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opinionAlso in this section: My right to die W. E. Gutman Being of sound mind and resolute purpose, I do herewith proclaim this to be my living will and last testament, hereby revoking any and all other wills, testaments or codicils. WHEREAS I regard life as a gift and a magnificent journey, but deem it utterly without purpose or merit when degraded by old age, physical incapacitation, the loss of full mental and intellectual faculties, pain and/or irreversible disease and, WHEREAS I deem physical pain NOT in the least virtuous or ennobling but rather frightening, cruel and debasing and, WHEREAS I consider that the "right to life" includes the right to die on one's own terms --- temporal and spatial, I HEREBY order and instruct my survivors, executors and/or caretakers to forego any extraordinary means of resuscitation or prolongation of physiological life by artificial means. More specifically, if my life cannot be sustained without the aid of extended artificial respiration and/or intravenous or tubal nourishment of the body, I HEREBY direct that any and all artificial, intravenous, tubal or other means cease and terminate and that the condition of my health be permitted to progress even if the result is death. WHEREAS I wish to leave this world the way I entered it --- one utterly unaware of the other, mutual indifference etched upon the other's face, I HEREBY order and instruct that no ceremony, rite or ritual --- religious or secular --- be conducted upon my death. I further order and instruct that my remains be cremated and, if circumstances allow, that my ashes be scattered --- half in the Seine River, in my beloved Paris, where I was born in 1937, and the other half in New York Harbor where my great American odyssey began in 1956. I take this opportunity to convey dismay and contempt for America's puritanical, hypocritical, intrusive and self-serving views on life, euthanasia and death, for its obscene grandstanding and moral preening over the tragic Schiavo case, which was hopelessly clouded by partisan politics and religious extremism, and for the sinister power of symbol politics. The travesty being played out, even after Terri Schiavo's death, is strictly an American phenomenon, fueled by morbid voyeurism, vulgar meddling, and the public's mistaken impression that they are entitled to publicly debate a private matter. The Schiavo case would have never made the news in Europe. It would have been handled by and resolved between family and the medical establishment. I believe that the only way to reach a sensible consensus is to personalize this sad affair. What would I want if I were in a similar situation? Would I demand that exceptional measures be taken to maintain me, for 15+ years in an irreversible vegetative state? Would I insist that an astronomical capital of time, emotion, money and medical technology be expended indefinitely, to keep me physiologically alive but brain dead? For my part, the answer is an emphatic NO. Life, once imparted, belongs wholly and exclusively to the living. No man or institution can abrogate this innate entitlement. Being a freethinker and a humanist, I further submit that my body and brief span of time on this earth belong to me and that I have the right to terminate my life in the most painless and expeditious manner possible lest I linger, even for one instant, in insufferable pain and robbed of dignity. Surely, a nation that unscrupulously and ruthlessly sends the flower of its youth to die and be maimed on some distant battlefield, or executes, in cold blood, society's chaff, can also grant a graceful end to those who demand it. If gravely ill pets deserve to be humanely put out of their misery --- and they do --- the same ethos and courtesy must apply to humans. It was a lethal dose of morphine that yanked my mother and maternal uncle from agonizing pain --- they died of pancreatic cancer and myeloma, respectively. Both had stipulated that life would lose all allure and quality if struck with a terminal illness. Both were mercifully liberated by doctors who understood and respected a person's right to die. My father, a physician who died of heart disease at 83 at St. Luke's Hospital in New York, and who understood the irrevocability of his condition, asked his attending physician to terminate his life. The physician obliged. Saving a life is a noble endeavor. Abiding by a person's wish to be spared the agony of unmanageable pain or irreversible incapacitation is a sublime act of charity. Obstructing or delaying this right is the work of the devil.
W. E. Gutman is a veteran journalist. He lives in southern California.
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