By Vera Arestakesyan
There have been numerous debates over the performance of euthanasia. A common trend is the idea that it can end a person’s misery and cease their pain. Yet, equally many people claim it could take their lives unnecessarily and cause major issues.
Euthanasia is the death of a person with the assistance of a physician. It is the termination of one’s life. Some people think physician-assisted death is ethical, and, on the contrary, think that suicide is not.
But really, how much different is it?
The organization dedicated to diminishing distress and death called Living With Dignity states that “the right to die implies a duty to kill,” meaning that when a person is ready to die, a doctor has to implement lethal injection.
They also declared that euthanasia is most likely to increase the suicide rate, as has happened in the Netherlands and Belgium, where euthanasia is legal and many seek death through it. This includes even those who have curable diseases or are perfectly healthy, assuming that they have served their purpose in life.
Recently, a Belgian doctor was questioned by his committee because a few moths ago a demented lady who had Parkinson’s disease was euthanized. However, she had not asked to be killed. This would have been considered a crime under the law, but the loose threads of the law regarding this matter overlooked the wrongdoing.
The National Review has been covering the latest assisted-deaths, for which numbers have been steadily increasing; suicide rates in the United States between 1990 and 2013 have increased 6.3% after the legalization of euthanasia. The percentage of euthanasia death of the total mortality rate tripled from 2002 too 2016, according to Dutch Professor Dr. Theo Boer’s study. Reporter Andrew T. Walker stated that “once assisted suicide is made legal, the definition of who is eligible for it inevitably expands.”
When performed needlessly, it impacts the society and the reverence for life by broadening its sanctioned range of admission. Subsequent to the provision of palliative care, the severe necessity of euthanasia ought to have decreased.
The Medical Society of the state of New York opposes physician-assisted death stating that, “although relief of suffering has always been a fundamental duty in medical practice, relief of suffering through shortening of life has not.”
Hospitals are meant to comfort people by ending their pain or disease, not their life overall. New York has henceforth treated it as a crime, along with the preponderance of the states in the United States. California, and five other states, have legalized it.
Yet, akin to law, in some situations, the court must interfere for approval. In certain cases, euthanasia or “mercy-killing” is best; where therapeutics cannot cure a terminal disease or excruciating death is inevitable.
People must stand up to life, the impracticality and unreasonableness of euthanasia, and how it affects our world and mankind.