Poll: Do you think euthanasia should be legal?

Under clear and defined instructions in a living will it should be possible. My mother died about 3 weeks after a massive stroke. It took that long for her body to shut down. She could have been kept alive a lot longer except that we were able to request "no extraordinary measures". 3 weeks was not a long time and she was in no pain but I don't think anything would have been lost if the end had been helped along a bit.

When I was in high school, I always wondered why there was this huge debate over youth in Asia. Why the heck shouldn't it be legal to have teenagers in China? I was at least a junior in high school before I found out what the word actually was.

I remember thinking exactly the same thing.

This has always been the political question that I've had the hardest time with. I am very nervous about it for one of the same reasons I'm against capital punishement, it is irrevocable. If you make a mistake you don't get a chance to correct it. On the other hand it is a personal decision and I like to leave that to the individual.

I tend to think that it should be allowed but only with huge safeguards that need to be developed. I wouldn't dream of thinking I know what they should be.

A few things need to be taken into acount. One is that for many people the reason they want to die is pain. In the U.S. we don't allow the use of the most effective pain medication there is, heroin. If we allowed it and more aggressive pain management in general then there would be far less desire for euthanasia.

Depression must also be taken into account and treated. There are those who believe that if pain and depression were treated effectively there would be no need for euthanasia.

These are things that need to be not debated but researched. For the USA this is a perfect example where taking advantage of the laboratory of the states could be useful. Which is why despite the fact that I'm squeamish about it I'm glad the Supreme Court didn't allow the Feds to block Oregon's Euthanasia law.

The only opinion on euthanasia that I totally disagree with is one that thinks it is an easy decision.

I heard an interesting thing on NPR the other day about the Oregon law....some statistics on why the people who asked for the medications wanted it...pain was rather far down on the list. The biggest things were stuff like loss of dignity, inability to do things, etc. Seemed like people can deal with pain a lot better than expected...it's the things they see as taking away their "life" that just couldn't be dealt with.

Pain you can dull into submission, theoretically. Severe loss of quality of life? Not as much you can do about that.

If we aren't free to decide how we end our lives, we're not free. Period.