Isabella+B’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2016


 * Join, or don't die **

I thought a lot about what to talk about in this speech. First, I wanted to talk about how much I love GMOs and GMO technology, despite being a BioScience kid. Then I wanted to talk about how much I hate NHS, an organization whose sole purpose is to artificially inflate college applications. Then I thought maybe I should talk about veganism, and soon thereafter I decided that it would be an awful idea.

Today, I am not going to talk about the America I want to grow old in. Rather, I want to talk about the America I’d prefer not to grow old in. The problem is, I don’t want to be forced to grow old, or be forced to grow old in a way I don’t want to be.

Wouldn’t it suck to grow old?

Luckily, just this year, a bill was passed that grants Californians the right to physician-assisted suicide, known as the right to die bill. I think this is great! I’m a big supporter of this bill because I think this is a choice that we deserve to be able to make. In the America I want to live in, all Americans have this right.

However, this mostly just applies to old people or terminally ill patients, a lot of whom are also old people. I’m glad that I won’t be forced to wither, but there’s still a big problem with how the right to life and death is honored for teens.

When I went to the DMV and tried to sign up to be an organ donor, my parents didn’t let me. And ultimately it is their choice, although it shouldn’t be. In a perfect world, everyone’s parents sign off on this, and there are lots of organs to go around, but this is not the world we live in today. This may be news to you but we are very short on organs. We would do much better to have an opt-out system instead of an opt-in system, where it’s assumed people are organ donors unless they indicate otherwise, but that’s a story for another day.

So, yes! We need kidneys! And I’d love to help. Unfortunately, I can’t because my family is religious and want to bury all of me, which is something I don’t quite understand because if my presumed soul goes to heaven I don’t know why it needs my kidney to make it there, but the point is that it’s not my decision.

So why can’t teens make these decisions? Minors cannot sign legal documents, which makes a bit of sense since we’re not legal adults, but that also includes all medical documents, including advance healthcare directives.

Advance healthcare directives, also known as living wills, tell your doctor that if you were to get into a precarious medical situation, you would not want certain measures to be used on you. Or, conversely, you would. Frequently this includes CPR, because even if you survive CPR, often you survive with impaired brain function and can live the rest of your life on life support.

So, living wills. Minors can’t make them. What a surprise, something else we can’t do.

Moreover, even if my parents did give me the right to a living will, and they wouldn’t, if I were driving to San Francisco and got in a car accident I would be taken to the nearest local hospital, for obvious reasons. There, they would first perform immediate lifesaving measures like a blood transfusion. Then they would attempt to contact my parents. They would have absolutely no idea about my living will because, surprise, there is no unified system for recording these. They are only on file with your local hospital.

This is not efficient. If I jump through all the hoops of making one, I want to be sure that it’s honored. However, the primary concern is the hoops. Here’s what I want: I want medical power of attorney.

Now why do I think 16 is the appropriate age for power of attorney?

One thing to be considered is that at the age of 16, you are eligible to apply for a driver’s license. Although we do try to be safe drivers, the facts don’t lie. When you begin to drive, your chance of death goes up significantly. With these higher chances, it should be up to the driver to determine on what grounds they should die, if it should come to it.

Imagine, just for a second, that you are a room full of middle-aged people. One of you might say “Teenagers cannot understand the gravity of such an important decision.” I happen to think that I can, and I think that you can too, and I also think that you think that you can make decisions about your well-being.

Others of you forty-somethings might say “It’s selfish to chose the easy way out. If you choose not to live on life support, you will crush your family with no benefit to you.” Yeah, I think there would be a benefit to me. Science tells us that some patients in vegetative states are conscious and can feel pain, although there is virtually no way to tell which.

We should be able to decide whether we want to be organ donors. Terminally ill minors should get their wishes when it comes to heroic measures. I want to be sure that the consent I give for a procedure is really my consent. I do not want to live my life dependent and with minimal function, trapped inside my body, even if it’s what would make my parents happy.

This may make me sound like a bit of a Republican, but our Founding Fathers ensured our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The right to life means, at the very least, the right to our own bodies, and the right to life on our own terms.


 * Sources **

[|__https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5wRwNcpyqD_eWJ2U0ZNV3lJOUU/view?usp=sharing__]

[|__http://www.sps186.org/downloads/basic/272002/Teen-Driving-Straight-Facts.pdf__]

[|__http://www.uslivingwillregistry.com/fedregs.shtm__]

[|__http://oag.ca.gov/consumers/general/care__]

[|__http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=prob&group=04001-05000&file=4700-4701__]

[|__http://www.sps186.org/downloads/basic/272002/Teen-Driving-Straight-Facts.pdf__]

[|__http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-teen-battles-chemo-order-0103-20150102-story.html__]

[|__http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/scientists-find-hidden-brain-signatures-of-consciousness-in-vegetative-state-patients__]

[|__http://www.coma.ulg.ac.be/papers/vs/Coma_Yearbook2001.pdf__]

[|__http://comptonherald.com/californias-right-to-die-law-the-facts/__]

[|__http://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/consumers/ProbateCodeAdvancedHealthCareDirectiveForm-fillable.pdf__]