What is Euthanasia?
Euthanasia is the deliberate killing of a person for the benefit of that person, also known as "mercy-killing" the intentional ending of a patient's life.
In most cases euthanasia is carried out because the person who dies asks for it, but there are cases called euthanasia where a person can't make such a request.
A person who undergoes euthanasia is usually terminally ill, but there are other situations in which some people want euthanasia.
The ethics of Euthanasia
Euthanasia raises agonising moral questions like these:
- is it ever right for another person to end the life of a terminally ill patient who is in severe pain or enduring other suffering?
- if euthanasia is sometimes right, under what circumstances is it right?
- is there any moral difference between killing someone and letting them die?
At the heart of the ethical and religious arguments over euthanasia are the different ideas that people have of the meaning and value of human existence, and of whether human beings have the right to decide issues of life and death for themselves.
There are also a number of arguments based on practical issues.
Some people think that euthanasia shouldn't be allowed even if it was morally right, because it would be abused and used as a cover for murder.
Arguments for legalised voluntary euthanasia
• "I am not being pressured or encouraged to take my life, in fact everybody has been trying to get me to stay longer but they are not going through what I am. I am not depressed, unstable or mad, I've simply reached a point where my life is done and now I want to die peacefully. Surely people just sitting with me, people I love, my friends, don't have to risk going to jail just because they chose to be with me when I die." (Nancy Crick)
• The passions aroused within the medical community on the issue of euthanasia are instructive. But just as doctors must be allowed to follow their conscience when their belief system guides them, the voice of patients must also be heard and acknowledged.
• The knowledge that in the last resort a compassionate doctor would be willing to consider a request for a medically assisted death would be a source of comfort to those who think that they might one day need that help, but poses no threat to those to whom it is unacceptable.
• If medical condition is appropriate, is supported by a second opinion and the patient continues firmly to request a medically assisted death, or had completed an advanced request to this effect, the doctor has only a moral decision to make. That decision concerns the doctor's conscience, not the patient's fate.
• Voluntary euthanasia shows greater respect for life, not less. We can have scant respect for life if we require people who are hopelessly ill and suffering intolerably, or who are permanently deprived of conscious life, to live on in that condition against their will.
• A voluntary euthanasia law would require two doctors to be independently satisfied that the request was both freely made and rational in the light of the patient's condition. The belief that such requirements could and would be easily circumvented is far-fetched. Furthermore, the desire to avoid distressing others is a valid motive in someone who is incurably ill and suffering without prospect of relief.
• Patients who are incurably ill and suffering unbearably may quite rationally be depressed and wish to die. However, if the euthanasia request is not appropriate to the patient's condition, the doctor will have no mandate to proceed, but could offer alternative treatment, or decide to refer the patient for psychiatric assessment.
• Australian research shows many doctors and nurses would like to see voluntary euthanasia legalised. The practice of voluntary euthanasia in the Northern Territory, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Oregon shows it is possible to offer merciful relief from incurable suffering without the sky falling in.
• Opponents of voluntary euthanasia are right to point out the potential for abuse. Legislation must have safeguards to protect vulnerable patients. But opposition to legalised voluntary euthanasia based on the fear of abuse is misguided, because the current prohibition means that euthanasia continues in secret without even the most obvious regulations to prevent abuse.
• The possibility of collusion to murder a frail, elderly and perhaps fatally ill patient (or even to falsify the diagnosis) already exists. It would not be increased when voluntary euthanasia is legalised because of the requirement for a second independent medical opinion and a detailed report.
• Voluntary euthanasia would not be euthanasia on demand, but based on very careful medical assessment. Doctors would have to be satisfied that the patient's condition was, for the patient, intolerable. They would also be required to assess whether a patient's request was free as well as enduring. The open discussion among those concerned (significant others and health care workers) that would be part of this process would provide sound protection.
• There are acknowledged limits to palliative care. There are still cases in which pain cannot be satisfactorily controlled, but of greater concern is the loss of faculties and descent into total dependence on others over a lengthy period as a miserable prelude to death.
Arguments against legalised voluntary euthanasia
• "If you ask, should people be able to end their own suffering? Ninety-nine per cent would say yes," he says. "But if you ask, should doctors be able to kill people? Ninety-nine per cent say no."
• " 'Whose life is it anyway?' is the classic question that is asked about euthanasia and it's an example of intense individualism. But a new talk of human responsibility is starting to emerge, and that opens itself up to thinking about what others need, what society as a whole needs."
• Leaving matters of life and death in the hands of government legislators and physicians opens up highly dangerous legal and ethical loopholes ... Plugging such loopholes is not easy. Patients who may be dying are often more vulnerable to being manipulated. Illness almost always means dependence and having to rely for advice on physicians and family members who might have different goals and agendas than the patient.
• Catchcries such as 'death with dignity' and 'the right to die' undoubtedly are heartfelt but they do not satisfactorily answer the legal challenges inherent in framing a law free of abuse, manipulation or de facto extension.
• Doctors already help terminally ill patients cope more comfortably with their pain and distress, even when the treatment shortens lives. That is to be welcomed and the law's application is appropriately sensitive to this need. This way, the law is safer for all.
