Should euthanasia be legal?...why or why not?

Question

im doing a report on euthansia. its kind of like a debate and im supposed to be against it. i cant think of any right to be against it. any help would be apprecitaed

Answer 1

Absolutly, if a person is going to die anyways, and there is no way out of it, that person should have the right to kill themselves. It would be too painful to watch them living in agony, just to have them die later.

Answer 2

Legalizing euthanasia is a very slippery slope. I certainly don't want to see a terminally ill patient suffer through their final hours. I wonder how many non-terminally ill people with long term issues would opt for euthanasia and how many people would want euthanasia for a parent or relative with Alzheimer's or someone who's comatose. Isn't euthanasia just a nice way of saying that someone (or something) has been killed? Who decides who is allowed to have euthanasia? What will the guidelines be? How do you determine if someone can make their own life ending decision?

I fully support Do Not Resuscitate orders as this allows someone to die without intervention but I have a lot of problems with helping the death along. I feel this way now but I have personally never had to participate in making a decision to turn off someone's life support. There are too many ethical and moral dilemmas associated with the legalization of euthanasia that I would be very hesitant to support it. I hope that this helps a little.

Answer 3

Since you are supposed to be against it, I will address those issues.
The predominate problem with euthansia is where the line is drawn. If a person chooses to end their life after careful contemplation with a doctor and family, and decides that they wish to end it prematurely because the future only offers a limited time with great suffering, that can be argued effectively for it. But how do you determine if a person is rational when facing a potentially fatal condition? How can be sure that depression isnt motivating them? How do you deal with the rights of a person that has assigned all medical decisions to another because they are mentally incapable of making decisions? What if a person doesnt have a fatal disease, but is incapacitated (say by stroke or paralysis) and doesnt like their state of health, but has a potential for 20 years or more of life? What about people that are suicidal? Shouldnt they also have the right to euthansia, if others do? After all depression is a disease as well.
the problem with legalized Euthansia is the same for all great ethical questions: where do you draw the line between acceptable, and unacceptable cases.

Answer 4

I had to do the same thing last year. Here are some of my points:

-It goes against the hippocratic oath
-It goes against most of the main religions
-They will eventually die anyway
-If euthanasia is legalized, people wouldn't know where to draw the line: someone who wanted to commit suicide could just have themself euthanized
-Euthanasia is still killing, so legalizing Euthanasia would be like legalizing killing
-Some people think that death by euthanasia is fast and peaceful, but actually it isn't! Sometimes the anesthesia wears off before the person is dead

Answer 5

Well, it depends on the type of euthanasia - is this a choice someone is making for themself or is a guardian making the choice for someone believed to be beyond medical help and/or brain dead? If we are talking about making that choice for another person, you get into trouble deciding which patients qualify as never going to return to consciousness or who won't live much longer and are only suffering because we can't know for sure someone won't come out of a coma or recover from a severe injury that has left them temporarily out of action or consciousness. Then, you have to think about the method for euthanizing someone - are you going to simply end medical treatment and let them die on their own, or are you going to actively kill this person. If you just let them die, you get into ethical questions of cruelty and suffering (basically starving to death like Terry Schiavo). If you are taking measures to end the person's life, you get into ethical issues of whether taking a life is wrong, regardless of the situation.

Those are some great points to start with.

Answer 6

Here is a true point My aunt was doyeing of heart disease and had terrible chest pains Doctors did not give her much hope. This was 15 years ago. She wanted to go to Dr. Death Jack Kivorkian and dye. Our family implored her not to and thank God she didn't, An experimental surgical procedure was introduced and my Aunt was one of the first to undergo it. She just celebrated her 90th. birthday. Does this help? The point is that medicine is always going forward on diseases trying to find cures and we don't know when a cure will come for someone who has a horrible disease. It is not for us to decide the hour of death but for God.

Answer 7

The only thing against it is when the sick person is mentally weak and doesn't know exactly what will happen. Or when some gridy relatives want the inheritance sooner and pushing for it....
In all other cases, the suffering person should be able to decide his/hers destiny themselves.

Answer 8

I believe that the assisted death of any human should not be legal. I believe that god makes us the way we are for however long he chooses, and when it is time he will bring us home.

Answer 9

it should be known that we are all entitled to live and living involves suffering to.we should not only think of living without of suffering.to drive the point home,it should not be legalised and remember, miracles do happen

Answer 10

Why not? We do it with animals, out of compassion. There is no reason why we shouldn't do it to humans who are terminally ill, only out of selfishness, to avoid feeling guilty.