Life is more than a box of cereal, or a board game that one might play on a rainy afternoon.

 

It amazes me that people will rise up and take on animal cruelty in such a vehement manner but, when it comes to human life, we seem more lackadaisical or indifferent.

 

The dichotomy that exists between animals and people are plenty.

 

A fetus is out of sight, not furry or cute and quite frankly treated like a disease. 

Baby animals have some redeeming quality, even if they are some sort of featherless bird.

 

We will push our lawmakers to adopt strict laws on any sort of cruelty to animals but when it comes to human life we politicize it. All of the sudden a fetus becomes a political football used to paint the other side in some sort of negative light.  This is anything but a proud moment in history and I truly believe that somewhere down the road we will be judged for this.  It may simply be in the history books and unless the trend of re-writing history continues, our grandchildren will look back at this generation and ask, “What the hell were they thinking?”

 

A few days after insemination (about the time the women misses her period), a fetus has a heart beat and its own unique blood type.  I would argue that this is when life starts.  Birth control ok, morning after pill ok, termination up until the fetus has a heartbeat I could live with.  After that it is simply killing a life that you don’t have the right to kill. 

 

The simple facts are that your choice in this process is to “choose” to have protected sex or not.  Whether your decisions produce a baby, or infects you with herpes or aids is now out of your hands.  Choose to practice safe sex or know that there may be consequences for your actions.

 

The other issue that needs to be aired out is “death with dignity.”  Currently if you or a loved one has some terminal incurable disease, you are pretty much left to die of “natural” causes.  This is anything but natural in that you are deprived of food and water and your organs have to literally fail, one by one, until enough toxins build up in your body to cause the heart to stop.   Since we have no idea what the person is feeling “as they can’t tell you” I would argue that our treatment of the ill needs to be changed. These people could last several days in this condition.  Since we can’t talk with them, we have no idea what they feel, what they are thinking or what is going on!

 

We treat our damned criminals more humane than this!

 

The criminal is strapped to the gurney where an IV is installed.  Through this IV at the time the order is given to execute the person, a chemical is given to sedate the person ( a general anesthesia).  He or she is put to sleep much like you would be put to sleep for a medical procedure.  After the person is asleep, more chemicals are given “paralytics as well as chemicals which stop the heart.”  I stress that the criminal is not there for that procedure.  Anyone who has ever been put under knows that the scariest parts are the unknowns and anticipating the procedure.  I would suspect that the criminal’s worst part of this is taking that last walk into the death chamber, and being strapped to the gurney.

 

The argument is that death with dignity “could” become a slippery slope, in that anyone could elect to die whether they were terminally ill or not.  If someone wants to die there are many ways to accomplish this and a loophole in some law should not stop us from offering assisted suicide to the terminally ill. 

 

There is another argument in that these “death panels” that are actually in this unaffordable health care act, could be expanded to terminate a life that has reached some arbitrary cost to keep alive.

 

No person should have this power to decide for another if they are to live or die.  Unless the patient assigns someone as a medical proxy; giving them the power knowing full well that they will let you go if the situation is that grim. If you create a living will and in that document your desire would be to die with dignity “morphine drip” that should be legal and allowed.  With enough morphine the respiratory system shuts down.  By the time that happens, the person has long since drifted away.

 

If no such document exist than the doctors should do everything in their power to keep you alive.  I am referring to coma patients who cost a lot of money to take care of.  We know that many people if given time will come out of a coma. 

 

Medicine in the most general terms is a practice and why drugs work as they do or people live who should be dead is a mystery.  Often times your doctor will prescribe medications to you that they have no clue how they work, they just do.

 

Until our medical acumen progresses to such a state that we understand much more, we should always error towards life. 

 

As far as cruelty to animals…; I am vehemently against it. Hopefully Dante has a special place arranged for those who would harm animals.

 

-Best to you and those that you care about.

 

 

 

 

 

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