Speaking. Do we have the right to dispose of our life?

So, last semester I read a book about eutanasia with reference to constitutional law. The autor,
Fernando Martínez, talks about the present conflict between the duty not to kill and the
personal autonomy to manage our life.

The fundamental issue is if a terminally ill patient or a patient that has a serious illness thar is
difficult to bear, with the ability to decide, has the right to end his life with medical help, wich is
called assisted suicide.

As Claus Roxin says, there must be a limit for artificial prolongation of life because there is a
point in wich death is unavoidable and extending the pacient´s suffering does not fit with the
idea of a dignified death.

There´s other point of view based on religion which says that only God can dispose of our life.
According to this, we can´t have an assited suicide regardless of wheter the disease is terminal
or not.

As reported by Spanish Palliative Care Society, in its Statement on eutanasia, there are some
cases in wich the patient can ask for an assited suicide:

- If the patient expressly consents

- If the patient had wrote the last Will or some kind of previous instructions
- When the patient is sedated, family´s consent will be enough

The writer talks about Holand, where the pacient doesn´t have to be suffering from a terminal
illness but just have to ask for an assisted suicide. Other example is the state of Oregon, where,
according to the Dead With Dignity Act, the patients are allowed to end their lifes with medical
help in order to avoid painful suicides and expensive insurance bills for the families due to long
hopeless treatments.

Finally, there are differents ways of approaching this subject:

- We can stand for the religious approach and say that only God can decide when we die
or not.
- We can say that everyone has the right to dispose of the own life and because of that
eutanasia should be legal in any case as long as we don´t harm other people
- Or we can think that every country should regulate the cases in which eutanasia would
be justified.

That´s it, I hope it wasn´t too long. Thank you.