Euthanasia refers to the painless killing of a terminally-ill patient in order to relieve them from their suffering. According to the Encyclopedia of American Law, “mercy killing” is considered criminal homicide because, judicially speaking, killing is considered inexcusable when carried out for any other reason aside from criminal punishment. While it may seem to some that euthanasia is unethical suicide, it is actually true that it gives the right to personal freedom because it allows you to determine what happens to your own body. From personal experience, one of the hardest things to see a family member or a loved one go through is unbearable pain, and ultimately, the last thing they would want you to see is their suffering.
According to The International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, euthanasia is considered unethical because, “The government should not have the right to give [doctors] the power to kill [patients].” One cannot disregard that medicine should not be allowed to hasten or cause death when its primary function is to cure individuals; however, it is irrational to claim that medicine is harming a patient when it is trying to accomplish the exact opposite. Euthanasia is being used to assist patients whose suffering can’t otherwise be relieved in order to provide a compassionate response to their illness.
The American College of Physicians also claims that by changing the medical profession’s traditional role in society it would harm the value that our society has toward life; especially the life of disabled and incompetent individuals. This point may be somewhat relevant, but it doesn’t seem logical that someone would think less of a disabled person because of a personal choice to relieve their suffering. In the final stages of a fatal disease, one has more respect for the tough decisions a patient and a doctor has to make regarding the body and the amount of suffering that it can withstand.
When someone is hurt or seriously injured, most people’s immediate reaction is to help relieve their pain; doctors are no exceptions. In carrying out their duty to assist patients in relieving their pain and suffering, physicians should be allowed to hasten the death of a terminally ill patient if and only if a voluntary decision is reached and the patient is competent to make the decision. Retired pathologist Jack Kevorkian (AKA Dr. Death) states, “Everyone has a right for suicide, because a person has a right to determine what will or will not be done to his body.” In a situation of extended and unnecessary suffering from an incurable fatal disease everyone should be given the right to a personal decision for their fate.
Nobody wants to see a loved one in pain. Faye Girsh, Senior Adviser at the Final Exit Network, argues that requiring a patient to endure unbelievable suffering when one does not wish continue should be considered just as unethical as using medicine to induce death. Euthanasia allows physicians to prescribe lethal doses of controlled substances to patients that are terminally ill. As there is no “right way” to die, this painless relief to unbearable suffering seems like a more ethical decision over standing-by to watch a person struggle through a life they do not wish to live anymore.
Euthanasia is not about an ethical idea of physicians becoming “killers.” It is about the patients. In a situation where pain and suffering cannot be cured we must not turn away from them, but instead reach out and assist them when they ask for help. If a competent, terminally-ill patient does not wish to continue on in life with his or her suffering, they must have the right to determine what happens to their body in their time of death. If someone is legally allowed to refuse treatment that may result in their death, why can’t someone be allowed the decision to end intolerable suffering that will ultimately achieve the same outcome? Try and imagine yourself in that position and ask yourself what the right decision would be.