What Is Euthanasia? Essay

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Euthanasia paper What would you consider euthanasia? Can it be a peaceful death, a suicide, or a murder? Euthanasia is “…the intentional killing by the act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit” (“Euthanasia.com” Online). This means a life is taken away when a person who is critically ill or a person who can no longer function physically or mentally abdicate their decision making and the family decides whether or not to have the plug pulled. Could you imagine having to make the decision of when to kill your mother? Well people are faced with this decision every day and the end result is always fatal. Euthanasia is wrong. Understanding why people choose euthanasia, the history of euthanasia, and why it should be illegal, is all important factors to realize this position. To understand why euthanasia is wrong people must know why patients choose to be euthanized. “Ethical problems arise when two or more values suggest conflicting actions or conflicting judgments about a particular action” (Yount 12). One of the major reasons why people choose euthanasia is that they are experiencing unbearable pain and they fell that if they end their life they will no longer have to brook the pain. Another reason is that people feel they have a right to die and to take their own life. These people have accepted death and are willing to leave the earth by using the process of euthanasia. “Supporters of legalization believe that terminally ill individuals have the right to end their own lives in some instances” (Leone 7). People have to realize that this death is wrong. We as humans can and should not be able to play the role of God and decide when we are ready to die, that is his job. In legalizing voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide we will in fact create a slippery slope that will result in the development from a simple legal right to die to something that is currently taboo becoming accepted. For example, according to the article written by Herbert Hendin called “The Slippery Slope: The Dutch Example” in 1996 Dutch doctors were legally permitted to commit acts of euthanasia. At first there were strict guidelines that governed the practice to avoid abuse of power that it granted. This law gradually moved from accepting assisted suicide to accepting euthanasia, and euthanasia for terminally ill patients to euthanasia for chronically ill patients. Then it progressed to euthanasia to the physically ill to those experiencing psychological distress. This deterioration of what is and what is not acceptable finally culminated in the acceptance of voluntary, non-voluntary, and involuntary euthanasia which endangered many poor, elderly and disable patients into being pressured into accepting this act. Doctors have dealt with the problem of euthanasia dating all the way back to 400 B.C. We have to realize that people are accepting death via euthanasia because they fear the pain that they might have to face or the pain they currently endure. “People have always feared a painful lingering death, and the debate over euthanasia is as ancient as this fear” (Torr 9). It all started with a man named
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