For most of us, talking about death isn’t easy, and mentioning it can be a conversational taboo. For something that surrounds us so completely, we seldom talk about death with our loved ones, yet death is a large part of the human experience, and its role in the age of modern medicine merits debate.
All too often we use technology and drugs in life-or-death decisions on terminal patients who have no hope of surviving. Medical professionals exhaust all of their resources in an attempt to save the lives of these patients. The efforts taken for these terminally ill patients give us the peace of mind that when our time comes, “everything will be done” to save us. This mentality prevents us from asking or answering the crucial question, “What is a good death?”
A “good death” may sound like an oxymoron, but according to the Center for Disease Control, 70 percent of people say they would prefer to die at home, but only 25 percent actually do. In fact, according to a national survey, more than 90 percent of people think it’s important to talk about their loved ones’ and their own wishes for end-of-life care, yet less than 30 percent have discussed what they or their family wants when it comes to end-of-life care.
Perhaps that’s why Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old with terminal brain cancer and six months to live, sparked such remarkably personal debates when she decided that death with dignity was her best option. All at once, it seemed, we were confronting the question together: Given a choice, how would we wish to die?
Brittany Maynard became a volunteer advocate for the nation’s leading end-of-life choice organization, Compassion & Choices. After discovering her fatal condition, she intensively searched for treatment, but all studies led to the same conclusion: No treatment would save her life, and the recommended treatment would take away from what little time she had left. So Maynard and her family moved to Oregon, one of five states that have Death with Dignity laws.
In an op-ed for CNN, Maynard wrote the following: “I’ve had the medication for weeks. I am not suicidal. If I were, I would have consumed that medication long ago. I do not want to die. But I am dying. And I want to die on my own terms.”
The right of a competent, terminally ill person to avoid excruciating pain from an incurable illness by embracing a timely and dignified death is implicit in liberty. Forcing someone to live who does not wish to do so should be considered a crime. We all die, but in an age of increased longevity and medical advances, death can be prolonged to the point that it does more harm than good. We don’t choose to be born, but we can choose how and when to die. For anyone to impede such a decision is wrong.