As you all must be aware of, the Supreme Court of Canada has decided to allow assisted suicide in Canada under certain circumstances. Those circumstances are of which: a competent adult seeks assistance from doctors due to an extremely painful and incurable medical condition that causes intolerable suffering, in such a scenario a doctor should not be prevented from helping the patient speed up death.
This decision has caused havoc and chaos, and has always been a heated debate in regards to morals and ethics. Should someone have the right to decide when they want to die? Or by doing so are we going against the natural order of life in general? Apart of this debate is of course religion, and different peoples various world-views.
So what do we, as the youth, have to say about all of this?
As an individual I personally believe that suffering too, is a cleansing of the soul, alike to how you were brought into this world you will also leave. You weren’t asked if you wanted to be born, it was a game of fate and destiny, and so is death. Regardless of the circumstances, I believe that we should stop interfering with the natural order of life. Think about the people from the past who also had to endure these conditions of unbearable pain, they didn’t go to the doctors office to get assistance to die, they let nature take its own course. In this world you get a fair share of happiness and suffering, they were both written in your destiny, you don’t have a right to take your own life when the suffering becomes overwhelming. However this is just my perspective, one of many I’d like to share with you.
I went around asking other youth on their individual perspectives and this is what I got:
Gayathri says, “Ethically, I believe it to be wrong because it is in direct violation of the hippocratic oath taken by all doctors to never take a life. But if it means to end someone’s suffering, then I guess it can be considered “good”.
“…Assisted suicides should only be for those who are still in a cognizant and relatively sane state of mind. There are a lot of procedures that should go into assisted suicide in order to make it safe for the person receiving treatment and ethical as well. Not only does it prevent families from having to go through a devastating “regular” suicide with no closure, it allows a person to be free of their suffering. Our right to live should be paralleled with our right to die.” ~Jessica Mai
Ailin shares her perspective, “…I support Jessica’s last statement; we are told that we have free will but if that doesn’t include the power to decide the fate of our own lives, then I think we’re missing a big part of it…This may sound harsh, because we humans would like to think of every life as precious, but what is the point of keeping someone alive if all he can do is remain suffering and/or immobilized for the rest of his days until their condition takes his life anyways?”
Talia shares, “If someone were to choose to end their own suffering, that’s their prerogative. Doctors have the option whether they will or will not perform euthanasia on a patient who requests it…By giving people the choice to die based on their own agenda, life and death becomes less of a ‘wait and see’ gamble… I believe that it is well within one’s inherent rights to be able to choose one’s one fate…”
Overall who’s to say what’s right or wrong? Many of us haven’t experienced or been in such situations where death seems to be the only option, all we can do is understand the severity, consequences, and benefits of this adjustment to the Criminal Code. Suicide is not a matter of which should ever be taken lightly, all we can do is hope for healthy lives of which we can live a quality of life over a quantity of life.
