Nov. 8, 2016. Election day. Among the many events that happened that day, Colorado passes Proposition 106, reinforcing terminally ill patients’ rights to physician-assisted suicide. With Oregon being the first state to have done 20 years ago, Colorado brings once again to national attention a topic no one really wants to talk about.

    Suicide is something we as a society should always work actively to prevent. Experts say, suicide seems as the last option for those who believe that there is no other solution to their problems.

    In an ideal world, we would administer a cure rather than kill anyone pronounced terminally ill. We don’t live in such a utopia, and the reality is that people die of terminal illnesses and  suffer an unbearable amount of pain in doing so.

    When diagnosed with a terminal illness, people in the US don’t have many options. The choices are fight the disease, hope the doctors are wrong, and maybe survive. Likely though, your condition will slowly decay as you await a very agonizing death. For those who know they are going to die, assisted suicide allows people to decide the means and time to do so.

    Assisted suicide isn’t about killing the terminally ill, it’s about giving them a less painful option. Waiting to meet death is not just traumatizing to the one experiencing the disease, but distressing to close friends and family as they watch their loved one’s condition continue to deteriorate. According to the National Health Care Decisions Day project, 42% of Americans have experienced a friend or relative suffering from a terminal illness or coma in the past five years. Instead of suffering, assisted suicide grants patients the ability to decide when and with whom they die.

    Ultimately, there is nothing truly stopping these people from committing suicide on their own through traditional methods, often more gruesome than a simple injection that assisted suicide offers. In England, 7 percent of common suicides between 2005 and 2013 involved the terminally ill according to the London Telegraph Newspaper.

    What sets physician-assisted suicide apart from other types of suicide, is that often those who commit suicide could have gone on to live a long and happy life with the proper treatment. Terminally ill patients, even with the best care, are going to die, regardless of any actions they take. To deny someone the right to a peaceful death doesn’t prevent the painful end that awaits them later on.

    Life is something we all hold dear. It is beautiful because we get to decide what we do with it. A society that cannot offer the cure, can, at the very least, offer the right of a peaceful death. If someone’s life expectancy has been cut short by a terminal illness, he or she should be allowed all possible options. This type of law gives people faced with the worst possible diagnosis a second option.