Legalizing Euthanasia

Euthanasia, by definition, is “the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma.” It has been a universal topic of controversy for a couple decades now, and few countries have seen progress in legalizing the act, though many have tried. As of this year, euthanasia is legal only in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, Germany, Albania, Colombia, and Japan. In the United States, a judge from New Mexico deemed physician-assisted suicide to be constitutional in early 2014. Oregon, Vermont, and Washington are the only other states that have legalized physician-assisted suicide. Montana has legal physician-assisted suicide via court ruling.

There are many people who are scared of the potential hazards that could happen if euthanasia was legalized. They believe that the notion that people have the right to die would inflict on doctors a duty to kill, instead of working as hard to save a life. There is also the fear of a ‘slippery slope.’ This means that they fear that if euthanasia is legal, the voluntary killing of patients would soon become involuntary, and doctors would decide when a life is not worth living. In the Netherlands in 1990 around 1,000 patients were killed without their request.

 

There is also massive support of legalizing euthanasia all across the globe. A whopping 75 percent of citizens in Australia supported euthanasia and assisted suicide. The first main argument is that it is a personal right to die. It is someone’s choice when they decide to alleviate themselves of suffering because it is their life. To deny someone’s right to die would only force them to continue to suffer, and in some cases, find another, most certainly painful way to die. Another argument is it really does not shorten life. In 1991, a Dutch report on euthanasia found that it shorted life by a maximum of a week in 86 percent of cases. This is really just relieving the suffering of the patient and showing compassion towards them. To legalize euthanasia would also save lives. Instead of wasting medical resources on some who is terminally ill and voluntarily wants to die, give that medical treatment to someone who can actually be cured. An appalling amount of countries do not have the medical resources that they need, and this could help save the lives of those who are curable.

A new study finds that more and more people from mostly the UK, France, and Germany are traveling to Switzerland, where Euthanasia is legal, to die. There was a slight decrease in tourists between 2008 and 2009, and then the number doubled between 2009 and 2012. These people, deemed “suicide tourists, seek assisted dying that is painless. People seeking death were between the ages of 23 and 97 years old, the most common being around the age of 69. Nearly 60

percent of the suicide tourists are women. 47 

percent of those seeking assisted suicide were suffering from a neurological disease, and 37 percent had cancer.

            My personal opinion is that euthanasia should be legalized. People have the right to die and the right to do what they want with their own selves. I believe that it will take a long time, but already 5 states in the US have made it legal, so slowly were are starting to get there.

http://listverse.com/2013/09/12/10-arguments-for-legalising-euthanasia/

http://www.care.org.uk/advocacy/end-of-life/euthanasia-the-arguments-for-and-against

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/world/europe/more-people-going-to-switzerland-for-assisted-suicide-study-finds.html?_r=0

http://euthanasia.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000132

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/infavour/infavour_1.shtml#h6