This House Believes That Voluntary Euthanasia should be legal

First, I will rebut all points that con said in the 1st round. 1. Justification Con said that "No should have the right to kill themselves or others.". First, I said before is right to choose kill their self not choose to kill other people. And the second, Everyone has the right to decide how they should die. 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. The central ethical argument for voluntary euthanasia " that respect for persons demands respect for their autonomous choices as long as those choices do not result in harm to others " is directly connected with this issue of competence (cp. Brock 1992) because autonomy presupposes competence. People have an interest in making important decisions about their lives in accordance with their own conception of how they want their lives to go. In exercising autonomy or self-determination, people take responsibility for their lives; since dying is a part of life, choices about the manner of their dying and the timing of their death are, for many people, part of what is involved in taking responsibility for their lives. Many people are concerned about what the last phase of their lives will be like, not merely because of fears that their dying might involve them in great suffering, but also because of the desire to retain their dignity and as much control over their lives as possible during this phase. The technological interventions of modern medicine have had the effect of stretching out the time it takes for many people to die. Sometimes the added life this brings is an occasion for rejoicing; sometimes it drags out the period of significant physical and intellectual decline that a person undergoes in burdensome ways so that life becomes, to them, no longer worth living. There is no single, objectively correct answer as to when, if at all, life becomes a burden and unwanted. But that simply points up the importance of individuals being able to decide autonomously for themselves whether their own lives retain sufficient quality and dignity to make life worth living. Given that a critically ill person is typically in a severely compromised and debilitated state, it is, other things being equal, the patient's own judgement of whether continued life is a benefit that must carry the greatest weight, provided always that the patient is competent. Earlier this year, a court in Ireland rejected ex-lecturer Marie Fleming"s bid to commit suicide, despite multiple sclerosis reducing her life to "irreversible agony." At the center of this dispute was her partner Tom, who was told he could face up to 14 years in prison if he helped her die. In other words, with a stroke of their pen, Ireland"s top court condemned a woman to live in unimaginable physical agony while also saddling her partner with an impossible choice: to watch the person he loves suffer daily or help relieve her pain and go to prison. By any sane reckoning this should count as institutional cruelty, yet rulings like this happen all the time. Take the case of paralyzed UK resident Paul Lamb. Last month, a judge ruled that any nurse or doctor who helps him take his own life will be prosecuted, despite Lamb describing his life as a "living hell." Or the case of Diane Pretty who in 2002 was told her husband would be prosecuted if he tried to help her avoid the horrible death she eventually had. Simply put, laws against assisted death cause suffering on an unprecedented scale, not just for the terminally ill but for their families as well. source : http://plato.stanford.edu... What con said truly illogical and baseless. About justification, con failed to break my argument about 'human right' and misrepresented. 2) Social I already talk it in the 1st round. It's give pressure for the sufferer it self. So many cases tell us about discriminative people has suffer that can't be cure like HIV. Can you imagine how tortured they are. They under pressure because their ill even other pressure from people in that environment. They don't know how to cure their ill when cure has yet been discovered by researchers. And the reality, for times not only a day or only 2 weeks but need some years. And do you want to see them more torture? Con talk about 'religion' in this debate. And unfortunately, con just explain 2 religions. But, we don't talk only about Arab with majority people there muslim. Or we don't talk only about America with majority people there Christian. If con want to prove it in religion, he should explain all religions not only 2 religions. In the fact, so many religions in this world. And also, how about people atheist? If you talk about God, it seems like you didn't considers their presence in this world. So, we should talk here is as government. And I'm as pro was bring my argument that logic and based on the fact. In social side con failed to bring this motion in religion. And unfortunately, con trying to break my argument but he didn't give us the best solution about this motion. - FACTS : TERMINAL SUFFERING Even with the best palliative care, between 5% & 10% of those dying cannot have their suffering adequately relieved. Pain is often a major problem, but not the only one - nausea, vomiting, coughing, breathlessness, incontinence, & other horrible symptoms can be difficult to treat. Severe weakness & total dependence on others are inevitable & many people find this the most distressing thing to bear. The final stages are often treated by increasing the dosage of pain-killers such as morphine & heroin & also by giving sedatives which induce sleep which slides into coma & death. This is known as 'terminal sedation' & in most cases the patient takes no part in the decision to use it. ECONOMY Most people would be shocked to think economics factored into their life-or-death decisions, and rightly so. However, there"s no getting around how absurdly expensive end-of-life care is in America: According to CNN, one in every four Medicare dollars spent goes to the five percent of beneficiaries in the last year of their life. The upshot of this is often crippling debt for the families of terminally ill patients, with the care of a single individual at the end of their life costing an estimated $39,000. For 40 percent of households, the bill exceeds their financial assets. This might be acceptable if end-of-life care was worth the money, but it"s objectively not. Doctors will readily attest to the ability of modern medicine to slightly prolong life"at the cost of totally destroying its quality. If you can"t be bothered to read that last link, I"ll sum it up here: End-of-life care is often brutal, nasty, traumatic, and very expensive, putting patients through long stretches of unnecessary suffering just to give them an extra month or two. And when the terminally ill patient undergoing these nasty, expensive treatments has repeatedly insisted that they"d rather be dead, you have to start wondering who all this expenditure is really benefiting.