Assisted suicide

Hazel McCallion Senior Public School
Mississauga, Ontario

By Ashley Y. (Grade 8)

You are lying in an old dirty hospital bed, suffering from an incurable illness. You have undergone many rounds of painful surgery, and to live you must go through more. The disease has left you incapable of many daily skills such as walking and talking. Family and friends have stopped visiting because the sight of you is too disturbing. If this were you, wouldn't you want to die?

If someone wants to die, it's their decision. It's not our life, it's theirs and if they want to end it, it's their choice. Who are we to say who cannot die? There are many perfectly healthy people strongly against assisted suicide but they don't know what it's like to suffer in pain every day of their life. Haven't the sick gone through enough? Don't they deserve to be left to go on to a better place?

Maybe we should wait until we die naturally, but then again maybe we shouldn't. If someone is in so much pain, why shouldn't they be able to end their life? Why should they spend the rest of their life unwillingly suffering from a disease that may never be cured?

If it's right to end the suffering of an animal because of a disease, why isn't it right to do the same for a person? People ignore the fact that animals are being put down but, think ending a human's life for the same reasons is so terrible and should be against the law.

Some may see assisted suicide as murder, but I don't. In my mind murder is classified as someone killing another human being against their will in a brutal and horrid fashion. Assisted suicide is when an individual such as a doctor, ends someone's life in the easiest and most painless way possible. People against assisted suicide should think again. Why should we stop something that helps others?

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