Euthanasia and The Right To Die

I read a sad article today about a poor woman that died recently. But it wasn't sad because she died, it was sad because she should have died a long time ago. In France, a woman named Chantal Sebire was diagnosed with a rare cancer called esthesioneuroblastoma eight years ago. This terrible disease causes her nasal passage to develop tumors that continue to grow exponentially, which makes her eyes and nose bulge out of her face. One cannot even comprehend the pain this must have caused her for eight long years.

The woman was given drugs to help alleviate the pain, but told her doctors time and time again that the drugs did nothing to relieve the excruciating pain. "It is not only the face. Some of my bones are eaten into. I don't have any more upper and lower jaws," she said in an interview last month, according to an Associated Press translation.

The poor woman decided she wanted to die and end her suffering. But French law states that assisted suicide is illegal. The law permits only passive euthanasia such as removing feeding and hydration tubes when a person is in a coma, or inducing a coma and then removing the tubes.

Her lawyer had tried to convince a French court that it was "barbaric" to put her through the ordeal of dying slowly in an artificial coma, something that could take up to two weeks while her three children looked on in anguish.

The French court ruled against euthanasia and turned down the appear. When she wrote to the French president, he told her to seek a second opinion. A whole lot of talk, circular logic, and no action.

This women deserved to put out of her misery like her and her family wanted. Put yourself in her position, would you want to continue living with such extreme excruciating pain everyday, knowing that eventually you will die... slowly and painfully.

But here is the problem... suicide is a sin. A large Christian uprising came from this women's story, with sympathy for her disease, but a point of view that she should not be allowed to receive assisted suicide.

Today in America, euthanasia is illegal as well. Abortian is legal. Euthanasia is illegal. This woman could legally abort a fetus, stopping an unborn child from being born... but she is not allowed to make the decision whether or not to end her own suffering. Everyday, dogs, cats, horses, and more animals are put to death to put them out of their misery. So euthanasia is legal for animals but not for humans.

This poor lady deserved to die when she wanted to. It's her life and she is the only person who should be able to decide when her time on earth is over. Christians are supposed to be about compassion and care. Forcing this poor woman to endure, day after day, excruciating pain, in front of her husband and kids, is wrong. That's not compassion. Source