Why Is Euthanasia Good: My Arguments for Euthanasia

Imagine a 13-year-old girl in a hospital bed, tubes surrounding her body, a monitor beeping, counting every second of her life left, a doctor coming in every 30 minutes looking at the monitor and writing something down. Her cancer is growing every day and her life’s timeline is shrinking even faster. The doctors know that she will die by the end of the year, her parents know that she will die by the end of the year, even SHE knows she is going to die at the end of the year. As the year is coming to an end, her cancer worsens, she gets occasional seizures, and she doesn’t have enough energy to move a limb. She’s going through pain and she doesn’t want to deal with it anymore. She wants to be able to end her life and stop all this suffering, but she can’t, it’s illegal. She is forced to suffer in pain for another 2 months before her death. Should she get euthanized? That poses the main question of my essay 'why is euthanasia good?'.

What is Euthanasia?

Euthanasia is defined as the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma. The practice is illegal in the United Kingdom. This is issue has been controversial throughout the years in the area of medical law and continuous to be the subject of debate as it comes in between the government of the UK and the rights of the individual citizens. In the UK euthanasia is treated as murder or man slaughter and it states that to kill another person deliberately, with or without consent being given is a crime. Doctors, nurses, family members along with anyone that takes part in medically assisted suicide will be sentenced to fourteen years to maximum being life imprisonment, as the act of suicide is a crime offence. The survey taken by the British Social Attitudes was able to voice the citizens and the statistics showed that eighty percent of the citizens of the public wants the law to be changed to ill patients being able to have the right to die with the help of doctors. Assisted killing of patients in pain should be legalised to end their suffering.

Unfortunately, there are people out there who are suffering from a long term illness or injury and find death to be their ultimate solution. They are in so much pain and suffering that they no longer find their quality of life to be at an acceptable level. There are many forms of Euthanasia which include, people suffering from incurable disorders, newborns with severe congenital disabilities, and adults in their final stage of a terminal illness under medical life support. Euthanasia is classified into passive and active Passive Euthanasia is when a patient stops taking essential medications which would eventually cause them to die, while active Euthanasia is when one is terminating a person’s life.

Euthanasia: Why I Agree

I believe that euthanasia should be legalized in all countries for people who have terminal/degenerative diseases. “The right to die should be a matter of personal choice,” said Michael Irwin a British doctor who is campaigning Voluntary Euthanasia, “...the law should be changed to let anyone with some severe medical condition which is causing unbearable symptoms to have an assisted suicide.” Imagine you have a terminal/degenerative disease that will kill you even if you try all the different types of medication and treatment that you could possibly think of. You really want to take euthanasia so that you can die peacefully. But then, you find out that euthanasia is illegal and you must live, knowing that you’re going to die but not knowing when. Why would you want to do that? “...in officially reported Belgian cases, pain was the reason for euthanasia in about half of cases,” reported Andrew McGee. This shows that if there was a choice for those going through severe conditions and are going through pain, they will most likely choose to get euthanized and die peacefully.

While I completely agree with the idea of people being able to choose whether or not they want to die and stop suffering, others do not. There are numerous factors that come into play when someone chooses euthanasia including time, money, and pain. It requires time to sign up to get euthanized for the countries that have it legalized right now, it requires time to get to the places that are legal, and it shortens the time of your living. You don’t even know if you are actually going to die or not even if the doctor says something like: “you have around 3 months left”. It also costs so much to get euthanized, between $15,000 and $25,000 to be exact. That’s a bunch of money that could go to medication and treatment for the person who wishes to get euthanized. Also, the passing of the person that is getting euthanized could travel their pain to their friends and family and it will hurt them both mentally and physically. Another factor is that a patient with a medical condition could say that they are not feeling well and are suffering even though they are not at the stage of near-death experience, and still have time to use medication and get treatment to help them get better. It is almost like we are saying that we do not want to help these people and killing them is the answer and the solution to it.

Final Thoughts

While those come to a great stance, not making euthanization legalized takes away free will. “People have the right to make their own decisions,” said Rebecca Barkdoll. People with cancer have a 5% chance of survival (“via chemo”). It isn’t right for them to go through the “torture” of them knowing that they are going to die but not knowing when. We all have a choice on who we want to be in our lives, what type of things we do when we do something. So why can’t people that have a severe medical condition be able to get euthanized when they already know that they are going to die?

Imagine the girl I was talking about earlier, the girl with cancer. Remember the question I asked you before. Should she get euthanized?