• If, as a society, we cannot agree that it is wrong to take innocent life, that natural rights need respect and protection, and that the frailties of mind and body imposed by serious illness render the sick peculiarly vulnerable to manipulation by others who may resent them for social reasons, on what can we certainly agree? If we cannot agree on the morality of anything, then the law can be dispensed with, except in so far as it represents self-interest or mob rule.
• People who request euthanasia often suffer from a lack of human relationships and understanding. Simply responding to such a request may be considered the final rejection in a series of abandonments through lack of human attention and loving concern.
• "The problem is you go into periods of depression where you're not thinking straight. So it would be dangerous to introduce euthanasia without a lot of controls."
• This is a vulnerable population who want to leave a legacy. To make every person who's facing death think about euthanasia is an enormous impost on people who are already feeling isolated and frightened.
• Although a 'right to die' is claimed, what is meant instead is a right to be killed. There has never been a right to be killed in any code of ethics. It is a deceptive concept, and no argument is ever made to support it. Since there is no right to be killed, others are not required to kill or assist in killing, nor should they do so.
• It is a contradiction in terms to think that an act of killing can achieve a 'dignified' or 'natural' death. There is nothing dignified about being killed. Dying people should be treated with true dignity where their needs are met by providing effective medical care which values their worth.
Heatley J 2002,
The Euthanasia Debate, Volumn 173,
Issues in Society,
Retrived 17 September 2007
Euthanasia is against the word and will of God
Religious people don't argue that we can't kill ourselves, or get others to do it. They know that we can do it because God has given us free will. Their argument is that it would be wrong for us to do so.
They believe that every human being is the creation of God, and that this imposes certain limits on us. Our lives are not only our lives for us to do with as we see fit.
To kill oneself, or to get someone else to do it for us, is to deny God, and to deny God's rights over our lives and his right to choose the length of our lives and the way our lives end.
The value of suffering
Religious people sometimes argue against euthanasia because they see positive value in suffering.
Down through the centuries and generations it has been seen that in suffering there is concealed a particular power that draws a person interiorly close to Christ, a special grace.
-Pope John Paul II: Salvifici Doloris, 1984
The religious attitude to suffering
Most religions would say something like this:
We should relieve suffering when we can, and be with those who suffer, helping them to bear their suffering, when we can't. We should never deal with the problem of suffering by eliminating those who suffer.
The nature of suffering
Christianity teaches that suffering can have a place in God's plan, in that it allows the sufferer to share in Christ's agony and his redeeming sacrifice. They believe that Christ will be present to share in the suffering of the believer.
Pope John Paul II has written that "It is suffering, more than anything else, which clears the way for the grace which transforms human souls."
However while the churches acknowledge that some Christians will want to accept some suffering for this reason, most Christians are not so heroic.
So there is nothing wrong in trying to relieve someone's suffering. In fact, Christians believe that it is a good to do so, as long as one does not intentionally cause death.
Eastern religions
Several Eastern religions believe that we live many lives and the quality of each life is set by the way we lived our previous lives.
Those who believe this think that suffering is part of the moral force of the universe, and that by cutting it short a person interferes with their progress towards ultimate liberation.
A non-religious view
Suffering is something which draws upon all the resources of a human being and enables them to reach the highest and noblest points of what they really are.
Suffering allows a person to be a good example to others by showing how to behave when things are bad.
M Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Travelled, has written that in a few weeks at the end of life, with pain properly controlled a person might learn
how to negotiate a middle path between control and total passivity, about how to welcome the responsible care of strangers, about how to be dependent once again ... about how to trust and maybe even, out of existential suffering, at least a little bit about how to pray or talk with God.
-M Scott Peck
ACT UTILITARIANISM (RELATIVE, TELEOLOGICAL)
Utilitarianism is the ethical doctrine that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its contribution to overall utility. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome—the ends justify the means. Utility — the good to be maximized — has been defined by various thinkers as happiness or pleasure (versus suffering or pain), though preference utilitarians like Peter Singer define it as the satisfaction of preferences.
Act Utilitarian theories start with specific cases from which general principles can be deduced. Bentham’s Hedonic Calculus weighs up the following measures of the consequential pleasure/pain:
Certainty
Duration
Extent
Intensity
Remoteness
Richness
Purity
Situation 1 – Euthanasia is right when someone is in a lot of pain for the rest of their life because the pain is intense, the pain is near (remoteness) and euthanasia would shorten the duration of the pain greatly.
Situation 2 – Euthanasia is wrong when an elderly person wants to die because they are suffering from depression. This is because the extent of the pain caused to family and friends is great, it is certain that the family and friends would feel pain and the duration of this pain is ongoing.
RULE UTILITARIANISM (DEONTOLOGICAL, TELEOLOGICAL)
Rule Utilitarianism starts with general principles from which specific acts can be prohibited without exception to the rule. It follows rules that promote the greatest happiness, for example the rules:
Kill all those who suffer
Give people the freedom to do what they want with their lives
These rules could be seen as promoting the greatest net utility
PREFERENCE UTILITARIANISM (RELATIVE, TELEOLOGICAL)
The moral course of action is the one that results in the most preference satisfaction. Therefore, if it is the preference of a person is to die then the most useful thing to do is to help them die.
