FREE ESSAY ON LEGALIZE ACTIVE EUTHANASIA

LEGALIZE ACTIVE EUTHANASIA

Michelle Dello-Russo
073-66-3337
Trish McGee
0202
Question 2
Legalize Active Euthanasia
I believe that the law should be changed to allow active euthanasia because it is a
person's freedom to determine their time of death if given the opportunity. This paper
will discuss what it is like to lose a person through a painful death and how the good
consequences of legalizing active euthanasia outweigh the bad consequences. It will
further examine the moral permissibility and the question of adopting social policy that
sanctions active euthanasia.
Watching a person suffer from a terminal, painful disease is one of the worst experiences
I ever went through. My grandmother had stomach cancer and was diagnosed too late to even
attempt to save her. She lay in a hospital bed for the last three months of her life not
knowing when her last day would come, only waiting for the pain killers to take effect.
She could not eat any food because the cancer would eat anything she put in her stomach,
so along with dying of cancer she was starving to death. She died a week before my
birthday after months of pain. I only went to visit her once because just looking at her
frail frame hurt, she wasn't the same grandma I had all my life and she just looked so
tired and in so much pain. The night before she died she told one of her friends that she
could not fight anymore, the next morning the fight ended.
If active euthanasia were an option then my grandma would not have had to suffer as much
as she did. She would not have had to go all those weeks in extreme pain; she would have
been able to take a lethal dose of medication and could have died peacefully and quietly
with all her dignity in hand. There are so many good consequences to legalizing active
euthanasia and in my opinion they outweigh the bad consequences. 
Self-determination, or autonomy, plays a crucial role in one's life. Self-determination
provides people with the opportunity to make their own decisions based on their own
values and beliefs. Self-determination further provides people with the chance to take
responsibility for their lives (Brock 165). People think ahead about the last years of
their lives. This thought can put a lot of fear in one's mind, not only the fear of pain
and suffering, but the fear of losing all one's dignity to a dreadful disease. All that a
person wants to do as death approaches is come up with a way that preserves the quality
of life, allows dignity to be kept, and do all that is humanly possible to avoid a great
amount of suffering (Brock 165). Self-determination is what gives them this chance, but
without legalizing active euthanasia then they are not able to carry out their decision
to end their life with the help of a physician. Every person has responsibility for their
life and their life alone. If someone is dying and are in extreme pain then they have the
choice to be hooked up to machines or to have a lethal dose of medication, no matter
what, it is the patients decision, not the governments.
Another supporting factor to legalizing active euthanasia has to do with physicians and
the legalities that they are restricted to. Is active euthanasia was legalized than
physicians could provide them at a patient's request. Providing active euthanasia to the
American people would give them a sense of reassurance, sort of like a security blanket.
It would assure them that if they were to get fatally ill and be in sufferable pain that
there would be a way out. Even if a majority of the population choose not to exercise
their right to active euthanasia at least the choice would be there if it were legalized.
Active euthanasia would be particularly useful when a person is dying and there is not
curable treatment then the doctor should have another option to present to the patient.
Right now doctors are not legally allowed to offer euthanasia, no matter what condition
the patients are in or no matter how bad the doctor feels for the patient, they cannot
offer them the only escape. Physicians are the person that someone goes to if they were
sick, so if a patient was dying and wanted to exercise euthanasia then the first person
they would go to for help would be their physician. If someone is going to die then they
would want their physician there because that would provide them with the guarantee that
the suicide/euthanasia will not go wrong and that their wanted end result will happen.
The physician can also provide them with a guaranteed, painless death.
The third and probably most powerful argument for legalizing active euthanasia would be
the prevention of the pain and suffering that terminally ill patients go through. If a
patient can take a medicine that would prolong their life and help with the pain then
they should take it. But if there were nothing left then resulting to euthanasia would be
the only way to escape from the suffering. It is an argument of mercy and is one of the
strongest arguments for legalizing active euthanasia (Brock 170). People can say that
there is always something that you can do to relieve pain but one will not really know
until they are the patient and the one who is in pain. 
There are bad consequences that come with legalizing active euthanasia. The biggest
argument probably being the slippery slope saying that there will be a generalization of
cases and it could unleash the nasty side of human nature. It says that doctors will get
used to killing patients and will end up abusing the right to active euthanasia. There is
also the risk that people will see it as too expensive to keep patients in a hospital so
physicians and family members will recommend euthanasia to the ill. I believe that these
things will not occur because there will be an extensive program to determine if the
patient is competent and if the euthanasia is the last possible treatment. I would
recommend that two psychiatrists should talk to the patient and determine their
competence and the results of all of the other medications they have taken. If the
patient is found in the right frame of mind and there are no other curable treatments
then active euthanasia would be the best escape from their world of suffering. 
Moral permissibility is a big question in the legalizing of active euthanasia. People
believe that active euthanasia is the killing of an innocent human being but I believe
that it is two people participating in the death of a person. It may be the physician who
commits the last action but the process and the idea comes from the patient. It is said
to be morally wrong to kill a person but it is not morally permissible to watch a person
suffer in pain and anguish for the last days or even hours of their life. If the patient
wants to die then they should be supported. It is morally permissible to help another
human carry out their dying wish, we may not see it as the right choice but it is not our
choice to make. Euthanasia is morally permissible, it does involve death but it is not
killing because the patient is dying and is most likely suffering from extreme pain, all
the physician is doing is letting a person die in a quicker way. The patient was going to
die no matter what; it is just a matter of time and how much the patient has to survive
before reaching death. 
We should adopt a social policy that sanctions active euthanasia because people deserve
the right to determine the time and the conditions under which they die. Death is a
person's last impression they leave on the people they know, most people want it to be
dignified. Active euthanasia provides them with this opportunity but in order to give
this opportunity we must make active euthanasia a social policy. People are concerned
that it will have a bad effect on society but it will provide members of society with the
chance to end all pain. Sanctioning active euthanasia will have more benefits than bad as
I showed above. It is the right thing to do because it will protect patients from
suffering and it will protect families from having to watch one of its members die in a
slow painful process. 
I believe that the law should be changed to allow active euthanasia. Active euthanasia is
morally permissible and should be sanctioned as a social policy. It allows people to die
on their own terms and may be easier on the patient and on the family. I don't know if my
grandmother would have considered euthanasia but I do wonder how much pain it would have
protected her from.
Bibliography
Brock, Dan W. "Voluntary Active Euthanasia: An Overview and Defense". Hastings 
Center Report 22. March/April 1992. Pgs 163-179. 1992.