Voluntary Euthanasia

          Voluntary Euthanasia, meaning “good death” in Greek, refers to the practice of ending a life in a painless manner. Voluntary euthanasia (VE) and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) have been the focus of great controversy in recent years. Some forms of voluntary euthanasia is legal in Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the US states of Oregon and Washington. In ancient Greece and Rome, before the coming of Christianity, attitudes toward infanticide, active euthanasia, and suicide had tended to be tolerant. Many ancient Greeks and Romans had no cogently defined belief in the inherent value of individual human life, and pagan physicians likely performed frequent abortions as well as both voluntary and involuntary mercy killings. Although the Hippocratic Oath, which was written between 300 and 400 BC, prohibited doctors from giving 'a deadly drug to anybody, not even if asked for,' or from suggesting such a course of action, few ancient Greek or Roman physicians followed the oath faithfully. Throughout classical antiquity, there was widespread support for voluntary death as opposed to prolonged agony, and physicians complied by often giving their patients the poisons they requested. On other hand, in 17^th Century, Common Law Tradition Prohibits Suicide and Assisted Suicide in the American Colonies. For over 700 years, the Anglo American common law tradition has punished or otherwise disapproved of both suicide and assisting suicide. For the most part, the early American colonies adopted the common law approach. For example, the legislators of the Providence Plantations, which would later become Rhode Island, declared, in 1647, that '[s]elf murder is by all agreed to be the most unnatural, and it is by this present Assembly declared, to be that, wherein he that doth it, kills himself out of a premeditated hatred against his own life or other humor. Euthanasia should not be legalized because it devalues human life and it is a start of a slippery slope.

          In order to argue that euthanasia devalues life, one must argue why one should value it in general. Humans traditionally attribute great value to life. Some will argue that life is valued merely because o­ne’s care for it usually acts as a motivator, and gives the person reason or justification for her/his actions. All human beings are to be valued, irrespective of age, sex, race, religion, social status or their potential for achievement. From a religious perspective, all three of the world’s major religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, all agree that life must be valued since it is a gift from God. From an evolutionary perspective, a person must value life because her/his prime concern should be survival and procreation; suicide opposes both of these, as it disallows further procreation, and a dead person can no longer aid in the preservation of humanity. According to the philosopher Immanuel Kant said that rational human beings should be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else. The fact that we are human has value in itself. People’s inherent value doesn't depend on anything else - it doesn't depend on whether they are having a good life that they enjoy, or whether they are making other people's lives better. People exist, so they have value. People shouldn't treat themselves as a means to their own ends. This means that people shouldn't end their lives just because it seems the most effective way of putting an end to their suffering. To do that is not to respect their inherent worth. Therefore the deliberate taking of human life should be prohibited except in self-defense or the legitimate defense of others.

          Voluntary euthanasia will cause slippery slope. Many people worry that if voluntary euthanasia were to become legal, it would not be long before involuntary euthanasia would start to happen. People concluded that it was virtually impossible to ensure that all acts of euthanasia were truly voluntary and that any liberalization of the law in the United Kingdom could not be abused. People were also concerned that vulnerable people - the elderly, lonely, sick or distressed - would feel pressure, whether real or imagined, to request early death. This is called the slippery slope argument. In general form, it says that if people allow something relatively harmless today, they may start a trend that results in something currently unthinkable becoming accepted. If people change the law and accept voluntary euthanasia, they will not be able to keep it under control. Doctors may soon start killing people without bothering with their permission. There is a huge difference between killing people who ask for death under appropriate circumstances, and killing people without their permission. Absolute legalization, or even permission for specific instances of euthanasia, also allows for abuse of the system. It is a another form of slippery slope. That is, if one allows for “acceptable reasons” for euthanasia, it would not be difficult for both patients and doctors to exploit the system, and defining “acceptable” deaths would prove most challenging. Patients may look for any way with which they can fit themselves into the criteria, and doctors may be influenced by the extra salary they could acquire by serving those patients. Naturally, one could contest that this argument exhibits all the characteristics of the “slippery-slope” fallacy, and indeed, it does. one should note, however, that it is precisely because of this reasoning that our laws regarding murder are so stringent – if there are specific cases other than mental diseases for which we make exceptions to our murder laws, it is not unreasonable to expect that those accused of murder will, for care of their own welfare and fear of punishment, actively pursue those “loopholes”. Furthermore, the fear of the result of legalization is not unjustified; o­ne need o­nly look at a country in which active euthanasia is legal, such as the Netherlands, to see the reason for worry. For a person to die by euthanasia there, courts decided that those suffering from unbearable suffering that could not be treated otherwise and persistently requested it, could choose to die by euthanasia. In 1990, it was found that 2 700 people died by euthanasia, 1 000 of these people died by active euthanasia. Of these, 60% made their wishes known in some form of writing, but not by the standard that their health association required. The remaining 40% had not expressed a desire to have their lives terminated. Of course, it could be argued that some of these patients had expressed a desire to die, but not officially; that does not speak, however, for those who did not desire their death at all. Let us even grant that all of these 400 people had requested death but not officially; the mere fact that in 40% of all cases, neither the patients nor their doctors complied with the laws regulating the practice and had no legal documents to support their cases in any form, indicates the facility with which the system can be abused. Eventually, voluntary euthanasia will lead to involuntary euthanasia and take away the life of people who do not want to die.

          In conclusion, voluntary euthanasia should not be morally permissible. Not only does it devalue human life, but it is also cause slippery slope and very susceptible to abuse which will also lead to another slippery slope, as demonstrated by the Netherlands case study. According to Jean Davis, President of the World Federation of the Right to Die Societies : "If we now return to the semantics of voluntary euthanasia let us try replacing "kill" by "help to die ... when we do this many of the most emotive objections to its legalization fade away." People claim that legalizing euthanasia is to help those patients to get out of suffer and is for their own good. But for my own opinion, how could people help those patients when they are not even alive anymore, when they are no longer see and feel anything anymore, when they are not exist in this world anymore. Euthanasia should not be legalized.

Refferences

Brock, D. W. (1992). Voluntary Active Euthanasia. The Hastings Center Report, 22(2), 10-22. Retrieved from http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/DanBrockVolactEuth.pdf.

Ethics - Euthanasia: Anti-euthanasia arguments. (n.d.). BBC. Retrieved January 10, 2013, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/against/against_1.shtml

Euthanasia. (n.d.). Euthanasia.com. Retrieved January 7, 2013, from http://euthanasia.com/

Historical Timeline. (n.d.). Euthanasia - ProCon.org. Retrieved January 10, 2013, from http://euthanasia.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000130

Rizkalla, M. (n.d.). Active Euthanasia. Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles. Retrieved January 7, 2013, from http://www.coptichymns.net/module-library-viewpub-tid-1-pid-331.html

Sanctity of Human Life: Suicide, Physician-Assisted Suicide, and Euthanasia. (2010). Retrieved from http://ag.org/top/Beliefs/Position_Papers/pp_downloads/PP_Sanctity_of_Human_Life_Suicide_Euthanasia.pdf.

Saunders , W. L., & Fragoso, M. A. Should We Legalize Voluntary Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide? Retrieved from http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF09F59.pdf.