The Right to Die

Right to Life groups are, in a nutshell, anti-choice.

Anti-abortion.
Anti-euthanasia.
Anti-stem cell research.

Right to Lifers, I say FUCK YOU. That's right - you can go and fuck yourselves with your lame placards.

What happened to owning our lives and the Right to Die?

This comes on the back of a story I have been following about Hannah Jones, a thirteen year old girl in Britain, who after having Leukaemia for most of her life now needs a heart transplant after extensive chemotherapy resulted in cardiomyopathy. Hannah has refused further treatment and does not want a transplant.

This morning, I read Bernadette Condren's piece from her 'Mum's the word' column in The Courier Mail about Hannah Jones. The more I read, the more disheartened I became, for Condren slathers blame on the law and is discourteous of the young girls' parents who fully support her (as does her social worker).

Hannah is thirteen, and Condren finds it difficult to accept that a person so young can essentially have what is a health care directive. She writes, 'There's the rank air of martyrdom around this story. Where's the pluck? The fighting spirit?'

The girl has had enough. Another element of the story that Condren failed to acknowledge, is that the immunosuppresants Hannah would have swallow every day post-transplant are cancer causing, and this I know from personal experience. Anti-rejection drugs make cancer spread like wildfire, so even if the transplant was successful, in all likelihood, she'd be dead within a year of having the surgery.

When I was thirteen, I practically had a degree in death, as well as a fairly advanced knowledge of Euthanasia. I've spoken to many friends prior to their deaths who have indicated their wish to be euthanised. Cystic Fibrosis is an awful death. It's often a long, slow slide and I would have Philip Nietzsche or Jack Kevorkian in my corner any day of the week.

I'm all for saving lives, but I'm also for ending them with dignity.

Two cases in point are that of Terri Schiavo in 2005 whose husband won a painfully drawn out court battle against his wife's parents, so her feeding tube could be removed. Over the last couple of weeks, Italy’s Supreme Court provoked the fury of conservatives by ruling that a father can remove the feeding tube that has kept his daughter alive in a coma ('persistive vegetative state') for nearly seventeen years after a car crash.

I'm fully aware that Hannah Jones is not of legal age to make decisions about her health care, but this doesn't mean she is too young to have made the choice to refuse further treatment. Condren writes 'Britain, it seems, has come out in favour of Hannah', which lends me hope.

What happened to journalists being objective? Hannah Jones may be thirteen, but unless you've experienced terminal illness and are in the eye of the storm, one cannot be too quick to pass judgement.