By Imogène Taveau
The other day I was having a cup of tea with my mother and having a chat about death. This may sound horribly morbid and depressing but this was not the case, for we had had this conversation many times before. A brochure had come in the post for the organisation EXIT A.D.M.D. Suisse romande, an organisation that deals with assisted suicide. My mother is a member, as is my grandmother, and I plan on becoming one when I turn 18 myself.
Assisted suicide allows those with terminal illness or severe chronic pain to choose to die earlier than their bodies naturally would so as to avoid an ending full of suffering and pain. This means that someone with terminal cancer, for example, can choose to die while they still have control of their body rather than having to live through the pain of their organs slowly shutting down on them.
Unsurprisingly, the concept of assisted suicide has been met with a lot of backlash and is illegal in most countries. In the USA, only six states have legalised medical aid in death; Oregon (1997), Washington (2008), Montana (2008), Vermont (2013), Colorado (2016) and California (2016), with Hawaii recently voting to implement the law in 2019. It should be noted that in all these states, it is not legal for a physician to physically assist in someone’s death, though they can prescribe lethal medication for a patient who wishes to die. There are only 6 countries in the world where assisted suicide done specifically by a physician is legal; The Netherlands (2001), Belgium (2002), Luxembourg (2009), Columbia (2015), Canada (2016) and Switzerland. In Switzerland, unlike the other countries, assisted suicide has been legal since the 1st of January 1942, making it the base for organisations such as EXIT and Dignitas.
People have many reasons for becoming a member, but it all fundamentally comes down to one main point: having the right to choose to die. As someone who has seen friends and family suffer through horrific treatments for terminal illnesses, this is a choice that I will always fight to have. My mother trusts me to make the call for her if she is unable, and I know she will do the same for me, because we both believe in preventing suffering as much as possible. It’s not an easy discussion, and I hope that I never have to use these companies, but if the time comes then that is just the way it is.
Assisted suicide isn’t people “trying to play God”, it isn’t an evil business feeding off other people’s pain. Assisted suicide is providing comfort to the end of someone’s life and allowing them to die as themselves and not a hollow shell of what they once were, and that is why I will support it until my dying day.
To finish, I have shared a poem. It was written by M. Gilbert Delètre on the day of his death for the Organisation EXIT.
EXIT
Je suis un semblant d’existence
Qu’on voudrait voir se maintenir
A tout prix, au prix du silence
Sur les coups qui me font frémir.
Un intense bombardement
Ne laisse parmi les décombres,
Au cœur des vivants, que des ombres :
Une façade, uniquement.
Plutôt que de la voir tomber
Dans les gravats de la souffrance
Mieux vaut l’aider à succomber
Dans l’amour et la délivrance.
-M. Gilbert Delètre
