Dying for the right to be euthanized, in a new book

Vincent Humbert went driving in France in late September of the year 2000. I doubt he expected to wake up in a cage nine months later — the time and space in between as dark and mislaid as all time to follow.

He was struck in an auto accident at the age of 19 and left unable to move, unable to speak, and unable to see — but able to remember who he used to be. He did not awake until nine months after the accident. It must have been a late-Sunday-morning-wake, long and drowsy and disorienting. But in this case, coupled with a Dalton Trumbo nightmare. Maybe it was a nurse or possibly his mother, Marie, who explained what had happened to him, when his heart monitor registered what his face and body could not — that he was alive.

He spent months in isolation before deciding that future days and future breaths were not as valuable as those of the past. I can only guess what he was thinking — or screaming.

The choice to kill one's self is perhaps the most intimately personal decision one can make. Beyond a woman's right to make choices about her own body, beyond a parent's right to choose the best things for her child, beyond our own decisions regarding careers, religion, friends, political views and love, the choice to end one's own life is fundamentally the most serious decision a human can make.

Perhaps it is for this reason that we legally have only one option throughout most of the world: to live. To continue. To take another step in the name of taking more steps. To not look back.

Most of us have played that game where we choose what we fear more: to be mute or blind, to lose a leg or an arm, to never be able to write again or sing. Which talent are you willing to lose? Which life-goal would you give up? To raise children? To work on Wall Street? To perform on stage? To hike the Appalachian Trail? To visit another country? What is most expendable? How about all of it?

If Vincent Humbert were to have the choice today, I wonder if he would be able to pick one thing. I wonder if the answer would be glaringly obvious, very, very glaringly obvious. I hope I never know his answer.

I would like to think that if I were in his position I could find a greater purpose in life. Even if I could never speak, laugh, witness, dance, stand, or cry again I hope that I could at least relish the thought of just being alive; that knowing I was knowing would be enough to sustain my existence. It is a hopeful thought.

Vincent Humbert longed to be killed. He even wrote Jacques Chirac (France's president) for the legal right to end his own life. Chirac explained he did not have the right to grant such a request. How horrible to leave the world as a criminal, condemned by your country's laws. Vincent Humbert, like any American would, had only two options: die a criminal or live in torture.

Euthanasia, the act of killing someone painlessly, is necessary when an individual no longer has the faculty to kill himself and thus needs assistance from another person in order to perform the act he so desires. It is not suicide. Suicide is impossible. In Humbert's case it was impossible for him to end his own life. His only option was involving another. Who are we to deny that request?

He wrote a book entitled "I Ask You for the Right to Die," which was released last Thursday in France, one day before he died from the intravenous sedatives that his mother administered (she has since been taken into police custody).

In it, he pleaded with his fellow countrymen to be allowed the gift of death. As The New York Times describes, Mr. Humbert wrote the book with the help of a journalist, Frederic Veille, by pressing with his thumb and nodding his head to spell out words as Mr. Veille read repeatedly through the alphabet.

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His own words best state his reason to publish before death: "[S]o that you understand me better, so that the debate about euthanasia finally reaches another level, so that this word and this act are no longer a taboo subject, so that we no longer let live lucid people like me who want to put an end to their own suffering, I wanted to write this book that I will never read."

It is hard to say, "people should be allowed to kill themselves" out loud. It goes against all natural instincts. Perhaps instead we should say "People should not have to live with pain alone." In this day and age, when we still drop bombs, why are we willing to kill thousands in the name of humanity, but not just one?