Sometime in the near future, House bills 2313 and 2311 will be dragged in front of a firing squad on the floor of the Arizona House of Representatives and killed. The bills (hereafter known as the condemned) would legalize active, unassisted euthanasia.
This type of euthanasia entails patients ending their lives without any other participants, save for the person providing the means (in this case, a medication that painlessly ends life). The division between unassisted euthanasia and that which we have now is that the legislation would give legitimacy to people's choice to end their lives.
Opposing views offer no argument beyond moralizing. The strongest objection to the bills is that a physician with the option to approve this measure should not be made into a triggerman for a bed-ridden whiner.
But a situation already exists in which a health care professional might face the same dilemma. In an instance where a caregiver might feel morally at odds providing birth control or the "morning after" pill, refusal is all that need be done to thwart the godless Huns.
It seems that this option would remain constant in the instance of unassisted euthanasia.
The inevitable death of these bills denotes an ugly, vestigial trend that is oozing across all aspects of American life. Looking back, I see its roots taking hold in the sepia-toned suburbia of my childhood.
When I was in grade school, the boldest avowal one could make was to support ASU or UA by wearing the applicable gear. Everybody that was anybody came to school dressed in either maroon and gold or red and blue. This was the delineation. This was the training ground for breaking off into ideologies.
ASU had the majority, so I jumped on board. We were a bloodthirsty pack of little brutes. At the time, the Sun Devils may have been athletically inferior to the Wildcats, but we had numbers, and that was all the rationale needed. We handed out wedgies and wet-willies as liberally as Texas hands out the death penalty.
Times haven't changed much. I don't mean to suggest that we give any quarter to the degenerates from Tucson or their supporters -- they are dogs of the lowest order. What frightens me is that we seem to be teetering on the brink of an era in which the morals of the majority will determine policy.
Subscribers to a religious-based system of values have awoken to realize that their opposition is too fragmented to mount any kind of resistance and are exploiting any situation they can.
What is set to happen in the capital is nothing more than a pack of mean-spirited punks corralling a weakened minority and giving a snide little cry of glee. The motivation behind the impending assassination of the right-to-die bills comes from an emergence of a new opportunism. As I sit here typing on my Lucifer-box, I wonder what archaic line of policy the upright, bake sale crowd will force down our throats next.
As scary as it is, the America of equality and opportunity seems to be fading in favor of an America driven by the ranting of a cheap preacher from a 24-hour worship station on public access. It was the majority of my parent's era that declared rock 'n' roll the devil's music.
A frightening notion looms: we might become the generation that stuffs the nation into a time machine to emerge clapped in chastity belts.
The thought of living under this type of rule makes me want to croak. But I doubt that I would be given permission.
Arthur Martori is a journalism junior. Euthanize his character at arthur.martori@asu.edu.
