This blog post delves deeply into whether humans have the right to decide their own death, focusing on euthanasia and freedom of choice.
“I have the right to destroy myself.” This was stated by the renowned French novelist Françoise Sagan. It means that as long as one does not harm others, even bringing about one’s own death or making life miserable is a personal freedom. Human life and freedom are inherent rights that each individual must decide for themselves, sometimes including even extreme choices.
What kinds of freedoms do humans possess? The most fundamental is likely the right to live as a human being. The right to live as a human being includes the minimum necessities of food, clothing, shelter, and social interaction. This is the core of human rights and an essential condition that must be guaranteed to everyone in modern society. Furthermore, all humans possess not only material security but also spiritual freedom and the freedom of choice. To live as a human being means to lead one’s life autonomously through one’s own choices, and this can include the choice of how to face death.
This is precisely the argument of those who advocate for death with dignity. Humans have the freedom to choose their own lives. This applies equally to choosing life or death; every human has the freedom to choose and shape their own death. For patients suffering from incurable illnesses, death with dignity holds particular significance as a choice to end suffering. Furthermore, it grants them the dignity to make their own decisions, even if only in their final moments. How one dies, the manner of death, and the timing of death are decisions each individual can make. As long as the choice of death does not infringe upon the protection of human rights, and as long as it does not harm others, humans have the right to enjoy infinite freedom over themselves.
Conversely, those who oppose death with dignity worry that it could become a tool for violating human rights rather than a means to protect them. This also carries the potential for the right to choose life to become entangled with economic logic at some point and distorted in a harmful way. It implies that human life could be weighed against economic principles. Indeed, it is said that most patients who wish to forgo treatment cite the financial burden that would fall on their families as the reason. Euthanasia could create situations where people want to live but cannot, where money is valued more than life. Such economic pressure, if the euthanasia system is mismanaged, could lead to lives being sacrificed for financial reasons. Voices expressing this concern must also be seriously considered.
People universally seek meaning in life through happiness. Living humanely, freely, and happily is the meaning of life. Yet for most critically ill patients forced to choose euthanasia, happiness is a luxury and a mockery. They face pain daily, endure suffering, and live with the burden of guilt over being a burden to their families. For them, even death is part of life, and that final moment holds meaning as one option to alleviate suffering. For them, each day alive is not a blessed time but merely an extension of agony. Each day spent helplessly awaiting an impending death, in a physical state where healing is impossible, can hardly be called a moment of human life. Even basic necessities like food, shelter, and freedom are inadequately met. If the meaning of human rights is the right to live as a human being, then these individuals have their human rights continually violated simply by being alive. All in the name of the grand principle that they must not die.
Death is an inescapable process of life for every human born into this world. Just as we grow and age, death too comes to us naturally and inevitably. The meaning of death is not merely the end of life, but one part of the entire process of living. Therefore, the manner of death can also be evaluated in terms of the dignity of human life. This process differs for each person; death sometimes arrives suddenly through an unexpected accident, and other times it comes painfully through chronic illness or a long battle with disease. Some may choose to endure that suffering, while others may wish to give up. However, this must be a matter of personal freedom of choice. If, despite causing no harm to others and despite the individual truly suffering immensely, they cannot choose their own end due to laws created and defined by humans, this is no different from a violation of human rights.
Of course, if dignified death is carried out solely with the consent of family or guardians, there is clearly potential for abuse. However, the role of the law is to provide a way for the human rights of the critically ill to not be violated by others, not to block the choice of death through legislation. The reason for the law’s existence is to protect and promote human rights. Furthermore, while euthanasia may be rejected by certain religions or cultures, to remain a universally permitted choice for all, it must move towards respecting the rights of the individual human being, regardless of diverse viewpoints. Therefore, to implement dignified death, various legal safeguards are necessary to ensure greater prudence. For instance, dignified death should only be performed with the direct consent of the critically ill patient themselves. While this may reduce the system’s efficiency, human life cannot be weighed against the efficiency of a system. Even with euthanasia performed solely with the patient’s consent, it could significantly help the approximately 180,000 critically ill patients who reach the terminal stage of their illness and pass away in hospitals each year.
Another method is the advance medical directive. An advance medical directive is a document prepared in advance for healthcare providers to reference when deciding on treatment policies, in preparation for situations where the patient may be unable to make treatment decisions themselves when facing imminent death. By promoting such documents not only when death is imminent but also widely, like organ donation registration, and obtaining them before illness or accident strikes, the risks of euthanasia can be mitigated. If there is evidence that a critically ill patient previously expressed such firm intent, euthanasia treatment aligned with the patient’s wishes, however imperfectly, may be possible.
We cannot ignore the potential abuses of dignified death. However, just as all societal rules are necessary despite considering their side effects, dignified death also has its reasons for being necessary despite its potential drawbacks. Just as we grant individuals the right to pursue ‘well-being,’ the ‘art of living well,’ shouldn’t we also entrust individuals with the freedom to choose the ‘art of dying well,’ the methods and means of a dignified death?
