Time to Do Something Constructive from This Pain

[ed. note: Alas, I can't do anything as phenomenally important as the broad who's decided to show her support for Terri Schiavo's feeding tube being reinserted by going on a hunger strike; please note this stupid, selfish, narcissistic chick is starving herself but still consuming Pedialyte (which is kind of a big cheat) and yes, pork rinds. The good news is that apparently even if this woman remains on her hunger strike, she does not need to worry about brain damage because... well, you can't take away was she didn't have to start with.]

But how about moving onto a more productive debate: how can we allow the very ill who choose to die to do so more comfortably?

The same people aghast at Mr. Schiavo's decision to let his wife go and shrieking at how inhumane it is are often the very same people who won't even discuss euthanasia or end-of-life care. This is remarkably like their anti-gay debate: the moralists insist gays can't marry and then they cry bloody murder that gays are living "unholy lifestyles". Likewise, in a case like Schiavo's, they prevent any measures that get closer to a comfortable death so they can scream about how barbaric the manner of death it.

So let's look toward a middle point: between those of us who are very sad for Mrs. Schiavo and simply want her death to be as humane as possible and the .. um.. other people.

I agree that euthanasia should never be a "state" solution (meaning some outside authority). But there's a massive difference between the feds deciding people with green eyes should all leave the planet and having an ill person (or the guardian of one) make a choice not to prolong that uncomfortable existence and have access to compassionate, carefully regulated doctor-assisted suicides.

We have a lot of Americans still with the capacity to choose who - because of conditions that cannot be cured or treated and who want to make the choice while they still can - want the option of choosing their death and having appropriate medication, support staff, and palliative measures for pain available to them. Studies so far indicate that in cases where patients at least perceive they have the option available to them to end their suffering, they are more likely not to put a gun in their mouths and pull the trigger.

When we don't let the terminally ill and the guardians of the very ill have any choice between "keep this person in a persistent nasty state forever" or "let them die a longer death", we're giving them no choice at all.

So where can we take this? Can't we have a dialog and come to some national concensus that, while services should always be available for those who choose to live regardless of how poor their quality of life and that there should be no "state" euthanasia, allows those who choose to leave this vail of tears before their agony is compounded to receive proper compassionate support (medical/spiritual/psychological/family)?

I don't know of a single person of the vast majority in this country who felt that states/Congress should not have interfered in a decision by the guardian who wanted Mrs. Schiavo to starve or dehydrate to death. Even bowing to professionals who say this manner of death is not uncommon and probably isn't the misery for her (and the many others who go through it) that we imagine, none of us takes any joy in this process.

So what can we do to make the process of death in such a situation far more humane?