Euthanasia Essays (4602 words) - Euthanasia, Medical Ethics

Euthanasia The Right to Choose The main issues of euthanasia are maintaining the status of illegality, legalizing the procedure, and regulating the procedure. The controversy of euthanasia involves moral, ethical, and legal concerns. In this country, according to a survey reported in the Journal of American Medical Association, nearly 63 percent of Americans favor legalizing physician-assisted suicide, yet most state statutes criminalize it (Stark, np). People fear that if legalized, the choice to die will eventually be taken out of their hands and placed in the hands of people who will choose to kill select people based on their own private criteria. Maybe this is true, but it is doubtful. The issues are more realistic and involve our society's morals and the legal consequences of choice in dying. Currently, the debate involving the practice of euthanasia revolves around moral and legal issues. The moral debate involves religion and other societal beliefs. Everyone has their own morals and values, which is their God-given, inalienable right. In America, our society's morals are based in part on religious beliefs. Most religions, especially Christian religions, feel that taking another's life is wrong and against God's commandments. The Catholic church feels strongly about euthanasia and encourages both the Catholic congregation and United States politicians to maintain the illegal status of euthanasia. The legal debate is a hot issue with both proponents and opponents striving to win. In the United States, the Supreme Court decided to allow individual states to decide what to do about physician-assisted suicide. Currently, only Oregon allows physician-assisted suicide. Several other states are debating over the subject but without success. The main legal argument is whether or not a citizen of the United States has the constitutional right to choose between life and death. As it stands now, the Supreme Court ruled we do not have the constitutional right to choose. One last issue is the financial effect on the person and their family. The surgeries, life support, drugs, doctor's fees and all the other expenses of a terminally ill patient are staggering. For one week in an intensive care unit, the cost could easily soar to $100,000. The cost of letting a person die is close to nothing when compared to the cost of keeping them alive. A solution to the debate over euthanasia is highly anticipated. Maybe one day all the issues can be resolved and the bickering over mercy-killing will end. Of course, on the pessimistic side, the right to die debate might never be concluded. The controversy surrounding euthanasia can only be resolved when the procedure is legalized with mandatory, regulatory guidelines put in place to enable both physicians and individuals to decide the best course of action for themselves without fear. Choice in Dying reminds us that Although the concept of the right to die has interested philosophers since the time of the Greeks, it was not until recently that the issue became a pertinent and widespread social concern. A cancer patient named Robert Dent wrote the following in a letter before he died of an injection that he requested (Australian Man First in World, A5). If I were to keep a pet animal in the same condition I am in, I would be prosecuted. If you disagree with voluntary euthanasia, then don't use it, but don't deny me the right to use it. He requested euthanasia and received it. The word euthanasia is a combination of the Greek prefix Eu, which means good, and thanatos, meaning death. Webster's Dictionary defines it as the act or practice of killing individuals that are hopelessly sick or injured for reasons of mercy. Euthanasia or mercy killing as they more commonly call it, is a highly debated topic that has many aspects. Financial, moral, social, and most important , legal concerns are raised whenever euthanasia is brought up. There were two major cases in the U.S. that pertain to mercy killing that the Supreme court ruled on and one they refused to hear. According to Choice in Dying's Legal Developments web page, the following three legal rulings have recently been issued. In 1996, the Ninth Circuit Court in Compassion in Dying v. Washington and the Second Circuit Court in Quill v. Vacco, ruled that the U.S. Constitution protects the