Is Euthanasia ever Morally Justified - Assignment Example

Name: University: Instructor: Date: Is euthanasia ever morally justified? Introduction Euthanasia can be defined as an act of ending a person's life deliberately with the aim of relieving suffering. Human life is sacred and has value; therefore, it is immoral for someone to take another person’s life since it is God’s gift. Only God has the right to end a person’s life when He wills. Presently, the society is facing tremendous personal, ethical and moral challenges while trying to manage the difficulties of the people who, although are technically alive, cannot function as other human beings. A number of these people normally suffer unbearable, permanent and excruciating. Others are alive because of medicine's machinery. Those favouring euthanasia appear to suggest that life is valuable only when a person happy. However this is half-truth because every person suffers in life; therefore, those willing to commit suicide or help others in suicide are undoubtedly concentrating more on suffering rather than on the mind ‘s inherent ability of the to withstand suffering and search for meaning that surpasses all the negative feelings. Certainly, we will eventually die, but this will happen sooner for people that are terminally ill. For people in this condition, they can survive for a few years when offered the right determination and concentrate on the meaning of life. Any person coerced to endure suffering must search for his/her own dignity irrespective of the status quo and the loved ones should do the same. It is immoral for the family and friends of terminally ill patients to end their suffering by killing them; instead, they should celebrate their lives and remember life' inherent value that is supremely more crucial as compared to suffering or happiness. When people say that the value of life is completely rooted in the level of suffering vs. happiness that a person is experiencing, then it is like allowing the poor to die. Life is sacred and must be protected at all costs. People should be allowed to live until God takes them. The objective of this piece is to demonstrate that euthanasia will never be morally justified. Discussion There are many palpable and plausible arguments against the legal as well as the moral justification of euthanasia. What remains certain is that euthanasia is immoral and unethical. The first argument is that euthanasia is against God’s will. Life is a valuable gift from God; therefore, it is wrong to end it. Only God has the authority to dictate how long a person can be alive, even when a person has neither acquiesced to nor requested for the gift (Jewell 4). Opponents of euthanasia hold that all people are God’s creation; therefore, this imposes some limits on us. As mentioned by Scherer and Simon (24), killing someone or oneself is akin to deny God’s rights over his gift (life) as well as his right to determine the lives’ length and how to end it. When a person suffers, he/she is drawn interiorly close to a special grace, Christ. Therefore, euthanasia destroys a person’s relationship with God and infringes the property rights of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Euthanasia can be considered as an effort to meddle with natural processes. The second argument is based on the ‘sanctity of Life’, which states that euthanasia is immoral due to the sacrosanctity of a person’s life. In view of this argument, every person should be valued, regardless of his/her social status, religion, race or ability to achieve. And so, human life cannot be considered as instrumental good because it is a basic good, a good in itself instead of a means to an end. Taking God’s gift deliberately to end a person’s suffering should be outlawed. Immanuel Kant, as cited by Beauchamp and Walters (341), argued that a rational person has to be treated as an end in him/herself rather than a means to something different. For that reason, the inherent value does not rely on any other thing; it does not rely on whether a person is having an enjoyable and good life that, or whether he/she is making another person’s life better. We all have value because we exist. As pointed out by Shuriye (210), the moral characterization of ending someone’s life is not in line with the values of his/her life. Consenting to euthanasia or participating in the process can morally be inferred as suicide. When a person ends another person’s life in voluntary euthanasia, he can still be considered as a partaker in suicide. Therefore, the sanctity of life from a Christian tradition context exhibits why euthanasia should be rejected. The human life inviolability is not just based on its sacredness but also other unique references to God. Such references include: (i), humans are God’s creation; (ii), God created them in his own image; and (iii) they have a unique relationship with God. Therefore, human life is deemed sacred and holy due to its connection with God’s divine action. A person is forever related to God; therefore, it is only God that has dominion over life from the first day to the last day. The fifth commandment states categorically “You shall not kill.” This demonstrates that no person has the right to deliberately destroy any human being. It is imperative for people to respect and honour the things that are deemed holy, such as life. Every person deserves respect and care and when life’s quality is low, no human being has the right to deliberately to end it. This is because its inviolability holds sacredness. For that reason, the ‘sanctity of life’ concept offers a strong argument to reject euthanasia. The third argument is the ‘slippery Slope’, which states that allowing for voluntary euthanasia can result in involuntary and non-voluntary euthanasia since the doctors are given the power to make a decision when the life of the patient is not valuable anymore.  ‘Slippery slope’ is often utilised to oppose active euthanasia by arguing that when people agree to help another person die, they would be legitimising suicide; thus, making it possible for the euthanization of mentally ill patients. When doctors are allowed to euthanise their patients without their consent, the humanity would likely degrade. The slippery slope is valid when argued based on the principle of non-maleficence, that a person should not do more harm to the patient (Myers 9). However, this principle does not differentiate between the relief of suffering and no further harm. Still, there is no justification that ending a person’s suffering completely replaces the patient’s quality of life. Another argument against euthanasia is based on the patients’ best interests considering that there are numerous cases where the patient has asked for euthanasia, but it does not serve their best interest. For instance, when the diagnosis is incorrect and the person is not terminally ill, if the doctor makes a wrong prognosis then there is the likelihood that the patient would ask for euthanasia because the doctors have made him/her believe that he/she is terminally ill. Many requests for euthanasia are attributed to ‘cry for help’, connoting that life is no longer valuable. However, the patient could live if numerous fears or symptoms are managed. Furthermore, when the patient is depressed and is made to believe that he/she is in a worse state, they become confused and incapable of make sensible decisions. Therefore, terminating the interpret patient’s life at this state can be considered as murder. Availability of alternative treatments like hospices and palliative care proves why there is no need for ending a patient’s life in order to end suffering or kill the symptoms. Palliative care is spiritual, emotional and physical care for a person is terminally ill when there is no cure. Normally, it includes kind-heartedness and care for friends and family. Providing competent palliative care could be sufficient to stop a patient from contemplating euthanasia. As mentioned by MacKinnon (146), medical practitioners are completely dedicated to saving lives and they have been prohibited by medical ethics from ending a patient’s life. For every life lost, it is a failure for medical practitioners; therefore, legalising euthanasia could corrupt the competence since they would not try hard enough to save patient’s life. Legalisation of euthanasia would probably increase the number of deaths since doctors and nurses would become lazy in protecting human life. Legalising euthanasia would make doctors put more pressure on the vulnerable people since they would be able to decide when a patient should die. When euthanasia is allowed, vulnerable people would be pressurised to end their lives; thus making it challenging, to prevent people from utilising coercion or persuasion to make patients ask for euthanasia when actually they do not want it. As mentioned by Young (5I7), killing another person is morally wrong since it unwarrantedly prevents the patient from realising his/her life-purposes. In his article “Active and Passive Euthanasia,” Rachels (114) mentioned that there is no difference between the moral acceptability of passive and active euthanasia, and therefore every decision made with regard to life and death are made on ‘irrelevant grounds’. Rachels further argued that killing a person to end suffering is not worse as compared to letting him/her die. There is no moral difference between the killing a person or letting him/her die; for instance, there is no difference between a man who kills his child by drowning and the one that watches his child drown, and breathe his last breath (Nathan 4). Still, passive euthanasia could be more tortuous as compared to the active one, but both are not morally permissible. The majority of people advocating for euthanasia base their arguments on autonomy: every person has the right to choose and all people must respect this. On the other hand, opponents of euthanasia argue that this is a distorted concept of freedom that extinguishes a person’s solidarity with others. The concept of freedom, from a Christian point of view, is that freedom is doing what God wants: It consists of independent choice to reject or accept illness as well as suffering and abandoning oneself to God’s will. Although all people have a right to life, this right cannot be considered as an absolute one since it is God’s gift. No human being has an absolute autonomy because we are all stewards of our life. Those opposing euthanasia believe that its legalisation can lead to undesired consequences; therefore, it is imperative to respect God’s gift. Damaged relationship between the doctors and patients is one of the fears attributed to consequences of legalising physician-assisted suicide as well as euthanasia. Legalising euthanasia will be like offering the physicians the license to kill their patients and this would likely erode the patients’ confidence in their doctors. Furthermore, euthanasia cannot be morally justified since pain and suffering are not enough to legalise euthanasia. Pain and suffering have a meaning and it is possible for people to face it devoid of moving towards to euthanasia. The majority of Christians clearly