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AC- Federal Legalization of Euthanasia

Contention 1: Inherency: It is under United States policy and federal law that Euthanasia
is illegal.

The Legalization of Euthanasia: The Right to Die or the Duty to Die?, 1995, Suffolk
Transnational Law Review, http://0-www.lexisnexis.com.library.jcu.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?
rand=0.5249968086587721/dmr/9/15/2015 (journal), MAP

[*304] B. The United States: What Acts of Euthanasia Are Permissible?

Under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, states cannot deprive an individual of a liberty
interest without due process of law. Since the New Jersey Supreme Court's 1976 decision in In re Karen Quinlan, the
judicial system has continued to define the limits of patient autonomy. Most states have established a patient's right to
decline or remove life sustaining treatment. Active euthanasia, however, remains illegal. Doctors who
intentionally induce a patient's death or assist in [*305] a patient's suicide are likely to be
prosecuted under homicide or assisted suicide statutes.

Of course, Congress is wrong. The harms are noted in

Contention 2: Harms: Euthanasia being illegal violates the right to die, a right Americans
have.

Hendry, Maggie, Diana Pasterfield, Ruth Lewis, Ben Carter, Daniel Hodgson, and Clare
Wilkinson. "Why Do We Want the Right to Die? A Systematic Review of the International
Literature on the Views of Patients, Carers and the Public on Assisted Dying." Palliative
Medicine 27.1 (2013): 19-20. Academic Search Complete. Web.http://0-
web.a.ebscohost.com.library.jcu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=10c3f3d8-5e8b-4104-a40d-
dd6036623d63%40sessionmgr4002&vid=10&hid=4101. (journal) M.A.P.
The desire for a good quality of death

Choice, Autonomy and Control

The right to choose and desire for autonomy with regard to the manner of death was a theme
expressed in most of the studies regardless of participants health status. Participants wanted to
retain control of their own life or death and to be able to choose to avoid suffering or placing an
extra burden on their families or making them vulnerable to prosecution. They felt that these
decisions should not be in the hands of others. Helping someone to die was seen as humane and
compassionate (you wouldnt do it to a dog was a common analogy) and in view of the circumstances that surround a
request for assisted dying, the additional condition that the individual should not be depressed was felt to be unreasonable.
Participants also referred to assisted dying as a possible means of contributing to the quality of
death by respecting the persons wishes, alleviating potential suffering and preserving
dignity.The most frequently cited reasons given by the patient respondents for wanting to have
PAS [physician-assisted suicide] as a personal option were freedom of choice, to avoid suffering,
or to avoid burdening their family. (People with dementia; Illinois, USA) In general they believed that people
have the right to decide how they will die. (People who were terminally ill; Canada) Relatives who made some comments
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emphasised that euthanasia

or physician-assisted suicide contributed to the quality of the end of the
patients life because by shortening life further suffering could be avoided because the patient
knew his/her wish concerning the end of life would be respected, because dignity in dying would
be preserved, and because unbearable suffering would be alleviated. (Relatives of people who had been
helped to die; the Netherlands)

Second, Euthanasia being illegal prolongs the suffering of those who are terminally ill and
would rather end their lives instead of continuing their suffering.

Grohol,JohnM."DenyingSomeoneaPeacefulDeathCanBeUnethical.7Oct.2014,New
YorkTimes.NewYorkTimes.Web.
Http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/10/06/expandingtherighttodie/denying
someoneapeacefuldeathcanbeunethical.(news)M.A.P

Sometimes it can be hard to let go. Nowhere do we see that more clearly that when it comes to a persons right to die with
dignity at the end of their life.

But perversely, sometimes the difficulty in letting go isnt expressed by the person with a terminal disease. Instead it's
expressed by their doctor. Doctors often fall back on medical ethics to defend their stance against euthanasia or assisted
suicide. Some doctors believe that since their primary responsibility is to heal, helping someone
along to a quickened death is contradictory to their oath.

When doctors equate healing with quantity of life, they ignore the quality of life. If suffering is
intolerable, it is inhumane not to end it.

