Voluntary
Euthanasia – Mercy killing or Murder?
A new study into the attitudes of terminally ill patients towards voluntary euthanasia has found that 73% of them would support the legalisation of assisted dying. Majority support for a change in the law was based on the individual’s right to choose, and pain, whether current or future. Those who opposed the legislation did so due to religious or moral concerns. 58% of all those interviewed thought that if euthanasia was legal they themselves might ask for a hastened death at some point in the future; 12% of them would ask for help to die immediately if they could. These statistics come from the most recent world-wide survey on euthanasia. Therefore if you applied a democratic principle, voluntary euthanasia would exist.
In the modern world we, as a society, have become
accustomed to controlling what happens to our bodies. If we are suffering from
a headache we take tablets for pain relief, if we go into hospital with an
illness we expect to receive treatment. In general, in this environment,
people’s life expectancies have been unnaturally extended.
Thanks to the sophisticated life-support equipment
now available in hospitals it is possible to keep alive people who not so long
ago would have died naturally. When machines control a person’s heartbeat and
breathing and there is no trace of any activity in the brain is that person
alive or dead? When the brain is no longer functioning, and personality has
disappeared, is it right simply to keep the body going artificially? Is there a
point on some sliding scale of brain function at which we can say this person
is dead?
There is also a group of people suffering from
agonising, terminal illnesses for whom there is no cure nor likely to be one in
the foreseeable future. For these people, pain relief is no longer effective
and life is unbearable.
The final group for whom euthanasia is likely to be
an issue is the elderly generation, many of whom end their lives in nursing
homes reduced to a childlike physical and mental state; requiring nappies,
unable to feed themselves and in some cases totally unaware of their
surroundings. Disorders such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and degenerative
diseases of the brain are irreversible and untreatable. As the survey demonstrated,
58% of people thought that they would rather die than exist in this totally
dependent state.
One of the major arguments opposing legalisation of euthanasia is the religious argument that human life is sacred and possesses an intrinsic dignity and value because humans were created by God in his own image. But although the Catholic Church holds these strong beliefs about murder they still manage to justify cases in which they themselves committed this immoral deed such as Capital punishment and warfare. But the acknowledgement that human life has this intrinsic dignity is not restricted to religious believers; there are many modern thinkers both religious and secular who are questioning whether a belief in the absolute sanctity of life is always appropriate. Whether when an individual’s life is intolerable because of pain or close to its end, he or she should be permitted to seek release. Many feel that the most important part of our existence is not the fact that we are alive but the fact that we possess a quality of life.
Perhaps Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who overturned a
Washington ban on doctor assisted suicide in 1996, sums up the case for
euthanasia best:
“A competent terminally ill adult having lived
nearly the full measure of his life has a strong liberty interest in choosing a
dignified and humane death rather than being reduced at the end of his
existence to a child-like state of helplessness diapered, sedated and
incompetent.”
Since our lives are sustained unnaturally by
medicine, shouldn’t we have the right to end them unnaturally too?
Should this not become a human right in itself? As
well as a right to live should we not also possess a right to die?
Is euthanasia an issue in your country as well? What
do you think, should we be allowed to choose when to die?
By Sally Murphy. From Bishop Heber High School,
Malpas