights. Furthermore, while there are aspects of aid in dying that may be rejected by certain religions or cultures, in order for it to remain a universally acceptable option for everyone, it must move towards respecting the rights of the individual human being, regardless of their views. Therefore, the implementation of aid in dying requires various legal mechanisms to make it more discreet. For example, it should only be carried out with the direct consent of the seriously ill patient. Although this would make the system less efficient, human life is not worth the efficiency of the system. Even with the consent of the patient, dying with dignity can help many critically ill patients, of whom there are an average of 180,000 in hospitals each year.
Another option is an advance directive. Advance directives are documents you fill out ahead of time to help your healthcare team make decisions about your care in the event that you are unable to make decisions about your own care in the future. These documents can be promoted in many ways, not only at the time of death, but also as organ donor signatures, to mitigate the risk of dying with dignity by having them in place before an illness or accident. If there is evidence that a critically ill patient has previously made such a clear indication, it may be possible to honor the patient’s wishes, albeit imperfectly.
It is impossible not to consider the end of life. But just as every rule in the world is necessary with consideration of its side effects, there are reasons why aid in dying is necessary despite its side effects. Just as we give individuals the right to choose how to live well and pursue well-being, shouldn’t we also give them the freedom to choose how to die well and the ways and means to do so?