But when doctors confuse or equate healing with the length of life, they ignore the importance of a persons quality of life.
When a patients end is near and suffering becomes intolerable, whats the point of continuing that suffering?

Instead, it appears incredibly inhumane, insensitive and disrespectful of a persons free will to
deny them an end to their misery. Its old-school medical paternalism at its worst: Im the doctor, and I know
whats best for you even when the patient may only have a few weeks left to live.

The doctors who rationalize and minimize such suffering explaining that it can be managed with even greater doses
of opioid medications miss the point. If one of our doctors' primary jobs is to relieve suffering, theyre abdicating
responsibility at this crucial moment. Doctors regularly undertreat pain complaints because theyre afraid to prescribe
opioids at the levels necessary.

At the end of life, when medicine cannot help a person live any longer or stop a terminal disease,
it seems in keeping with a physician's ethics to help an individual maintain their dignity and
choose the date of their own death. Indignity and loss of independence can be viewed as forms of
pain, even if they're not traditionally seen in that light. Ask any prisoner whether being imprisoned is a
painful life experience, and I'm pretty certain what their answer will be. The same could be said for when we age we
can become prisoners of our own failing bodies.

If the mind is healthy (something mental status examinations by psychiatrists can determine)
why not allow an individual the freedom of this one last, important choice?
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Contention 3: Harms: Not inducing euthanasia takes away scarce health resources that
could be used otherwise.

DMShaw.EuthanasiaandEudaimonia.September2009,JournalofMedicalEthics,Vol.35,
No.9,pp.530533Publishedby:BMJ,http://www.jstor.org/stable/20696634,M.A.P.

It is argued by some that it is an act of cowardice to seek death before nature brings it. In one sense, it is indeed brave to
face one's suffering. But is it not actually more courageous to meet death head on, willingly shortening one's life to meet
death on one's own terms? If a soldier knows that his enemies will find and kill him soon, it is braver to run out to attack
them than to wait for them to find him. Also, in terms of charity and justice, it makes more sense to free up
medical resources for others if one has already accepted death and is faced with choosing
between a brave slow death or a brave swift one. One can accept this without conceding that
someone in such circumstances would be a burden on others if they did not want to die.

Plan: The United States federal government should legalize Euthanasia, allowing every
state to allow for Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS).

Contention 4: Solvency: The liberty of choosing to die will be restored for the terminally ill
and for those who are incapable of expressing their wishes to die by way of the legalization
of Euthanasia.

Croteau, Michelle. 7 Feb. 2013. PR NewsWire. Less Than One In Three

Americans Have A Living Will. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-
releases/less-than-one-in-three-americans-have-a-living-will-says-new-
findlawcom-survey-190163891.html

Less than one in three Americans 32 percent have a living will, spelling out whether they want
life-sustaining medical care in case they are incapacitated or otherwise unable to communicate
their medical treatment preferences, according to a new survey by FindLaw.com, the most
popular legal information website. This means the vast majority of Americans 61 percent
could potentially be leaving legal problems for family members if they are unable to
communicate their health care wishes due to illness or loss of consciousness.

Although roughly only 1/3 of people have a living will, most people verbalize their preferences
to their spouse or loved ones. Therefore, Euthanasia will allow the spouses and love ones to
express the patients wishes when they cannot.

Euthanasia will allow the terminally ill and those in a vegetative state to stop suffering and
will also allow the family to stop suffering from watching the suffering.

Swarte, Nikkie B et al. Effects of Euthanasia on the Bereaved Family and Friends: A Cross Sectional
Study. 2003. BMJ: British Medical Journal 327.: 189. Print. MAP.
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Participants :189 bereaved family members and close friends of terminally ill cancer patients
who died by euthanasia and 316 bereaved family members and close friends of comparable
cancer patients who died a natural death between 1992 and 1999.

Main outcome measures Symptoms of traumatic grief assessed by the inventory of traumatic grief, current feelings of
grief assessed by the Texas revised inventory of grief, and post-traumatic stress reactions assessed by the impact of event
scale.

