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

This round I will attempt to address my opponent's Opening arguments and then move on to his refutations of my own. Before I go into my rebuttals I would like to point out a few things that my opponent is advocating here. In R1 he advocated that he would "in some cases" permit Involuntary Euthanasia. Now what's Involuntary Euthanasia you might ask? Let me define it for you. Involuntary Euthanasia- Involuntary euthanasia occurs when euthanasia is performed on a person who is able to provide informed consent, but does not, either because they do not choose to die, or because they were not asked. [1]Now I don't know about you, but this "in some cases" sounds like actual murder since this is done without the persons consent or even against their will. My opponent states that I do not know what I'm debating, but this is one of the things that he is advocating and is one of the things I warned about in my framework. The second type of euthanasia that my opponent argues for (outside of voluntary euthanasia) is non-voluntary euthanasia- Non-voluntary euthanasia (sometimes known as mercy killing) is euthanasia conducted where the explicit consent of the individual concerned is unavailable, such as when the person is in a persistent vegetative state, or in the case of young children. [2]Rebuttal 1: Resource Delegation My opponent's argument here is completely invalid as he has made one of the most common mistakes. Physican Assisted Sucide is not the same as Voluntary Euthanasia. PAS is when the doctor provides the materials to kill the patient while in Euthanasia the Doctor actually kills the patient. [3] This is a completely different thing so this argument must be thrown out of the debate since it is an untopical argument. As for the costs, this is a National Healthcare issue. The International ask Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide reported that when making the drugs for Euthanasia it costs more than it does for the medical treatment of keeping the patient alive. [4] This is a key thing as it shows that this argument from my opponent is really just an argument in my own favor. Rebuttal 2: Quality over Quantity "Activists often claim that laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are government mandated suffering. But this claim would be similar to saying that laws against selling contaminated food are government mandated starvation. Laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are in place to prevent abuse and to protect people from unscrupulous doctors and others. They are not, and never have been, intended to make anyone suffer. " [4]As we can see from the quote above my opponent is simply misunderstanding the law that is in place. The laws aren't meant to make people suffer. That's like saying that FDA regulations against certain foods are intended to make people starve. The laws against Euthanasia are proper regulations to ensure and protect against abuse. Rebuttal 3: It is possible to Regulate Euthanasia I find it quite interesting that my opponent brings up the "Death with Dignity Act. " The reason being is that the law has absolutely nothing to do with Euthanasia. You heard me right, it has nothing to do with euthanasia, but is actually PAS. Let me give you a direct quote from Oregon's Department of Human Services, " The Death with Dignity Act legalizes PAS [physician-assisted suicide], but specifically prohibits euthanasia, where a physician or other person directly administers a medication to end another's life. " [5] So we can now officially see that there really isn't any legal forms of euthanasia in the US and by my opponent's own words and standards stated in Round 3, we would be unable to actually know how it would impact the US without it here. Though if we are to regulate how is that possible with my opponent allowing involuntary euthanasia which is pratically murder? “Globally speaking, people do develop intolerance to morphine, and delirium is very common at the end of life”[6], as we can see here in a quote by Palliative Specialist Dr. BJ Miller, that delirium is common towards the end of life and at this point the person has no idea what they are doing, but may appear as they do. This is harmful at this time as they may chose to permit Voluntary Euthanasia, but they might not actually want to do so in the correct state of mind. So even with Pro's "regulations" we won't be able to actually be able to properly help them, but kill them. Rebuttal 4: Euthanasia already happens. My opponent makes an interesting argument when he brings in Passive Euthanasia. Though I will continue with my argument from Dr. BJ Miller on that people are in capable at making these kinds of decissions at which point we should not permitt others to preform euthanasia since it would normally be against he person's wishes. I also extend across my arguments from last round that highlight the importance of seeing a Palliative Specialist which these cases have dropped to miniscual numbers. This is important as it helps evaluate the patient and their state. Euthanasia skips over the Palliative Specialist and has the doctor kill the patient at command. Now with that out of the way is is time to move on to my opponent's Round 3 arguments. FrameworkMy opponent goes throughout here and just states that everything is blasphamous, but it is not so. I have shown that in each of these situations that an invention meant for good things are turned into a weapon of terror against the people. My opponent claims what Hitler did wasn't Euthanasia, but keep in mind Hitler was simply doing Involuntary euthanasia, which is something my opponent is advocating for, and nonvoluntary euthanasia. Note that I'm not talking about the Holicost as this is pre-Holicost. My opponent launches into an Ad Hom attack into Lois Lowry and must be discarded as he doesn't actually refute the argument made here. Contention 1: Unreported Euthanasia. My opponent pratically discards this argument since it is from another country, but here we have to keep two things in mind. A) Europe is a more liberal place and with this policy in a movement towards a more liberal policy we can see Europe as an almost model to compare to. B) The US hasn't legalized Euthanasia only PAS. Europe actually has and studying these cases is important since they are the only places that have and make a similar path that the US would follow. Secondly we have to remember that my opponent's continued disgust of Involuntary euthanasia contradicts his R1 claim and with him arguing against himself it will immidiately flow the debate into my favor. Contention 2: The Slippery Slope ArgumentMy opponent continues to ignore the fact that the killing of children in this case is euthanasia. If you look at the types of euthanasia definitions that I have provided you'll see that the killing of children is indeed in one of them showing that it is indeed Euthanasia. Though this contention is named the "Slippery Slope Argument" does not truely mean that it is a Slippery Slope Fallacy. The reason for this is that I have provided a great deal of evidence that shows that this does and will happen. With Europe ahead of us and being the only nations that have done so chances are that it will happen in the US. Not to mention that our moral values and our policies are moving more towards liberal Europe's views. The doctor is meant to cure and help heal patients not kill them. It is an entire different story. My opponent is bringing up a rediculious argument as it shows the direct opposite of what the doctor is suppose to do. There's a complete difference between preforming heart surgery and pushing the suringe on a need injecting posion into a patients IV to preform euthanasia and kill them. My opponent doesn't tell you all of the moral compass quote. The rest talks about prescribing them a drug that they can possibly overdose on. It says nothing about lethal injections or anything of that nature. That's like me telling you to swallow an entire bottle of Sleeping pills. There's a ton of things that are nearly irrelivant with my opponent's argument here. Contention 3: Self-Ownership and SicknessMy opponent here talks about that he's not for this type of Euthanasia, but yet he is defending Non-Voluntary Euthanasia and this is something that is including in this relm and thus he has no choice, but to go and defend this point as this falls under the umbrella that my opponent set-up for his argumenation. Though I feel for those in pain and I'm not as heartless as my opponent thinks I am there is such a thing as a rational mind. I would go much more indepth here, but I'm running out of character. Immanual Kant states that all humans are Rational beings, but when there is injury or pain this blocks our cognative and state of mind. This puts us in a temporary state of Irrationality. [7] Due to this improperstate of mind we cannot permitt them to make these massive decissions. My opponent makes a mistake with my quote. We must observe that the person, in a Rational state of mind would never choose death, but due to this imparement of Rationality we cannot allow them to take their lives since they are not in the correct state of mind. That is respecting the rights of the individual. The community needs the person due to the their contrabution and if the individual takes their life then the entire community will feel it. "For whom the Bell Tolls. "