Is Euthanasia Ethical or Not - Essay Example

University

Introduction

Euthanasia is among the issues that have been debated for long globally. Euthanasia had been a relevant matter in human rights discussions as it likewise influences ethical and legal matters relating to patients and healthcare providers. Euthanasia is a medical field concept that means the intentional speeding of a person's death pegged on terminal medical conditions. Healthcare providers always encounter ethical challenges when caring for terminally ill patients, and they have to choose between the difficulty of undesirable alternatives. They are commonly obligated to utilize their moral reasoning in solving these ethical challenges. In the modern world, despite the technological and scientific advancement mostly in the laws and regulations field linked to human health, there is still haziness and controversy on the euthanasia concept. Hence this ethical dilemma might enforce healthcare providers to legal and ethical danger. This paper supports euthanasia by arguing that it is morally allowed for terminally ill patients who have drained all other reasonable treatment alternatives.

Argument

• Patient Autonomy

Euthanasia supporters argue that euthanasia is highly beneficial and easing to a terminally ill patient whose condition is irreversible. The patient’s life support becomes a huge financial and mental burden to his or her friends and family. Several people perceive death as an end to a person's life, but in several cases, it is likewise the end to someone suffering. Euthanasia advocates argue that euthanasia is closely linked to the American values of personal freedom and liberty of choice (Emanuel, 1994). The American constitution indicates that we are entitled to freedom, life and quest for happiness. When a person's quest for happiness entails a speedy and painless death, they are entitled to it. When the quest for happiness is someone's fundamental right, then one should die the way he or she wants to. Voluntary euthanasia is validated based on the person's autonomy who suffers massive pain and for whom drugs have no more impact on easing the suffering. In such a scenario, the patient has to make a mature decision not to enforce more burden to his or her loved ones. When the patient gives free, informed consent for euthanasia, there is no injustice done. Declining the patient's request would expose the cruelty of the doctor. It is likened to compelling a patient to live in a painful condition when he or she no longer desires. Hence declining the patient's request is a failure to honor the patient's autonomy.

• The Right to Die

Several patients in incessant vegetative condition or terminal illness do not desire to become a burden on their family members. Such patients perceived euthanasia as an option to uphold the right to life. Euthanasia is performed when there is no hope of recuperation and o likelihood of being in-charge to serve others. But one might state that defending euthanasia is self-centered and selfish. Still, euthanasia supporters state this as untrue because the patient is not deciding his good but likewise the good of his or her loved ones (Gill, 2006). Hence euthanasia advocates argue that the patient has the right to decide death, and society should revere and give this right as a show of justice and care towards another human being.

The essential liberty principle outlined in the U.S Supreme Court on abortion is practically valid to euthanasia. The U.S Constitution highlight that there is personal liberty real where the government cannot interfere. The patient's suffering is too private and personal for the government to engage in. The right to die perspective of a person is an enlargement of personal autonomy. Edge & Groves (2005) state that the right to live their life as per their vision is unrestricted by other views. The right to die movement started in 1976 after the court gave the verdict in 1976 on the Karen Quinlan case for the father's respirator to be removed (Lim, 2005). Hence, a patient's right is safeguarded because of a rise in law enforcement that allows the withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy.

• Eradication of Suffering

Euthanasia advocates argue that It is performed to ease suffering. Euthanasia is said to be acceptable because it eases suffering and agony when pain is unendurable and insupportable. Where possible, patients should be saved from suffering needlessly. Hence euthanasia is an ideal way to ease pointless suffering. Also, the denial of patients the decision to be saved from excruciating misery is observed as unfair treatment, making them bear the unwarranted burden and enforces on them unethically the value of others (Johnstone, 2019). Euthanasia is a solution to terminate the intolerable misery and agony of patients. Assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia are moral, and both should be provided to any patients if they ask for either of them. No harm or injustice is performed neither to the doctor or patient because the patient has made a choice him/herself.

• Care-givers Burden

Euthanasia advocates contend that patients with incurable, deteriorating, disabling or devastating illness should be permitted to die in solemnity. This contention is further fortified for people with chronic incapacitating sicknesses, although it is not terminal as a brutal mental sickness. Most of such petitions are filed by the patient’s caregivers or family members (Math & Chaturvedi, 2012). The caregivers’ burden is massive and cuts across several domains, such as social, psychological, financial, time and emotional aspects. Therefore, it is infrequent to hear pleas from a psychiatric illness patient caregiver to offer some poison to the patient or else. Hence euthanasia supporters believed that any individual should be saved from suffering mostly is the misery is intense. It appears cruel to refute patients from selecting death to ease his loved ones from mental and financial burden.

• Rejecting Care

The right to reject medical treatment is acknowledged in law comprising or medical therapy that extends life. For instance, a patient who has blood cancer can reject therapy or refute feeds via a nasogastric tube (Math & Chaturvedi, 2012). Acknowledgment of the right to reject treatment provides a method for passive euthanasia. Several people do contend that permitting the medical end of a pregnancy before sixteen weeks is likewise a type of active euthanasia.

Counter-Argument

• Religious argument

Opponents of euthanasia argue that humans are God's sacred creation, and hence human life by addition is sacred. It implied that there are restrictions on what humans can do with their lives, like terminating it (Wildes & Mitchell, 1997). Only God can decide when a person dies, and so performing an action of euthanasia is operating against God's will and is sinful. Hence this argument is shared by the Islamic, Christian and Jewish faiths.

• Slippery Slope Argument

Sulmasy et al. (2016) argue that the slippery slope contention is pegged on the notion that once a health system and by extension government begins murdering its citizens, then a line that should never be crossed is crossed and a risky pattern has been established. The concern is that a society that permits voluntary euthanasia will then steadily transform its disposition to incorporate non-voluntary and then involuntary euthanasia. Likewise, legalized voluntary euthanasia could ultimately cause great unforeseen outcomes. For example, very sick individuals needing perpetual care or individuals with acute disabilities might feel pressured to ask for euthanasia, so they do not burden their family. Similarly, legalizing euthanasia might deject research into palliative care therapy and likely cures for individuals with terminal sicknesses.

• Medical Ethics Contention

The medical ethics contention indicates that sanctioning euthanasia would breach one of the fundamental medical ethics, which calls on a doctor to know that they have the responsibility of upholding human life from conception. Requesting a physician to forsake their obligation to uphold human life could gravely damage the physician-patient relationship (Sulmasy et al., 2016). Physicians can become hardened to death, and the procedure of instigating death becomes a repetitive administrative task. Hence this could cause a lack of empathy when dealing with terminally ill or elderly patients. Hence individuals with complex health desires or acute disabilities can become distrustful of their physician's efforts and intents, thinking their physicians would instead murder them off than taking charge of a multifaceted and demanding case.

Conclusion

Euthanasia is morally permitted in situations where the patient's illness is terminal for various purposes. Firstly, humans have a right to die and the right to do want they wish with their bodies. Secondly, death is a private affair, and the government cannot interfere that dictate to citizens how to lead their personal lives. Thirdly, patients who have tolerated torment until they wish for a death warrant to die with dignity. Hence euthanasia should be acknowledged as ethical and legal as it observes the healthcare moral standards and underpins a person’s freedom of selection. Likewise, it eases terminally ill patients from agony and misery, lifts the monetary and mental burden from the family's shoulders and potentially reduces the rate of suicide.