Results: The bereaved family and friends of cancer patients who died by euthanasia had less
traumatic grief symptoms (adjusted difference -5.29 (95% confidence interval -8.44 to -2.15)),
less current feeling of grief (adjusted difference 2.93 (0.85 to 5.01)); and less post-traumatic
stress reactions (adjusted difference -2.79 (-5.33 to -0.25)) than the family and friends of patients
who died of natural causes. These differences were independent of other risk factors.

Conclusions The bereaved family and friends of cancer patients who died by euthanasia coped
better with respect to grief symptoms and post-traumatic stress reactions than the bereaved of
comparable cancer patients who died a natural death. These results should not be interpreted as a plea for
euthanasia, but as a plea for the same level of care and openness in all patients who are terminally ill.

Euthanasia will free up the scarce health resources and, thus, save money

Anti Choice at the End of Life- January 2011- The Revealer-

http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/2011/01/17/antichoice-at-the-end-of-life- ( Activist). M.A.P.
Opponents of the healthcare bill got the White House running scared by spreading the "death panel" meme from
conservative legal groups to Fox to right-wing blogs and back again, both after the Affordable Care Act passed and after
Christmas. But they weren't building a messaging chain from scratch. Instead, they worked the same network that has been
mobilized since the 1970s to fight legal abortion. For the past decade, those same religious organizations have begun
working to limit treatment choices for those facing the end of their lives, a development that increasingly impedes
meaningful healthcare, and resigns countless eldersincluding millions of aging Baby Boomersto "healthcare" that
does little for, or even damage to, their quality of life.

A host of anti-abortion groups denounced the end of life counseling regulation, including Operation Rescue's Troy
Newman and Janice Crouse of the Beverly LaHaye Institute at Concerned Women for America. Family Research Council's
director of Congressional affairs, David Christensen, told The Christian Science Monitor, "We're concerned this [the
regulation] could be misused, especially in a state like Oregon that sees mercy killing as a legitimate medical
service." Three days after Pear's story, Mathew Staver, chairman of Liberty University's Liberty Counsel, a conservative
legal organization (think "Choose Life" license plates case), said, "When you remove the sanctity of life from the equation
and place health care under the control of government bureaucrats, you end up with increased costs, decreased care, and
death panels." Judie Brown, the president of American Life League, gave a succinct summary of the "prolife" conflation of
end of life care with abortion: "Nothing good can come of this. This will affect everybody's parents and grandparents and
preborn babies, and it will not affect anybody for the good."

About 80 percent of Americans wish to die at home, yet 80 percent die in institutions, because
the default mode of medical care in the United States is to "do everything," as Thaddeus Pope, law
professor at Widener University, describes it. For the past fifty years, medicine has focused on curing
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illnesses and ailments but not on guiding patients through the dying process. So terminal patients
are now frequently given rounds of treatment long after they've been found ineffective simply
because doctors fear "giving up." Aggressive intervention enables doctors and patients to deny
the inevitability of death and prevents them from planning for the process of dying.

A collective American reticence to frankly discuss death enables organizations like the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope
Network and NRLC to misinform the public about existing government programs like hospice, Medicare and other legal
tools for the elderly, like advanced directives and medical proxies, which can provide more control over how they age and
die. Combined with a paternalistic medical profession that's only recently begun training new doctors on how to talk to
patients about how to plan their end-of-life care and a Republican party dependent on the support of antichoice groups,
"pro-life" groups have been able to fundamentally shape state and federal legislation.

Of course, even in the absence of this regulation, doctors and patients will continue to initiate conversations about end-of-
life carebut not frequently enough to save uninformed seniors and terminal patients from painful and pointless
treatments they don't want. And not often enough to stem the crisis in healthcare financing aging Baby Boomers will
bring.

When advocates of the Stupak-Pitts amendment to severely restrict abortion coverage took healthcare reform hostage,
advocates for women's health were reminded of the outsized ability "prolife" groups have to determine healthcare
policy. The defeat of increased funding for end of life care should serve as a warning to all those
concerned about autonomy over their own healthcare choices.