Euthanasia, also known as assisted suicide, physician-assisted suicide

(dying), doctor-assisted dying (suicide), and more loosely termed mercy

killing, means to take a deliberate action with the express intention of
ending a life to relieve intractable (persistent, unstoppable) suffering. Some
interpret euthanasia as the practice of ending a life in a painless manner.

1. The Person is in Unbearable Pain (Patient suffering at the end of

life):

Euthanasia is known as many different things like mercy killing, physician

assisted suicide, and the right to die, but they all mean the same thing.
Euthanasia is administering a lethal dosage of a certain medication, or
ending all life support means, and letting a person who is terminally ill pass
away at their own will. Many different things charge the debate surrounding
this hot button issue. Terminal diseases and illnesses are painful,
especially when the person inflicted is nearing the end of their battle.
Unimaginable pain, uncertainty, and a loss of control are things that no one
should have to endure when they are nearing their death.

"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
"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
live who with justification does not prevent abuse and to protect people
wish to continue as it is to take lifefrom unscrupulous doctors and
without consent." others. They are not, and never have
been, intended to make anyone
Faye Girsh suffer."
Senior Adviser, Final Exit Network,
"How Shall We Die," Free Inquiry Rita Marker
"Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide:
Frequently Asked Questions"

A common argument that is made by those who commit euthanasia acts.

Famous cases include Terri Schiavo and Tracey Latimer. Both individuals
were in pain and called for drastic actions on the part of husband and father
respectively. Most of us fear death, but a large part of that fear comes from
uncertainty and worry that in might be preceded by agonizing pain.

2. The Persons Wishes (Living wills):

Many individuals wish to be euthanized to prevent a slow and painful death.

The question here is whether we have a right to stop them from making
their own life and death choices?

"Living wills can be used to refuse extraordinary, life-prolonging care and

are effective in providing clear and convincing evidence that may be
necessary under state statutes to refuse care after one becomes terminally
ill.

A recent Pennsylvania case shows the power a living will can have. In that
case, a Bucks County man was not given a feeding tube, even though his
wife requested he receive one, because his living will, executed seven
years prior, clearly stated that he did 'not want tube feeding or any other
artificial invasive form of nutrition'...

A living will provides clear and convincing evidence of one's wishes

regarding end-of-life care."

Nobody wants to be at the mercy of anybody else, especially not a disease

or sickness that has controlled your life for so long. The biggest benefit of
euthanasia is simply having a choice. It puts people back in control of their
own life, when it matters the most. This gives people a great sense of
peace and hope for their family.
3. Die with Dignity:

A person that is bed ridden and sick is at the mercy of nurses, medical
staff, and family for things like eating, using the restroom, changing clothes,
and bathing. This can be very degrading for a person, and many do not
want to be a burden or remembered by their family in such a way. Giving
them the opportunity to choose when they die and how they die lets them
take control of their own life, and the ability to say what they want to say or
do for their family before their death.

This could be the best argument yet. For those arguing for euthanasia,
watch someone die a slow and painful death tarnishes their reputation.
People are or will be becoming dependent on others and can no longer
take care of themselves. Proponents thus argue for euthanasia because it
allows them to die with dignity.

Death is usually slow painful slow, painful, and undignified. And by refusing
people the "right" to end their lives, we're increasing the pain and indigniti
to horrifing extent.

4. Quick and Painless:

According to the proponents, Euthanasia makes death quick and painless.

Where death may be imminent, euthanasia can prevent a painful and slow
death. Why prolong someones imminent death is the argument for this
case. This is especially the case when people are dying of cancer.

People that are living with a terminal illness, or that are in an irreversible
coma, are suffering. This is especially true when you look at the end of their
battle. The pain can be debilitating, and the only option for these people are
to take copious amounts of drugs and painkillers to help numb the pain
even just a little bit. The quality of life is extremely low. Euthanasia gives
these people a way to stop theirs and their familys suffering.

5. Right to 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, 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 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."

