Legalizing Euthanasia

INTRODUCTION. Thank you for accepting this debate, Inevitable_winner. ARGUMENTS. Argument 1: Optional Euthanasia/ The Right to Die In america, you have the right to smoke, drink, eat, and live the way you want. Doesn’t it make sense that you should be able die by your free will too? You have control over your own body, so why can’t you have control over your life or not? “"The right of a competent, terminally ill person to avoid excruciating pain and embrace a timely and dignified death bears the sanction of history and is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. The exercise of this right is as central to personal autonomy and bodily integrity as rights safeguarded by this Court's decisions relating to marriage, family relationships, procreation, contraception, child rearing and the refusal or termination of life-saving medical treatment. In particular, this Court's recent decisions concerning the right to refuse medical treatment and the right to abortion instruct that a mentally competent, terminally ill person has a protected liberty interest in choosing to end intolerable suffering by bringing about his or her own death. A state's categorical ban on physician assistance to suicide -- as applied to competent, terminally ill patients who wish to avoid unendurable pain and hasten inevitable death -- substantially interferes with this protected liberty interest and cannot be sustained." - {1} {3} That sums it up, right there! “substantially interferes with this protected liberty interest and cannot be sustained.” You should be able to choose your life on how you lead it. And end it. Argument 2: Extreme Pain and discomfort Take that pain that you had when you broke a leg, had a migraine, twisted an ankle. Some people are forced to live with twice or thrice that amount of pain for there whole lives! They wouldn't be able to do anything without simply crumpling under the pain! My grandfather had a rare form of Lung Cancer called Mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is caused by breathing in you got it, there is no way to get rid of it. It will kill you, slowly, painfully, you will feel like you are drowning from the inside. The doctor said he had five years, he died in 9 months. Imagine how much pain he was in, all of the suffering. But the law forced him to suffer, 9 months of utter pain and agony, if only there was a way to stop the pain. There is. By ending the life of those in pain you are doing them a great favor. They are going to die anyways, so why not end it all now? Just put yourself in that situation, live for a few more months in torture or die painlessly? "At the Hemlock Society we get calls daily from desperate people who are looking for someone like Jack Kevorkian to end their lives which have lost all quality... Americans should enjoy a right guaranteed in the European Declaration of Human Rights -- the right not to be forced to suffer. It should be considered as much of a crime to make someone live who with justification does not wish to continue as it is to take life without consent."- {1} {7} As the government, do you want your people to suffer? Is that what a good government looks like? No way! A government should help, not harm. Argument 3: Free Will Free will is defined as: “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.” “The U.S. Supreme Court has called free will a “universal and persistent” foundation for our system of law”- {4} If free will is a foundation of our law, then why is free will for Euthanasia not in it? “Everyone has the right to decide how they should die.” {6} Argument 4: The Pet Analogy “Most people would have their pets put down if they were suffering – this would be regarded as kindness. Why can’t the same kindness be given to humans?” {6} When you have a sick dog who is slowly dying from a disease, a hip or walking problem, it is common practise to put it out out of it’s misery, and kill it. It is considered king, actually. Then why isn’t the same thing happening to humans? I know this ties into the second point, but I just wanted to share this point of view. If we think doing this to a dog, or cat, is ok, then why can’t we do this to us? Now, people may say that animals are not humans, but why do people euthanize pets? To put them out of their misery. Us humans suffer from diseases and joint problems and broken backs yet society is happy when a poor dog is put to sleep but when a poor old lady is dying of cancer society refuses to end their pain? I truly do not believe this is fair at all. Argument 5: Money I know this sounds very very cruel, but hear me out. If someone is in an irreversible coma, and you were sure of it, then why keep them alive? They can’t do nothing, and they have no chance of “waking up.” Life support costs huge amounts of money, and after research the most common figures that popped up where $8,000.00 a day. That is a huge amount of money for someone that has no chance of “waking up” in the first place. If you keep that for a 31-day period, it can cost up to $248, 000. That’s a lot of wasted money on someone who has no hope. Instead, you should just use Euthanasia, to safely end someone's life. That money could be spent on people who have suffered an illness but have a chance to recover, not wasting it all on a person who just can’t make it. CONCLUSION. In conclusion, Euthanasia should be legalized for these 5 main reasons. I look forward to your arguments, DDD References: {1} http://euthanasia.procon.org... {2} http://en.wikipedia.org... {3} ACLU Amoco's Brief in Vac co v. Quill {4} http://freethoughtblogs.com... {5} http://en.wikipedia.org... {6} http://www.rsrevision.com... {7} Faye Girth, End