Euthanasia, also known as the Right to Die or PAS (Physician Assisted Suicide), is the practice of deliberately killing a person to spare him or her from having to deal with more pain and suffering. Euthansia is always a controversial issue because of the moral and ethical components that are involved in the decision-making process. Euthanasia should not be legalized for reasons such as, its involvement upon religious perspectives, potential abuse, and the intrinsic wrongness of killing.
Many will ask about the involvement upon religious perspectives. A question to be asked is, what’s the involvement of religion towards euthanasia, is it a private matter? All religions are not the same and their privacy is well appreciated by those who are a part of it.
“One might expect that the religion clauses of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits government from establishing religion or denying the free exercise of religion… instead, it is the unenumerated right of privacy with which the law of Euthanasia must be reconciled”(Tom Stacy, 1994). As the government has no establishment upon religion, privacy will have no enhancement, so why consider euthanasia a decision? Most people that have a strong religion background personally believe that euthanasia is a sin and that it devalues human life.
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Only god should be able to take away life. “… would allow the private killing of one person by another.Public control and regulation of such actions would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. The potential for abuse, especially of people who are most vulnerable, would be substantially increased.” (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, “A Message on… End-of-Life Decisions,” elca.org, 1992) Elaborating further, euthanasia will be disrespecting people who have a strong christian conscience, as it does goes against it.
Legalizing Euthanasia or PAS (physician assisted suicide) may lead to what people call a “slippery slope” or potential abuse. Meaning that Euthanasia possibly can lead to taking a turn for the worse. Maybe even involuntary euthanasia. Question is, why risk it? We see an example of Euthanasia going downhill within the Dutch government, “In the 1980’s the Dutch government stopped prosecuting physicians who committed voluntary euthanasia on their patients…by the 1990’s over 50 percent of the acts of euthanasia were no longer voluntary.” (E. Wesly Ely) Over time we see that doctors just keep pushing the limit. “Euthanasia in the Netherlands went from illegal but not prosecuting, to legal even including children”.(E. Wesley Ely) This shows that euthanasia gives doctors entirely too much power and that the risk euthanasia comes with is a big one and who says it’s to stop there?
Lastly, legalizing euthanasia will over all consider it as the intrinsic wrongness of killing.
References
- First Amendment to the United States Constitution
- BBC Ethics – Euthanasia
- New York Times – Euthanasia
- NHS – Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide
- World Health Organization – Palliative Care
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Voluntary Euthanasia
- Pew Research Center – Public Opinion on Euthanasia
- ProCon.org – Euthanasia
