Winter Regular tournament R1: Resolved, the USFG should legalize Euthanasia

To start off, I would like to point out that neither myself, or my opponent set up a specific style of debate in our private messages or in the comments. This meaning I am a little caught off guard to the fact that he mentioned he would save rebuttals to the arguments I made in round 3, whilst copy/pasting arguments from an old Euthanasia debate of his. While tactically, I do not see an advantage in doing this, I will go along with it and I suppose we can just ignore my arguments for now and focus on the points he brought up. It just might have been easier to just have let him start the debate if I knew in advance this would be the case. I apologize to the readers for our apparent lack of communication in this matter. First, I will address my opponent’s opener. He starts my making a medieval analogy from the use of guillotines to Euthanasia. This reference seems to be completely irrelevant, and out there. Not only have societal morals and ethics changed considerably from the time Guillotines were used, that also has nothing to do with Euthanasia. Several points throughout the debate, I think my opponent seems to confuse Euthanasia to that of the death penalty. The Guillotine’s use was for that of punishment, not generally relief from pain and suffering. Lannan then makes a reference towards Hitler’s creation of “Euthanasia”. At this point, I am coming to understand that my opponent may not know what Euthanasia actually is. Euthanasia was defined in the first round however, as being something completely different than killing an entire group of people in pursuit of one’s personal Agenda. What Hitler did was not Euthanasia, and to spin that as Euthanasia is not only inaccurate, but also manipulative. My opponent also draws a point from the movie “The Giver”. I could point out how incredulous the notion is that fictional society’s rules can have any influence towards our own realistic society. This is the equivalent of me saying the movie “Contagion” is a proper reference for the Pro Euthanasia standpoint. Rebuttal 1: Unreported Euthanasia and Euthanasia without consent. Let’s forgive the fact that this whole argument encompasses statistics from Belgium and the Netherlands, and the debate is in the realm of the United States (a society with a completely different standard of laws, ethics, and morals). Euthanasia without consent of a fully functioning, mentally stable adult is not “Euthanasia”. Without the consent of the patient, or the patient’s caregivers, giving someone a lethal dose is murder. The murder statistics and the argument itself are thus irrelevant to this debate. My argument 3 actually addresses this point in advance however. A properly regulated legalization process would ensure specific measures are taken in regards to patient or caregiver consent, just as with my Oregon source. Rebuttal 2: The slippery slope argument As I mentioned above, it is hard to debate the morals of a different country. My opponent drawing references to children deaths, again is not Euthanasia. It has nothing to do with putting a patient out of his or her misery, and isn’t even closely related to the topic at hand. My opponents own argument provides several definitions that re-emphasize that Euthanasia is the killing of a dying patient. Using the slippery slope argument seems to work against his intentions, as the slippery slope fallacy often suggests that inaccurate presumptions are being made about a potential outcome of a rule or legislation, without any actual evidence that these things will happen. My opponent is drawing a very long line from painlessly killing people in hospitals, to murdering children for no apparent purpose. My opponent mentions how doctors may have a hard time with Euthanasia because they are used to healing rather than killing. Euthanasia should be looked at as a cure from suffering and pain. It is essentially healing a person of some of the worst pains possible. If a doctor has trouble with this, maybe he hasn’t been around enough open wounds to really be called a doctor. Doctor’s being scarred for life is a moot point. Patients should fear doctor's that go outside the realm of legality and choose to murder innocents, however that has nothing to do with Euthanasia.Lastly, in this point, my opponent offers statistics on doctor's preferences on physician assisted suicide. Many doctors probably don't want to commit assisted suicide, but I think that is far beside the point. In my opponents own source(3), A whopping 56.2% of doctors had received requests for assisted suicide during their career. After all, Euthanasia values should arguably focus around the patient, not the physician. The patients are the one's in excruciating pain after all. 53% of Physicians answered yes to the moral compass question asked to them, if they would have been okay with Euthanasia upon a patient requesting it.Rebuttal 3: Self ownership and SicknessLannan brings up a point about how a patient who is in a vegetative state came out of it after 13 years. While I don't really think this falls under the category of extreme pain, I will address this point anyway. I am not really advocating for painless Euthanasia's as that is not covered in the definition, but if vegetative states were permanent it may be different. My opponent shows that it is easier with medical research the way it is these days to bring someone out of a coma. My response is: Great, more power to them! We don't need to Euthanize individuals who can probably come out of a coma. It may be up to the family at that point who paid for the 13 years of medical care for the vegetative person. But my arguments mostly apply to individuals that are more than likely for sure going to die.Next my opponent mentions that patients might not be of the right mind when they ask for Euthanasia. It's easy to forget sometimes that humans are animals too, though. We are instinctual, and the instinct and reaction to pain is the same throughout most species. When in pain, we want to not be in pain anymore. In fact in most circumstances, when in excruciating pain, the only thought that one will have is that they will do anything to let the pain end. Why is ending that pain a bad thing? Most sane, rational humans beings wouldn't want to sit and watch a cat or a dog suffer who had just been hit by a car. Is it more ethical to allow them to live in pain and misery because they cannot think clearly, or to do them the justice of putting them out of their misery? Will they ever be in the "Right" mind, when pain is always around the corner? How do we determine whether someone is in the "right" mind to begin with? This to me sounds like some narcissistic justification for someone to justify their stance on the moral realm of Euthanasia. Thinking for the patient doesn't mean that under different circumstances, they still wouldn't have wanted the pain to end via death. I actually found this line from my opponent quite humorous, as it works against him:"This means that we must observe the weight of the individuals value to the community verse the needs of that individual."What value does a terminally ill patient serve to their community? The value in their life has diminished to suffering, and misery. The spheal about Euthanasia robbing the community doesn't make much sense to me. We are robbing the community of an individual who will be susceptible passive Euthanasia no matter what, a person who is most likely bed ridden, and doesn't want to live anyway (whether they are in the "right" state of mind or not).To conclude, I think my opponent has a very different view of what Euthanasia actually is, than I do. If we are sticking straight to the definition (which I am), then half my opponents arguments don't even apply to this debate. Most of his objections to Euthanasia seems to be out of criminal intentions. I am not an advocater of criminal intent, and law breaking, so these points really serve no purpose in the debate.I wish my opponent luck in the following round.Sources:(3) http://euthanasia.procon.org...