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Three Cons and One Pro to legalizing Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

Con: Slippery Slope to Legalized Murder. On the website euthanasia.procon.org


a columnist for The Village Voice, Nat Hentoff (1992) writes: In debates with those
bioethicists and physicians who believe that euthanasia is both deeply
compassionate and also a logical way to cut heath care cost, I am invariably
scorned when I mention the slippery slope. Hentoff goes on to write that
American advocates of euthanasia often point to the Netherlands as a model a
place where euthanasia is quasi-legal for patients who request it. Yet the September
1991 official government Remmelink Report on euthanasia in the Netherlands
revealed that at least 1,040 people die every year from involuntary euthanasia.
Their physicians were so consumed with compassion that they decided not to
disturb the patients by asking their opinion on the matter. (Hentoff, 1992)
On the website Buzzle.com Dr. Meenaz M. states that Mercy killing would cause
decline in medical dare and cause victimization of the most vulnerable society.
Would mercy killing transform itself from the right to die to right to kill? (Meenaz
M., 2008)
Con: Hippocratic Oath and Prohibition of Killing. In an article titled
Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide The Modern Euthanasia Movement, Pros and
Cons, The People Vote, Jack Kevorkian, Legal Challenges the author Wesley J. Smith
comments that The Hippocratic oath explicitly prohibited doctors from giving their
patients poisons to end life and thus, traditionally, euthanasia and assisted suicide
have not been considered legitimate medical acts. Legalizing either practice would
transform hastening patient deaths from an ethically proscribed and (usually)
criminal act into a legitimate medical practice. Thus, widespread legalization would
be a profound and dramatic shift in the traditional ethics of medical practice.
(Smith, 2009)
In addition, On the website euthanasia.procon.org Dr. Leon Kass, M.D., PhD. argues
that The prohibition against killing patientstands as the first promise of selfrestraint sworn to in the Hippocratic Oath, as medicines primary taboo: I will
neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to
this effect (Kass, 1989)
Con: Right to Die. On the website euthanasia.procon.org an argument against
euthanasia cites a U.S. Supreme Court Majority Opinion in 1997 stating The history
of the laws treatment of assisted suicide in this country has been and continues to
be one of the rejection of nearly all efforts to permit it. That being the case, our
decisions lead us to conclude that the asserted right to assistance in committing
suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause.
Pro: Patient Suffering at End-of-Life. Faye Girsh, Ed.D. writes in an article titled
How Shall We Die referenced on the website euthanasia.procon.org that 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 Declartion 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.
Also, Dr Meenaz M. writes on the Buzzle.com that legalizing euthanasia would help
alleviate suffering of terminally ill patients. It would be inhuman and unfair to make
them endure the unbearable pain. (Meenaz M., 2008)
WORK CITED
Meenaz, M. Dr. (2008) Pros and Cons of Euthanasia. Retrieved May 9, 2009 from
Buzzle.com Intelligent Life on the Web. Website:
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/pros-and-cons-of-euthanasia.html
Smith, Wesley J. (2009) Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide The Modern Euthanasia
Movement, Pros and Cons, The People Vote, Jack Kevorkian, Legal Challenges.
Retrieved May 9, 2009 from law.jrank.org. Website:
http:/law.jrank.org/pages/1104/Euthanasia-Assisted-Suicide.html
Unknown Author (2009) Top 10 Pros and Cons Should Euthanasia or Physician
Assisted Suicide be Legal? Retrieved May 9, 2009 from Euthanasia.procon.org.
Website: http://euthanasia.procon.org/viewsource.asp?
resourceID=000126&print=true

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