ACLU Amicus Brief in Vacco v. Quill

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

6. Hippocratic Oath and Prohibition of Killing

"Over time the Hippocratic Oath has been modified on a number of

occasions as some of its tenets became less and less acceptable. The
much-quoted reference to 'do no harm' is also in need of explanation. Does
not doing harm mean that we should prolong a life that the patient sees as
a painful burden? Surely, the 'harm' in this instance is done when we
prolong the life, and 'doing no harm' means that we should help the patient
die. Killing the patient--technically, yes. Is it a good thing--sometimes, yes.
Is it consistent with good medical end-of-life care: absolutely yes."

Any physician who didn't alleviate their patient suffering when asked was
violating the principles of their oath-and allowing both great and great
injustice to occur on their watch.

Philip Nitschke, MD
"Euthanasia Sets Sail"

7. Government Involvement in End-of-Life Decisions

"We'll all die. But in an age of increased longevity and medical advances,
death can be suspended, sometimes indefinitely, and no longer slips in
according to its own immutable timetable.

So, for both patients and their loved ones, real decisions are demanded:
When do we stop doing all that we can do? When do we withhold which
therapies and allow nature to take its course? When are we, through our
own indecision and fears of mortality, allowing wondrous medical methods
to perversely prolong the dying rather than the living?

These intensely personal and socially expensive decisions should not be

left to governments, judges or legislators better attuned to highway
funding."

Los Angeles Times

"Planning for Worse Than Taxes"

8. Healthcare Spending Implications

"Savings to governments could become a consideration. Drugs for

assisted suicide cost about $35 to $45, making them far less expensive
than providing medical care. This could fill the void from cutbacks for
treatment and care with the 'treatment' of death."

International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

"Frequently Asked Questions,"

Terminally ill patients, or people that are in irreversible comas, use a large
portion of the medical funding available. This is also true for space that is
available in the hospitals and care facilities. While this is by no means a
good way to look at it, it is simply an added benefit of euthanasia. These
people, instead of spending weeks, months, or even years using these
resources, could die in peace all while saving money and space for the
hospitals.

9. Regulating How We Die: The Ethical and Medical Issues

"In a society as obsessed with the costs of health care and the principle of
utility, the dangers of the slippery slope... are far from fantasy...

Assisted suicide is a half-way house, a stop on the way to other forms of

direct euthanasia, for example, for incompetent patients by advance
directive or suicide in the elderly. So, too, is voluntary euthanasia a half-
way house to involuntary and nonvoluntary euthanasia. If terminating life is
a benefit, the reasoning goes, why should euthanasia be limited only to
those who can give consent? Why need we ask for consent?"
Edmund D. Pelligrino
Regulating How We Die: The Ethical, Medical, and Legal Issues
Surrounding Physician-Assisted Suicide
 Why active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should be
legalised?
Diane Pretty was refused the legal right to choose the circumstances of her
own death. She suffers from motor neurone disease and is experiencing
the disintegration of her body. She faces a death that she believes will
entail indignity and suffering and physically cannot kill herself. The court
has denied her request that her husband be allowed to help her. This
decision may be consistent with legal precedent but is morally wrong. That
is why the law should be changed.
Suppose that Mrs Pretty became permanently and severely incompetent as
a result of brain damage and that her life was being sustained by medical
technology. If her doctors believed that medical treatment could provide no
benefit because of her inability ever to engage in any self directed activity,
then legally they could withdraw life sustaining treatments, including
hydration and nutrition. In such circumstances they would foresee that she
would die as a result of their failure to perform what would ordinarily be
their duty to protect life and health. In most other circumstances clinicians
are not allowed this discretion to accelerate foreseeable deaths through
inaction.

Sometimes acceptable for doctors to stop life sustaining treatments when

there are grounds for assuming that this is in the best interests of severely
incompetent patients. Equally, action and inaction may be deemed morally
and legally equivalent in the context of a deliberate failure to carry out the
duty of care to save life when clinicians agree that it should be saved. Thus
parliament and the courts should take the next step of recognising that this
same equivalence should hold when there is clinical agreement that it is in
the best interests of some severely incompetent patients to end their life.

