If there's one thing that really bothers me about the Western world today, it's our view of death as a punishment. For some reason, a lot of people believe that any life -- no matter the quality -- is always better than death.

This disturbs me, mostly because nobody knows what death is like. By putting it off, people may actually be keeping their loved ones from something much better than what they are experiencing in life.

Take Florida resident Terri Schiavo, for example. Her heart stopped beating 15 years ago, causing her brain to be without oxygen for five minutes. Since then, she has been in what is known as a "persistent vegetative state." Her husband, Michael, wants to have her taken off of all life support so that she may finally rest in peace. Michael is amid a near-war with Terri's family, though, because she never left anything in writing saying that this is not what she wants.

This woman has been in a hospice bed for 15 years because her family believes she can get "better." For 15 years she has been unable to speak, eat or move on her own. Why? I'm sorry, but if she has shown almost no improvements in 15 years -- it's time to let her go. She's not going to get her life back or be the way she used to be. She shouldn't be kept prisoner in her body, lying in bed 24 hours a day in hopes that she may someday defy doctors' predictions and get better.

Terri is not the only woman to experience life in an extended vegetative state.

Karen Quinlan was in a coma for more than 10 years before New Jersey courts permitted her parents to take her off of life support.

Nancy Cruzan lived in a vegetative state for almost eight years before the U.S. Supreme Court granted permission to her parents to remove her from life support. Why is a life lived unconsciously in a bed better than death?

Maybe people are afraid to let go of their loved ones. While I can understand that, it's selfish to keep them alive to delay your own grief.

Maybe people believe so strongly that a miracle will happen that they deny all the physical evidence in front of them. People want so much to believe that those in comas always have the potential to magically snap out of them, when in reality, few people are so fortunate. I watched my grandmother deteriorate and die from cancer. I would have never wanted her to be on life support for a decade in hopes that doctors would find a cure for cancer while she was in a coma.

Our cultural value of "life in any form is better than death" causes pain for many people, not just those in comas and their families. Many women who discover their babies will not survive their first days outside the womb refuse to terminate their pregnancies.

For example, anencephaly is a rare disorder in which a baby's neural tube does not close during development. Babies with anencephaly are born missing parts of their brain and sometimes parts of their skulls. They enter the world blind, deaf and unconscious. They die within hours of their birth, if they are not stillborn.

Pregnant women who discover their baby has anencephaly will carry their baby to full term because they believe their baby will be the one to defy every other case in medial history.

These women have a legitimate reason to terminate their pregnancies, but they don't.

Why? Is a dark, silent, unconscious life for a few hours better than no life at all? In the case of these women, maybe they endure the pain of watching their newborn die -- or delivering a stillborn baby, in some cases -- because there's such a negative stigma attached to abortion. People refuse to believe there is ever a justifiable reason for terminating a life. Even if that life is doomed.

Every day I see people putting themselves and their loved ones through an emotional gauntlet because they believe so strongly in the "right to life." What about a "right to mercy"?

When someone's quality of life is so poor that their only activity is breathing, that's not a life, it's simply being alive. In the technologically advanced world we live in today, being alive doesn't mean what it used to. We have machines that breathe for people, eat for people, pump blood for people, etc.

People using those machines today would have either made a recovery on their own or passed away 50 years ago. Just because doctors can keep someone alive doesn't mean they should.

In our "right-to-life" culture, we picket outside abortion clinics and demonstrate against evildoers like Michael Schiavo who want to end a life.

When did it become our responsibility to set the moral bar and declare that death should be avoided at all costs, no matter how agonizing one's life is? Maybe someday we'll realize that death is not a punishment -- it can be the end to a life of senseless suffering.