by Julie Howe

Created on: October 24, 2007

How devastating it must be to receive a tragic diagnosis of a virulent, advanced cancer or accept the cruel realities of a future with Lou Gehrig's disease. It is the ultimate betrayal: one's own body turned against itself. It is a sad truth that most life-ending diseases strip away the dignity one hopes to maintain through the end of life. When a slow or painful death is accompanied by debilitating side-effects there are those who will demand a more humane alternative, those who will ask for the right to make the most intimate of decisions: to determine how they will bring their own existence to a peaceful end. Physician-assisted suicide is one such alternative. With over half of Americans considering this practice morally acceptable, this critical human right should be a legal alternative afforded to the terminally ill through compassionate and specifically designed legislation.

The definition of physician assisted suicide (PAS) is when a physician provides a prescription for a lethal dose of medication for the purpose of ending one's own life. This statement is hard to read and hard to comprehend. It seems to somehow challenge our very right to exist. Perhaps it is the use of the word "suicide" that evokes this emotional response as we are all taught, regardless of our religious beliefs, that this is wrong. Perhaps it is our own revulsion at the knowledge that ending a life can be so premeditated and calculating, so completely opposite from the laws of nature. Regardless of the reason, the "Whose life is it anyway?" debate is pushing its way to the fore.

Let's examine the question of who is ultimately responsible for our lives. Of course, our first response - as the vehement defenders of personal rights that we Americans are - would be the following declaration: Me, and me alone. However, in a society that relies on our elected officials to both guard our freedoms and maintain objectivity with regard to the law, it is not quite that simple. In matters of life and death right-to-die, abortion, the death penalty it has become a "conservative versus liberal" battle of wills and taking a stand in support of any of them is not for the faint of heart. Those who have chosen to take on the controversial issue of PAS are the point men and women in the battle for objective and compassionate end-of-life laws, many of which never make it past the bill presentation stage. One recent example would be that of Arizona representative Linda Lopez and 17 other democrats who

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