Critical Thinking Essay #4

Legalising Euthanasia

Should people cheated death instead of suffering? Euthanasia is the term of terminating a very sick person in order to relieve them from suffering. At the same time, euthanasia can be done under request of the person suffering, yet, there are times when the person who suffers couldn’t make the request for examples, people in coma and paralysed the decision to do euthanasia is made by the relatives, the medics, or other instances. Moreover, euthanasia is mostly done to people who suffer from incurable sickness, and most people would think that euthanasia is mostly done to the people who suffered pain awfully, however, the statistics from USA and Netherlands shows that “less than a third of request for euthanasia were because of severe pain.” In other words, psychological factors such as depression, feeling a burden, and dislike of being dependent are the cause that makes people to think of euthanasia. For this reason, there are some countries that don’t support the act of euthanasia because it is against the religion, it is not humanist, and it against the law because euthanasia also called suicide or kill. Nonetheless, the ethical problems of euthanasia and the facts that supports euthanasia will shows why euthanasia should be legalise.

Euthanasia should be legalised because of several morality or ethical reasons. In general, those civilised people argued that the act of euthanasia or suicide should not be a crime because they believe that everyone has the rights of their own bodies and mind which is means that they have the rights to make their own decision to live or to die. Moreover, they believe that forcing people to continue living and suffering is immoral. In fact, the act of euthanasia is illegal in most of the countries including the Britain. According to the 1961 Suicide Act, euthanasia is consider a crime in Britain, and the punishment is 14 years of imprisonment, to assist, aid or counsel somebody to taking their own life. And besides, the Times (24 January 2007) stated that, according to the British Social Attitudes survey in 2007, “80% of the public said that they wanted the law changed to give terminally ill patients the right to die with a doctor’s help.” And at the same time, in the same survey, it stated, “45% supported giving patients of non-terminal illnesses the option of euthanasia. And a majority opposed to relatives being involved in patient’s death.” As the matter of facts that forcing people to continue living and suffering is immoral and against human rights, the act of euthanasia should be allowed and legalised.

Furthermore, euthanasia should be allowed and legalise because of the logical facts of the act of euthanasia. First of all, as it mentioned in the paragraph above, people have the rights to control their own bodies, mind, and life. As it was stated in The Independent (March, 2002), “in cases where there are no dependants who might exert pressure way or the other, the right of the individual to choose should be paramount. So long as the patient is lucid, and his or her intent is clear beyond doubt, here need be no further question.” Second of all, death is a private matters, and if it is not harmful to others the state and other people have no right to interfere. As an example, if an action promotes the best interest of everyone concerned and violates no one’s rights then that action is morally acceptable, and which is means, euthanasia is morally acceptable because euthanasia promotes the best interests of everyone involved and it violae’s no one’s rights. And last but not least, euthanasia could be necessary for the fair distribution of health resources. For instance, in some countries, there is a lack of health resources and sometimes some people who are ill of sickness that can be cured can’t get the fast access and treatment because all the equipments are being use to the person whom the sickness can’t be cured. And thus, by allowing some people to commit euthanasia help people who are in needs and want to stay alive from the valuable resources. Therefore, the act of euthanasia shouldn’t be banned and illegal because this act affects the society positively and people live and death is their own rights to choose.

To conclude, as a human being, people would prefer end their own life in dignity and painless rather than suffering and waiting until the time to come. At the same time, killing people under request or because of helping people to relieve their suffering does not count as crime, because they do something bad for good. Therefore, euthanasia should be legalise because it doesn’t affects other people, it does not against human rights, and it is an individual meters to make their own decisions.

Work Cited

BBC - Ethics - Euthanasia: Ethical problems of euthanasia. (n.d.). BBC - Homepage. Retrieved May 16, 2012, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/overview/problems.shtml

BBC - Ethics - Euthanasia: Pro-euthanasia arguments. (n.d.). BBC - Homepage. Retrieved May 16, 2012, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/infavour/infavour_1.shtml