Euthanasia Controversy

Euthanasia

Imagine a person who has a terminal disease and still has time to live. Now picture this alive person asking for euthanasia. Euthanasia is the bringing about of a gentle and easy death for a person suffering a painful, incurable disease (The Oxford Paperback Dictionary, 1988) but is it painless? It is a relief? Nobody has ever come back to tell have they? Exactly. Euthanasia is the equivalent to suicide or murder. It stops further research for curing diseases and shouldn't be allowed to be conducted in our world.

Right to life is a phrase that describes the belief that a human being has the essential right to live, particularly that a human being has the essential rights not to be killed by another human (Right to life, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/right_to_life). Euthanasia disobeys, weakens and removes this belief completely because by euthanizing the person it removes their right to live and also technically the person is being killed as euthanasia can also be called assisted suicide (BBC euthanasia, www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/against_1). A very important quote is "All human beings are to be valued, irrespective of age, sex, race, religion, social status or their potential for achievement" (ibid). This quote walks hand in hand with the declaration of human rights and if euthanasia is legalized then people's lives could end up being devalued. If life can be disposed of so easily, humans tend to forget that "human life is sacred because it is a gift from God" (ibid). If life is a gift from God, then only God should be allowed to take it away. This belief is also seen in Jewish scripture, "a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to pluck out what was planted" (Jewish scripture, ecclesiastes 3:14).

One quote says "It would be difficult and possibly impossible to stop people from using persuasion and coercion to get people to request euthanasia when they don't really want it" (BBC Euthanasia, bbc.co.uk/euthanasia/against_1). If euthanasia is legalized people tend to think that it will enable the patient the feeling of being in charge of their life. However this is incorrect because instead, the people associated with the patient may push them into doing something unwillingly as people who are ill and dependent can often feel worthless and an undue burden on those who love and care for 'them. This pressure can lead to them euthanasia (ibid). Already, in the world, there is so much abandonment and loneliness and increasing numbers of desertion to the elderly or the examples of abuse or neglect to the elderly by their families show. This is an important issue as pressure to not be a burden could cause them to choose euthanasia (ibid). This shows that people who are vulnerable could end up in a lot more problems or get forced to end their precious lives instead of