Persuasive Essay On Euthanasia

As the western world is putting more and more emphasis on individual autonomy, the question of whether or not terminally ill patients should be able to end their life early because of unbearable pain is becoming widely debated. The Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines euthanasia as “the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy” (“Euthanasia”), and comes from the Greek word meaning “good death” (Humphry). The practice is currently legal in Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the states of California, Oregon, Vermont, Washington (Burki), and most recently Colorado (Brown), and is being considered by many other territories.
There are very strict guidelines in territories where euthanasia is legal that determine who is eligible to make a request for physician-assisted suicide and the steps the physician must take to complete the request. For instance, in Colorado, in order to make a legitimate request, “two physicians would have to agree the person is mentally competent and has fewer than six months to live, and the person choosing to die would have to self-administer the dosage of secobarbital, historically used in low doses as a sleeping pill. People with dementia or Alzheimer’s would not be eligible for the prescription.” (Brown). The physician must fully inform the patient about his or her medical condition, discuss all possible options of alternative treatments, and consult another physician about the case before performing euthanasia.
Experts bring into question the morality of euthanasia. They debate whether it is ethical to intentionally end one’s life early in order to prevent the unbearable suffering that would lead up to his or her natural death. Legalizing euthanasia would relieve suffering that hospice programs cannot control, increase the individual autonomy of patients, and improve the use of end of life care; however, euthanasia can be likened to homicide, it would spread to patients who are not terminally ill, and patients could be easily be coerced by their family members or doctors to receive euthanasia. Physician-assisted suicide is a good idea in theory for many reasons, but the logistical drawbacks should make governments hesitant to legalize euthanasia.
The argument for euthanasia centers around the claim that it relieves unbearable suffering from terminally ill patients. “Pain, particularly that due to infiltration by cancer of extremely sensitive nerve rich areas such as the head and neck, pelvis and spine, is commonly episodic and excruciating aggravated by movement, and may be likened to a dental drill on an unanaesthetised tooth nerve” (South Australian Voluntary Euthanasia Society). For some people, this kind of pain makes their quality of life not worth living, and they would rather die a quicker, less painful death than continue living while their illness slowly and painfully takes away their state of being.
Although hospice care attempts to make the final days of a patient as comfortable as possible, not all terminal pain can be controlled with the use of drugs (Humphry).
Timothy E. Quill, a professor of medicine at the University of Rochester in New York points out that hospice care can improve the quality of life for most patients, but “despite what doctors and nurses report about achieving good symptom relief for hospice patients in the last week of life, the patients themselves often say that they are still experiencing severe pain and shortness of breath” (Quill, “Dying Patients”). He argues that when hospice care fails, patients should be able to legally discuss assisted suicide with their doctors and request euthanasia if they feel it is right for them (Quill, “Dying
Patients”).
There are also many non-pain-related ways a patient can suffer that some argue would also warrant the use of euthanasia. Of all reported cases of euthanasia in Belgium from 2002 to 2007, 95.6 percent or patients reported physical suffering and 68.0 percent of people reported psychological suffering at the moment of euthanasia (Smets 190). Some examples of psychological suffering are “hopelessness, futility, meaninglessness, disappointment, remorse, and a disruption of personal identity” (South Australian Voluntary Euthanasia Society), and they can be caused because someone is constantly taking care of the patient, reducing their independence. Therefore, palliative care cannot possibly provide a pain-free, comfortable death for all patients.
In addition to the argument for the relief of pain and suffering, many claim that euthanasia should be made legal because it is within an individual’s autonomy to determine the manner in which he or she dies. An expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada concludes that “the manner of our dying reflects our sense of what is important just as much as do the other central decisions in our lives” (qtd. in Singer), so deciding how to die should be recognized as an individual right. A competent, non-coerced, informed, terminally ill patient is fully able to make an educated decision on whether or not to end their life early, and should be able to do so legally.
It is possible that legalizing euthanasia improves the use of palliative care. In Belgium, where euthanasia is legal, “the overall incidence of end of life decisions did not change between 1998 (39.3%) and 2001 (38.4%), but the incidence of voluntary euthanasia substantially decreased (from 1.1% to 0.3%)” (Bernheim), so doctors increasingly discussed palliative care options with patients. Additionally, in Oregon, where euthanasia had been legal for 13 years in 2015, it had not reached 100 deaths per year (Singer). This could be because the movements of euthanasia and palliative care developed side by side with one another with shared workers. To many, euthanasia is considered a form of palliative care and, therefore, promotes it. Advocates of euthanasia wish it to be used as a last resort, so all other possibilities for end of life care must be used or discussed with the patient, leaving no room for physician-assisted suicide to be a “replacement” for palliative care. (Quill, “The Right to Die”). There is no evidence that the legalization of euthanasia would lead to a decline of effective palliative care measures.
Much of the opposition to euthanasia is based on religious reasons, such as the belief that voluntary suicide is a sin; however, this argument should not be used as a reason to not legalize euthanasia because it discredits agnostics, atheists, and others with different religious beliefs (Humphry).
One of the basic tenets of this country is the separation of church and state, so religion should not play a role in the debate over whether or not to legalize euthanasia in the different states of the United States.
Bill Muehlenberg, an ethicist and philosopher suggests that euthanasia should be considered homicide because it is “ an act that directly and intentionally causes a person's death” (Muehlenberg). He argues that there is a big difference between allowing to die by the means of reducing treatment and intentionally taking a patient’s life. The first, he says, is acceptable because it is simply allowing a patient to die of natural causes; the second is killing. He concludes that “no civilized society can permit the legalised killing of its own citizens, even if done in the name of compassion”
(Muehlenberg).
Others argue that if we legalize euthanasia for the terminally ill, it would spread to accept people that are not terminally ill. In the Netherlands, where euthanasia has been legal for more than 30 years, the government has now made it legal for a physician to assist an Alzheimer’s patient in committing suicide (Smith). Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, claims that that truly compassionate approach to dealing with such patients‒ who can still love and be loved‒ would be to care for them until their natural deaths (Smith). Legalizing euthanasia elsewhere may cause patients that do not have a terminal illness to be euthanized like in the Netherlands, so many argue that it must not be legalized in the first place.
With the legalization of euthanasia, patients may be coerced in their decision of whether or not to partake in the practice. Families might pressure a patient to receive euthanasia because of financial or caregiving burdens. Studies have shown that in 24 percent of euthanasia cases, families lost most or all of their savings to medical care costs, and in 7.9 cases of euthanasia the United States, financial burden was a core motive (Emanuel 637). In addition to putting a financial strain on their families, patients also require significant caregiving attention and assistance from their families. A study found that “second only to depression, having high caregiving needs was a significant predictor for terminally ill patients having seriously thought about euthanasia” (Emanuel 368). If euthanasia were legalized, patients may be severely influenced by coercion of their families and therefore would not represent the individual autonomy of the patient for which supporters of euthanasia argue so strongly.
Although euthanasia can relieve physical and psychological suffering, it might not be the best option for all terminally ill patients. Governments considering allowing physician-assisted suicide need to take into consideration all the positive and negative possibilities of the legalization.