There is an incredibly complex battle raging across the United States about whether or not it is socially acceptable to allow a doctor to help a patient commit suicide if they are suffering beyond help.

In my eyes, this is a decision best left to the person who feels they have a right to die to avoid further suffering. If I was sound of mind and so desperate to end my life to stop the pain, then it should be my right if there’s nothing further that can be done. I support doctor-assisted suicide because if I’ve gotten to the point where I want to die, I want to die painlessly and not be forced to jump off a bridge or suffer some other equally horrifying and excruciating death.

To reach this point, some people have probably already suffered an unimaginable amount of pain and to add insult to injury, they cannot even die in peace with some dignity. They have to resort to drastic measures that will cause them even more pain than what they have already gone through.

One of the largest arguments against doctor-assisted suicide is that ending someone’s life is “playing god.”

Dr. Jack Kevorkian himself said, “Any time you interfere with the natural process, you’re playing god.”

Kevorkian makes a great point with this statement. Whenever you extend someone’s life with medicine or technological advances, you are in effect playing god. If you don’t want your doctor playing god, then you shouldn’t even see a doctor to begin with. In fact, there’s a sect of religious people in Oregon called The Followers of Christ that believe in just that, so they don’t see or utilize doctors. As a result, they have received extensive media attention because their children have been dying as a result of the parents’ beliefs.

With that argument made, I’ll proceed to a question you really need to ask yourself: who really benefits banning doctor-assisted suicide? It’s not the doctor—he/she feels terrible for the patient and wishes they could do something to make them feel better. It’s not the patient who’s in utter agony every waking moment and only wishes the pain would end before they suffer even more. It’s the big and powerful corporations and special interest groups that have bottom lines which are dependant upon the suffering of others.

I’m a particularly harsh critic of super corporations in America in general. And when it comes to the issue of euthanasia, large pharmaceutical companies are at the head of the line when it comes to profiting off the ill and weak. They don’t want sick people to prematurely die as they are undoubtedly swallowing hundreds of dollars in pills every month to stay alive. Another sad example could be a medical union that wants to protect the livelihoods of their members, who depend on patients being and staying sick to have a job. If these sick patients die, then who would these doctors and nurses treat? A patient with a persistent problem is a steady cash flow to many of these groups.

Oregon has a system in place called the Death with Dignity Act that has all sorts of fail-safes for potential problems and moral arguments that people may have with euthanasia. For example, it takes at least thirty days and two requests to be legally euthanized so that you can’t rush into it without time to think about this final decision. You also cannot have just one doctor say that there’s nothing that can be done for you and then apply for euthanasia. Oregon has been extremely meticulous in measuring what worries people and has written the act to address these problems quite well.

While it’s always a sad occasion when a life ends, with euthanasia as a legal choice, you would be able to find comfort in the fact that at least your loved one died in peace with a lot less suffering than necessary. Or maybe one day you could face sad decision yourself. Either way, isn’t giving someone more options, rather than less, the true humane thing to do?