With ‘right to die’ laws, guard against abuse: #tellusatoday

California enacted a measure this month joining four other states in allowing certain terminally ill patients to receive and self-administer medication to end their lives. Letter to the editor:

The word “victims” in the headline of Fordham University professor Charles Camosy’s piece could just as easily apply to those terminally ill people who commit suicide every year by means of a firearm, drug overdoses, hanging, suffocation or driving their car into a tree (“The vulnerable will be the victims: Opposing view”).

People at the end of their often disease-ridden, painful and depressed lives are going to end them as they see fit, whether the law permits physician-assisted suicide or not.

Wouldn’t it be preferable to have them peacefully surrounded by their loved ones in their final moments rather than die a lonely, solitary, violent death that leaves behind only confusion and pain for those who survive them?

Edward Lumas; Grand Rapids, Mich.

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We asked our followers whether terminally ill patients should be able to choose when they die. Comments from Twitter are edited for clarity and grammar:

If the disease is terminal, individuals shouldn’t have to suffer anymore.

— @Jazzyk760

The entire discussion is stupid when so-called civilized people abort countless lives.

— @sea329

If I’m entitled to any right, it should be the right to choose the time of my death. Prolonging death through heroic measures can be extremely painful and cruel.

— @MEschRadtke

Comments from Facebook are edited for clarity and grammar:

Too bad many people can’t put themselves in the shoes of the elderly poor, people with mental illness or with disabilities who will be given this option of assisted suicide. If your survival were at the whim of administrators of a rundown nursing home who might pressure patients to use this measure, you might just feel differently.

— Willam Nat

Why do people think it is wrong to be able to end one’s life when one is suffering?

How about trying to put yourself in the shoes of those same suffering people who want to end their suffering but can’t. Try a little understanding before deciding what everyone else can do with their bodies.

— Wayne Eden

I strongly oppose this “right to die.” I am pro-life from conception to natural death. That doesn’t mean that I am against palliative care. I am all for giving the utmost care to those who are dying to make them as comfortable as they choose to be. But no one has a right to take a life in these circumstances. It is morally wrong to commit suicide or to assist another person in committing suicide. I must vigorously protest this ominous trend in our society to throw in the towel when things get bad.

— Sherri D. Ray

For more discussions, follow @USATOpinion or #tellusatoday.