by JP Shaw

Created on: April 27, 2008

It's our right to live, and therefore should be our right to die. End of story. Right? Well apparently wrong, especially if you are arguing biblically, ethically or morally. But who is right in the choice of euthanasia?

I realize there are many opinions concerning euthanasia, and whether or not we should allow depressed people to commit suicide when they are suffering mentally, especially when they may recover from their illness. Or whether a terminally ill patient has a right to make a choice to end their life in the hopes that later down the line they may fully recover and go on to lead a happier life.

The truth is every moment counts while we are here. Not the past or the future but the present. A friend of mine committed suicide. She wrote notes to us, locked herself in car across from a set of train tracks. Brought a pillow and blanket, her favorite pictures and had her favorite song playing while the muffler was stuffed and she slowly fell asleep.

Many family members and people who loved her thought her cowardly for taking her own life. It was only her son and myself who understand the pain she was living in. It was her life. Therefore there was no reason for forgiveness in my mind, because justly it should be her death and how she wanted to die. Nobody had a right to argue with her. It was her pain suffered. Her mental illness. Her she had to answer to. We were the people in her life who had the joy of loving her while she was here, and although saddened by her decision to end her life, wishing she could have found another way to fight or deal with it. In the end it wasn't my decision to make. I just thanked God for the time I was allowed to love her and prayed she was happy and in a better place.

Many doctors are against euthanasia, but let's get this straight. You hear all the time stories of terminally ill patients and how doctors did everything they could. How they performed surgeries and test, medications galore and put the person through the ringer before allowing them to choke and spit on the death awaiting them. I think it's wrong. In most cases it's about money and not about the rightful decision a human being has over their own life and their own death and the choice that is there's and nobody else's.

This I know, if I was sick and falling apart and dying. It wouldn't be whether or not I would feel better down the line, or hoped for the possibility of getting better. Each one of us has our own breaking point. Each one of us has our own pain threshold,

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