End of Life Choices

End of Life Choices

Over the course of the semester, we have covered many interesting topics in this class. However, the one that I continually struggled to form a solid opinion on, and sincerely had to ponder what my decisions would be in the given situations, was the topic of end of life choices. My own personal thoughts and beliefs would conflict with my religious following, and my mind would continually change on such topics as whether or not physician assisted suicide should be legal, or whether or not I would want to keep living in a persistent vegetative state in the hope of a miracle recovery. I still struggle forming an unyielding position, but the information we have learned in this class has helped me learn more on these topics and given me a broader spectrum on which to base my final decision.

Growing up in a Catholic family, a town in which over 95% of the people were Catholic, and attending Sunday Mass and religion classes once a week, I was always taught to believe in the “saving power of God.” I guess I have kind of taken a divine command approach at times when thinking about these issues. I do believe God has an amazing power to heal and save and this is why I have struggled with the end of life choices questions. Watching the videos of people struggling with their own end of life choices, discussing cases such as Terry Schiavo’s, and discussing the topics of physician assisted suicide and advanced directives really opened up my eyes to what I felt I would want in their situations. Like we often discussed in class, being so young, we often believe we are invincible. We feel that we have many years of life ahead of us at all times, and nothing can go wrong. As we all know deep down, this is not always the case; therefore, it is important to think about our own decisions when we are finally met with these situations in our lives. The Catholic side of me says to place everything in the hands of God. When pondering the idea of physician assisted suicide, I know my Catholic morals tell me it is wrong, and natural deaths are the only deaths that should occur. However, in watching the videos and hearing the stories, my own personal feelings of whether or not I would want to go on living in those situations seem to be in favor of physician assisted suicide. Just to see some of those people and their family struggle so much makes me think that at times it is almost unethical to make them have to go through that all. I believe that as long as it is monitored and a complete and thorough process is taken, as in the state of Oregon and the country of Netherlands, then