On the one hand, we need to ask what makes life sustaining treatment of
no benefit or too burdensome if it can achieve its designated aim of saving
life. Severely incompetent patients can only be said to be unable to benefit
from further life sustaining treatment or to find it too burdensome ifbottom
linethey are judged incapable of benefiting from further life itself.
Therefore, when the continuation of life sustaining treatment is described
as being of no benefit or of too much burden, the clinician must already
have decided that the life of the incompetent patient in question is not worth
living and therefore not worth prolonging. This is why withdrawal of
treatment is deemed to be in the best interest of the patient and consistent
with the duty of care to protect this interest.
On the other hand, if death is in the best interests of some patientsif the
withdrawal of life sustaining treatment can be said to be of benefit in this
casethen death constitutes a moral good for these patients. And if this is
so, why is it wrong to intend to bring about this moral good?

Returning to Mrs Pretty, why should we not also legalise voluntary active
euthanasia in light of these arguments? Were she permanently and
severely incompetent, we have seen the circumstances in which her
doctors would be allowed to end her life passively and should be allowed to
do so actively. Therefore, should she not be able to invite them actively to
end her life and to advise them about how this should be done? No one
has questioned her competence or courage. Yet her own perception of her
best interests, and the perception of those who know and love her, have
been judicially overruled.

Of course, any coherent advocate of active euthanasia and physician

assisted suicide must take seriously the problem of slippery slopesof
deciding when a request for helping dying is appropriate. Though this may
be difficult, it cannot be impossible.
 Cases of Euthanasia

Karen Ann Quinlan Case - when Quinlan was 21 she lost consciousness
after returning home from a party. She had consumed diazepam (Valium),
dextropropoxyphene (an analgesic in the opioid category), and alcohol.
She collapsed and stopped breathing twice for 15 minutes. She was
hospitalized and eventually lapsed into a persistent vegetative
state.Several months later, while being kept alive on a ventilator, her
parents asked the hospital to discontinue active care, so that she could be
allowed to die. The hospital refused, there were subsequent legal battles,
and a tribunal eventually ruled in her parent's favor. Quinlan was removed
from the mechanical ventilation in 1976 - but she went on living in a
persistent vegetative state until 1985, when she died of pneumonia.Even
today, Quinlan's case raises important questions in moral theology,
bioethics, euthanasia, legal guardianship and civil rights. Health care
professionals say her case has had an impact on medical and legal
practice worldwide.

Since Quinlan's case, formal ethics committees now exist in hospitals,

nursing homes and hospitals. Many say the development of advance health
directives (living wills) occurred as a result of her case. In 1977, California
legalized living wills, with other states soon following suit.Quinlan's case
paved the way for legal protection of voluntary passive euthanasia.

Derek Humphry (born 1930), a British-born American journalist founded

the Hemlock Society in Santa Monica, California. At the time it was the only
group in the USA to provide information to terminally ill patients in case
they wished to hastened death. The society also campaigned and
contributed financially to drives to amend legislation. In 2003 Hemlock
merged with End of Life Choices, changing their name to Compassion and
Choices.

In 1990 the Supreme Court approved the use of non-active euthanasia.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian (1928), an American pathologist, right-to-die activist,

painter, composer, and instrumentalist, was tried and convicted in 1992 for
a murder displayed on TV. He had already become infamous for
encouraging and assisting people in committing suicide. He claimed to
have assisted at least 130 patients to that end. He famously said that
"dying is not a crime."

Brittany Maynard was 29 when she found out she was going to die. In
April 2014, she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor that would kill
her in six months. It was incurable. She could have prolonged her life
through full radiation treatment, but she would die painfully while all those
around her watched her deteriorate.This was not the way Brittany wanted
to go. She had only been married a year and wanted to start a family.
However, death is inevitable, and Brittanys was happening sooner than
anyone would have liked. So, looking at the possibilities of a slow death
marred with tremendous headaches, seizures, and memory loss, she
chose to move from California to Oregon where assisted suicide is
legal.Funded by donations, Brittany was able to check all the items off her
bucket list, which included visiting Alaska and Yellowstone National Park.
The last item on her list was a visit to the Grand Canyon, which she did
October 21.Brittany died on November 1, two days after her husbands
birthday, surrounded by her loved ones in her home in Portland.

