In the End, It Should Be About Choice

By Phil Strickland, for The Californian, The North County Times, May 30, 2006

Editorial

For decades now, people have been battling for the right to make choices in their lives.

The right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. The right to marry the person you choose. The right to live where one wants, eat where one chooses and the right to attend public colleges and universities. Even the right to not be required to sit in the back of the bus. There are children's rights, the rights of the aged, rights in the workplace. The list goes on.

Sometimes it seems so silly, or maybe sad is the better word, to have to fight for some of these things. But, there it is. Opposition to some rights grows out of closely held moral beliefs or fears, rational or not. In other cases, it simply may be a manifestation of our need to control something ---- anything ---- as the choices in our lives shrink with each new intrusion by government.

You can't smoke in bars or, in some cities, public areas. You gotta wear that seatbelt. In some places, you can't burn leaves. Most places won't even let you die in peace ---- and it doesn't get much more personal than death.

Ask Missy Hector.

You may have read her story ---- or rather, the story of her partner, Greg Yaden ---- in Monday's edition of The Californian. She moved from Oregon to Murrieta to be near her son after her partner succumbed to leukemia.

He did not end his life, but he had that choice after being prescribed a lethal dose of barbiturates under the Oregon Death with Dignity Act.

She now is a supporter of Assembly Bill 651, which would make assisted suicide legal in California. The Assembly passed the legislation in February 2005. It now is stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

If you've ever seen a terminally ill person in such pain that keeping them whacked out on morphine is the best you can do, or if you've ever watched a once-vibrant person be ravaged by disease to the point that they look like a Holocaust victim, you probably have a sense of the humanity of allowing them to make the decision to not participate in a life that is one in name only, and not a very kind one at that.

It was in 1990 that Dr. Jack Kevorkian first assisted in the suicide of a person who decided to forgo the agony and insult of a lingering journey to death and set off the public debate about choosing the quality of life.

Over the next eight years, despite the efforts of prosecutors, judges and people who knew better than those who were suffering, he aided the death choice of about 100 people.

He now is serving 10 to 25 years after being convicted in Michigan of second-degree homicide. It was ruled that the doctor, who previously had maintained an arm's length in the procedures, went too far in administering a lethal injection to a terminally ill person who was physically unable to do it himself.

Death evokes gut emotion and making the choice of death gives birth to great angst on the part of some survivors. In the end, it's not about those who remain behind. It's about life and the quality of existence that a person deserves.

Our senators in Sacramento might do well to remember the words of Mark Twain: "All say, 'How hard it is that we have to die' ---- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live."

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Temecula resident Phil Strickland is a regular columnist for The Californian. E-mail: philipestrickland@yahoo.com.

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