Euthanasia is the termination of an extremely ill person’s life in order to relieve them from the
suffering the illness is causing. Euthanasia is usually only conducted on a person with an
incurable condition. Should a terminally ill patient in a great deal of pain and discomfort be
allowed to terminate their life, if that is what the patient desires?
On the one hand, in euthanasia, a patient has willfuly made a decision to die, but she might
simply be unable to carry out the act herself, so she asks someone else to do it for her. In
assisted suicide the decision still rests with the patient. But here, the assistance comes in
the form of something like a prescription from a doctor, but the patient is the one who
ultimately ends her own life. These cases may be defended using liberty, I mean, everyone
should be free to make decisions about their lives, and in this case, their own deaths. So it’s
the patient’s freedom to choose whether to live or die. And it doesn’t mean that they don’t
value themselves but to them it might only make sense to choose their own ending. So this
leaves us with a big one question, What makes life worth living? But I think in these cases
pain is probably the most compelling reason that people support decisions to death. Pain
plays a big role in this topic. Choosing to die is not something people do out of desperation.
It’s something that suffering people do.
On the other hand, there are many different personal views when it comes the idea of
euthanasia. There are some people who believe it should be illegal. These arguments
against euthanasia are in place to prevent abuse. Choosing to die affects more than just the
patient since consequences such as guilt must be balanced among their loved ones as well
Moreover, The desire to die by assisted suicide, can be associated with treatable
depression however, there are certainly people with disabilities, even severe ones, who
are happy to be alive so we should support each person’s decision.
Thinking about cases such as a person with a terminal illness makes your head hurt and
your head spin but we have to think about them. I think it’s worth it because by talking about
these difficult topics, we are going to gain some insights into what it is that we actually value
about life.