understand the meaning of suffering since it makes a person re-establish or buttress his/her relationship with God. In Evangelium Vitae, John Paul II argued that there were meaning and value in personal suffering (Braun, Pietsch and Blanchette 177). The pope further argued that when a person is suffering, he/she is likely to come across the truth. Therefore, suffering should not be ended because it is a transformative event and it is the human beings’ transcendence. This can be evidenced by the story of Job in the Bible, demonstrates that we are all important in God's eyes regardless of the pain and discomfort we are experiencing in life. Job’s experiences were traumatic and discouraging, but Job did not end his life to stop his sufferings. Job suffering can be considered as transformative suffering rather than punishment for his sins because he understood suffering beyond retribution. Therefore, suffering can be considered as an act of building virtue and repentance. Therefore, ending someone life is morally wrong because suffering has its definitive and fundamental meaning since the person will be participating in the suffering of Christ. Through suffering, Jesus Christ managed to redeem the mankind. Therefore, it is the duty of every person to participate in redeeming Christ’s suffering. Many Catholics believe that the past and modern-day Christians have experienced an interior closeness to Christ by suffering. Therefore, suffering has a meaning; therefore, suffering when terminal ill is unavoidable; people should face it like Jesus and Job rather than asking for euthanasia. The doctors should show love to those suffering instead of advising them to end their lives. As God’s children, we should love one another and understand that no one has the right to end someone’s life. Jesus suffered to redeem us; therefore, we should do the same to redeem our relationship with God. Supporters of euthanasia should understand that suffering is an inevitable part of our lives. More importantly, it has the unexpected spiritual impact on those attending to the dying. When a patient suffers, he/she would find spiritual growth and would move towards a special grace. Euthanasia is not and would never be a true relief of suffering; a person can get relief by submitting self to God sovereignty. Euthanasia should be opposed in order to protect vulnerable people who can be manipulated by doctors to ask for euthanasia while in actual sense it is the society that has failed to offer appropriate healthcare. Euthanasia is immoral because it involves ending a person’s life. Rational people know that killing another person deliberately cannot be justified irrespective of the motivation offered. Helping people to end their life make doctors either murders or participants in suicides. Conclusion In conclusion, this piece has demonstrated why euthanasia will never be morally justified. As mentioned in the piece, euthanasia is morally unacceptable because life is a gift from God; therefore only God has the right to end it. It has further been argued the suffering has a meaning and value because it draws a person close to God. Arguments against euthanasia are rooted in life’s inviolability as well as the traditional teaching of the Church and the Bible. In addition, opposition towards legal euthanasia can be based on the principal responsibility of the government and society to protect life. It is the duty of the government to protect its people from all sorts of threat or danger. God’s commandments warn us against killing; therefore, when a doctor ends his/her patient’s life is unethical because it violates the rights and dignity of the person. Therefore, the legalising euthanasia could be a failure of government and society to protect its members from being killed. The relationship between the doctor and patient is likely to be destroyed if the doctor is allowed to decide when the patient is not fit to continue living. Legalising euthanasia could corrupt the doctors’ competence because they would not try hard enough to save patient’s life and they would become lazy in protecting human life. Besides that, killing someone or oneself is akin to deny God’s rights over life and also his right to determine the lives’ length and how to end it. Work Cited Beauchamp, Tom L. and ‎LeRoy Walters. Contemporary Issues in Bioethics. Belmont, California: adsworth Publishing Company, 1999. Braun, Kathryn L., James H. Pietsch and Patricia L. Blanchette. Cultural Issues in End-of-Life Decision Making. London: SAGE Publications, 2000. Jewell, Paul. “Rationality, euthanasia, and the sanctity of life.” Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics 12th Annual Conference. Adelaide, 2005. 1-8. MacKinnon, Barbara. Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues. Boston: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2000. Myers, Harry D. Determining the Morality of Active Euthanasia. Senior Honors Thesis. Southern Illinois University . Carbondale, IL, 1995. Nathan, Rae. “Is Euthanasia Morally Permissible? Why or Why Not?” Sound Decisions: An Undergraduate Bioethics Journal 1.1 (2015): 1-8. Rachels, James. The End of Life: The Morality of Euthanasia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Scherer, y Jennifer M. and Rita James Simon. Euthanasia and the Right to Die: A Comparative View. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Shuriye, Abdi Omar. “Ethical And Religious Analysis On Euthanasia.” IIUM Engineering Journal 12.5 (2011): 209-211. Young, Robert. “What Is So Wrong with Killing People?” Philosophy 54.210 (1979): 515-528. Read More