Blog 1
Brittany Maynard's Death
Brittany Maynard was only 29 when she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. She had just gotten married a year earlier and was trying to start a family with her husband when she was informed. Her once normal and healthy life quickly turned into endless doctor visits and surgeries. Despite her and doctors’ vigorous efforts to remove the tumor from her brain with surgery, all failed and the cancer came back worse than before. This is when doctors told her that she was only expected to live for six months. During these six months she would be receiving full radiation therapy, lose all of her hair, and suffer from other painful side effects. She came to the devastating conclusion that “There is no treatment that would save my life, and the recommended treatments would have destroyed the time I had left.”
Brittany considered her options, which were limited because of severity of her condition. She didn’t want her family to watch her suffer, nor did she want to live in excruciating pain. She stressed that she didn’t want to die but she is dying. She decided that “Death with Dignity” was the path she wanted to take. States that have death with dignity laws, allow terminally ill adults with less than six months to live request prescription medication to aid them in death. Basically, they give you access to the proper means to overdose yourself.
Brittany ended her life on November 1st, 2014 by taking barbiturates. This act alone is considered physician-assisted suicide and its and extremely controversial topic today. Brittany made her situation very public because she wanted to spread awareness and be an advocate for Compassion & Choices. Brittany also shared her entire story online before she took her life, in hopes to help with the legalization of assisted suicide in other states.
Brittany had her own standpoint on the issue since she knew
it was viewed as unethical. “I would not tell anyone else that he or she should
choose death with dignity. My question is: Who has the right to tell me that I
don't deserve this choice? That I deserve to suffer for weeks or months in
tremendous amounts of physical and emotional pain? Why should anyone have the
right to make that choice for me?” she said.
I chose two articles that address her death and assisted suicide from
two completely different stand points.
The first one:
The author of this article explores assisted suicide and Brittany Maynard’s
death as a wrong decision. “Assisted suicide is morally
abhorrent – even when it is understandable.” The author also emphasizes that
assisted suicide campaigns play off people’s emotions to convince them that
something unethical is okay. It seems mean and intrusive not to agree with an
ill person’s decision to end their own life. The author notes that there is an
extreme emotional pressure to do so, but we shouldn’t.
The second one:
The author of this article supports Brittany Maynard’s decision
and thinks she was courageous. No one likes to talk about death because its uncomfortable
but when does that start infringing on peoples own freedom to their body? The
author also talks about the “involvement” of doctors in assisted suicide not
being a bad thing because they aren’t technically involved.
You do a nice job here of discussing the controversy surrounding this young woman's agonizing decision. Each of these articles appears to be a sincere effort at expressing a different perspective on this area. Would you suggest that there is a public controversy surrounding the idea of assisted suicide? There appears to be attention on this matter only periodically - like when someone like Brittany Maynard reveals herself and her struggle to the public. Are there specific laws about this practice? Most everyone knew of the notorious Dr. Jack Kevorkian and the multiple efforts on the part of the state of Michigan to find him criminally responsible for his patients' deaths. However, since he died in 2011, public debate about this rather dissipated - except in high-profile cases like this one.
ReplyDeleteWould you say that different narratives have emerged surrounding this issue? Highly personal decisions like this, especially involving life and death, can evoke lots of emotion in others. Most public opinion polling, however, would appear to indicate that people don't feel comfortable making such decisions for others. It can be easy to argue in "favor of life" when you are not the person who has to take care of a loved one who is bedridden and suffering, and perhaps wanting relief from their pain. In situations like this - which are quite different from political disputes - even those who disagree seem anxious to remain respectful of others.
This is an intriguing idea to serve as the basis of your project in our class - not exactly a conventional choice! I appreciate the innovation here, though I'm not exactly sure if the same sort of ideological framing gets extended here. Please let me know how I can help!