Oregon 1994 - Oregon voters approved the Death with Dignity Act in 1994,
allowing physicians to assist terminal patients who were not expected to
survive more than six months. The US Supreme Court adopted such laws
in 1997. In 2001 the Bush administration tried unsuccessfully to use drug
law to stop Oregon in 2001, in the case Gonzales v. Oregon. Texas
introduced non-active euthanasia legally in 1999.

Terri Schiavo case - a seven-year long legal case which dealt with
whether Terri Schiavo, a patient diagnosed as being in a persistent
vegetative state for many years, could be disconnected from life support. In
1993, Michael Schiavo, her husband and guardian, asked the nursing
home staff not to resuscitate her - however, the staff convinced him to
withdraw the order.
In 1998, Michael petitioned the Sixth Circuit Court of Florida to remove her
feeding tube under Florida Statutes Section 765.401(3). However, Robert
and Mary Schindler (Terri's parents) argued that she was conscious and
opposed the petition. Michael eventually transferred his authority over the
issue to the court. The court concluded that the patient would not wish to
continue life-prolonging measures.

Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was withdrawn on April 24, 2001, and
reinserted some days later as legal decisions were made. This attracted
the attention of the media, and subsequently that of politicians and
advocacy groups, especially pro-life and disability rights groups.

Members of the Florida Legislature, the US Congress and even the

President of the USA started talking about it. President Bush returned to
Washington D.C from a vacation in March 2005 to sign legislation aimed at
keeping Schiavo alive. This move turned the case into a national topic for
most of the month.

The Schiavo case involved 14 appeals, several motions, petitions and

hearings in the Florida courts, five suits in federal district court, Florida
legislation was struck down by the Supreme Court of Florida, a subpoena
by a congressional committee to qualify Schiavo for witness protection, and
some other legal proceedings. Eventually the local court's decision to
disconnect Schiavo from life support was acted upon on March 18th, 2005 -
Schiavo died on March 31st.
 Legislation and political movements

California

In the 1983 case of Barber v. Superior Court, two physicians had honored a
family's request to withdraw both respirator and intravenous feeding and
hydration tubes from a comatose patient. The physicians were charged
with murder, despite the fact that they were doing what the family wanted.
The court held that all charges should be dropped because the treatments
had all been ineffective and burdensome. Withdrawal of treatment, even if
life-ending, is morally and legally permitted. Competent patients or their
surrogates can decide to withdraw treatments, usually after the treatments
are found ineffective, painful, or burdensome.

Maine

On May 31, 2013, the Maine state legislature rejected decriminalization of

physician assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia (95-43).

New Jersey

In the United States legal and ethical debates about euthanasia became
more prominent in the Karen Ann Quinlan case who went into a coma after
allegedly mixing tranquilizers with alcohol, surviving biologically for 9 years
in a "persistent vegetative state" even after the New Jersey Supreme Court
approval to remove her from a respirator. This case caused a widespread
public concern about "lives not worth living" and the possibility of at least
voluntary euthanasia if it could be ascertained that the patient would not
have wanted to live in this condition.
Texas
In 1999, the state of Texas passed the Advance Directives Act. Under the
law, in some situations, Texas hospitals and physicians have the right to
withdraw life support measures, such as mechanical respiration, from
terminally ill patients when such treatment is considered to be both futile
and inappropriate. This is sometimes referred to as "passive euthanasia".
In 2005, a six-month-old infant, Sun Hudson, with a uniformly fatal
disease thanatophoric dysplasia, was the first patient in which "a United
States court has allowed life-sustaining treatment to be withdrawn from a
pediatric patient over the objections of the child's parent.