Chantal Sebire, a 52-year-old French schoolteacher, suffers from a rare disease which has left her disfigured with facial tumors, and which will eventually damage her brain and kill her; there is no cure, and no treatment. She could suffer horribly for years before dying, in the meantime becoming a great burden upon her loved ones. She wants to end her life, and die with dignity.
After failing to get French legislatures to enact a law allowing euthanasia, she has petitioned a judge to decide whether existing legislation allows her doctors to end her life. She wants to “go out celebrating, surrounded by my children, friends, and doctors before I’m put to sleep definitively at dawn.”
Sebire is not the first person to seek euthanasia due to terminal illness. Opponents say that it is immoral and unethical, and even criminal, for a doctor to help a patient die. Proponents say that being released from pain and suffering is a basic human right, and that it is the responsibility of physicians to help their patients to not suffer. In the United States, of course, Dr. Jack Kevorkian – known to many as “Dr. Death” – claims to have helped 130 patients die, and eventually ended up in prison for doing so. Kevorkian is now seeking political office in Congress.
I’m not really sure why Sebire doesn’t just commit suicide. Perhaps she is afraid that she will do something wrong, and it will be ineffective and possibly leave her in even worse suffering than she has now.
I believe that people suffering from terminal diseases should be allowed to end their lives, if they so desire. It is, in my opinion, extremely arrogant for those who have not suffered that pain and indignity to make that decision for them, and force them to live such a torturous existence.
UPDATE: From YahooNews:
DIJON, France (AFP) – A severely disfigured French woman, found dead this month after a court rejected her request for euthanasia, took a lethal overdose of barbiturates, a prosecutor said on Thursday.
Former schoolteacher Chantal Sebire, 52, asked for the right to die to alleviate the suffering caused by a rare and incurable tumour, which deformed her face, causing her to lose her eyesight and the senses of smell and taste.
Her body was found at her home in eastern France on March 19, two days after a high court decided current French law did not allow her doctor to prescribe her lethal drugs.
“We can say that Mrs Sebire did not die of natural causes, as shown by the autopsy, but from absorbing a lethal dose of barbiturate,” prosecutor Jean-Pierre Alacchi told reporters in the eastern city of Dijon.
Post-mortem tests revealed “the presence in the blood of a toxic concentration of barbiturate, Pentobarbital… (at) three times the lethal level for this product,” he said.
Pentobarbital is commonly used for animal euthanasia and can be legally prescribed for assisted human suicide in Switzerland, Belgium and the US state of Oregon.
Investigators were trying to establish how Sebire obtained the drug, which is not delivered by French pharmacies, to establish whether her death was a case of suicide or assisted suicide.
Chantal Sebire’s lawyer Gilles Antonowicz said she “put an end to her own suffering, she delivered herself, but I do not want to talk of suicide, because that was not Mrs Sebire’s intention.”
Read the rest of the article about her death, and the controversy surrounding it, here.
Many thanks to Sandy at It’s An Insane World Out There for the update on Mrs. Sebire’s death.
I may be mistaken…but I thought she HAS died though I do not know the terms of her death…I am not sure if it was suicide or natural causes….I can’t remember where I saw it though it was recently say, in the past week?
I googled it, and you are right. It says she died within days of their refusing her request, but the results of the autopsy were inconclusive as to cause of death.
Ok…I was just making sure I read everything correctly. I too couldn’t believe she hadn’t committed suicide sooner…but maybe her religious beliefs prevented it and thought that doctor assisted would be less sinful.
Either way, she is in peace now.
I have always thought that people with a terminal and painful illness (hers obviously was) who had all the information about treatment options (she obviously didn’t have any) should be allowed the choice to die when they chose. So often people are caught up in the selfishness of keeping those alive who would really be better off to die in the guise of “humane-ness” when really it is all about not wanting to either admit that WE are going to die someday, or that we don’t want to go through the pain of losing someone close to us.
We we consider it “humane” to put a dog or cat to sleep who is suffering, who doesn’t even have a choice in the matter…why is it NOT ok to allow a Human Being to choose the same fate with informed consent?
There is an update to this I just found today…she committed suicide taking a lethal dose of barbiturates. I found it on Yahoo:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080327/hl_afp/francecourthealtheuthanasia
but you can probably just Google it.
She took her life for the love of others, her family. If they don’t complain, why should anyone? Only those who love the love of a Mother know she was right. It was not a sacrifice nor a cowardly suicide, it was the utmost gift for her beloved ones. Let her rest in peace, and let others in similar circumstances decide for themselves. Why should backward governments put their dirty noses in the intimacy of people and even put in jail those who want to help?
[...] There is an article about a woman who wants to end her life with dignity. http://elfninosmom.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/euthanasia-the-right-to-die-with-dignity/ [...]