Euthanasia

Debates about the ethics of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide date

from ancient Greece and Rome. After the development of ether, physicians
began advocating the use of anesthetics to relieve the pain of death. In 1870,
Samuel Williams first proposed using anesthetics and morphine to intentionally
end a patient's life. Over the next 35 years, debates about euthanasia raged in the
United States which resulted in an Ohio bill to legalize euthanasia in 1906, a bill
that was ultimately defeated. Euthanasia advocacy in the U.S. peaked again
during the 1930s and diminished significantly during and after World War II.
Euthanasia efforts were revived during the 1960s and 1970s, under the right-to-
die rubric, physician assisted death in liberal bioethics, and through advance
directives and do not resuscitate orders.

Several major court cases advanced the legal rights of patients, or their
guardians, to practice at least voluntary passive euthanasia (physician assisted
death). These include the Karen Ann Quinlan case (1976), Brophy and Nancy
Cruzan cases. More recent years have seen policies fine-tuned and re-stated, as
with Washington v. Glucksberg (1997) and the Terri Schiavo case. The
numerous legislative rulings and legal precedents that were brought about in the
wake of the Quinlan case had their ethical foundation in the famous 1983 report
completed by the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in
Medicine, under the title "Deciding to Forgo Life-Sustaining Treatment"
(Angell, Marcia. "How to Die in Massachusetts." The New York Review of
Books. 21 February 2013: 60.3. Web. 14 Jul. 2014.). The Commission sustained
in its findings that it was morally acceptable to give up a life-supporting therapy
and that withholding or withdrawing such a therapy is the same thing from an
ethical stand-point, while artificial feeding and other life-supporting therapy are
of the same importance for the patients and doctors. Before this report, to
withdraw a medical therapy was regarded as much more serious decision than
not to start a therapy at all, while artificial feeding was viewed as a special
treatment. By 1990, barely a decade and a half after the New Jersey Supreme
Court’s historic decision, patients were well aware that they could decline any
form of medical therapy if they simply choose to do that either directly or by
expressing their wish via appointed representative.

In a 2004 article in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Brown University

historian Jacob M. Appel documented extensive political debate over legislation
to legalize physician-assisted suicide in both Iowa and Ohio in 1906. The
driving force behind this movement was social activist Anna S. Hall. Canadian
historian Ian Dowbiggen's 2003 book, A Merciful End, revealed the role that
leading public figures, including Clarence Darrow and Jack London, played in
advocating for the legalization of euthanasia.

The recognition of a right to die is an extremely sensitive issue, susceptible

of multidimensional approach – religious, social, medical, legal – but impossible
to be concluded at the moment. Euthanasia is a crime in the name of compassion
by causing the death of a person, with his/hers consent, a deliberate act to end a
patient's life with the intention to end his suffering.

Although euthanasia and assisted suicide are legalized in many countries,

legal recognition of their social usefulness actually puts into question the limits
to which the protection of the right to life must be exercised. Paradoxically, the
very right to life – an essential principle, constituting the indispensable condition
for exercising other guaranteed rights, doesn’t enjoy a well-defined bordering.

The pro-euthanasia and assisted suicide lobby emphasise the importance of

personal choice and autonomy. Shouldn’t patients have the right to end their
lives? Dignity in Dying patron, Sir Patrick Stewart has argued “We have no
control over how we arrive in the world but at the end of life we should have
control over how we leave it.”

Surely however the debate is not about the right to die; it is about the right to help
patients kill themselves. Instead of giving freedom to patients, euthanasia and
assisted suicide is about giving other people the legal power to end another
person’s life.

Assisted suicide is not a private act. Nobody chooses assisted suicide in isolation.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide are matters of public concern because they
involve one person facilitating the death of another. Friends, relatives, healthcare
staff and society are hugely affected by the wider ramifications of the process.

Journalist and author George Pitcher has said that any change in the law would
have “profound adverse affects on the social fabric of our society, on our
attitudes towards each other’s deaths and illnesses, on our attitudes towards
those who are ill and have disabilities.”

From a religious point of view

On one level, suffering –particularly struggling towards the end of life – is
to be avoided. It is something which many fear and can be intensely painful for
both the sufferer and loved ones who feel powerless to act. However, we believe
that any discussion about suffering, life and death must be framed in the context
of faith in a sovereign God who is supremely in control, whose love and attention
does not waver according to circumstances and whose ways are beyond our
understanding. Fundamentally, we are deeply concerned that any law which
legalises assisted suicide or euthanasia will fatally undermine human dignity and
what it means to be created in God’s likeness. There is no way by which any law
legalising assisted suicide or euthanasia can be made safe from abuse or
negligence, resulting in the death of innocent people.
 The 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.

This is called the slippery slope argument. In general form it says that if we
allow something relatively harmless today, we may start a trend that results in
something currently unthinkable becoming accepted.

Those who oppose this argument say that properly drafted legislation can draw
a firm barrier across the slippery slope.

Bibliography:
 Obsesia terapeutică. Pro şi contra eutanasiei – noi provocări ale legislaţiei româneşti *
Lect. univ. dr. Laura STĂNILĂ** Universitatea de Vest din Timişoara Facultatea de
Drept
 https://www.care.org.uk/our-causes/sanctity-life/arguments-for-and-against-
euthanasia
