Should euthanasia be legal?

Did you know that, according to New Zealand government statistics, 68% of
respondents support euthanasia? Euthanasia is a way of painlessly terminating the lives
of those who are suffering from an incurable disease. It seeks to allow seriously and
incurably ill, mentally competent adults the right to receive medical assistance to reach
death under certain specific safeguards. Euthanasia can be used to avoid problems in the
future for people suffering from these diseases or for their relatives. Many people are
not fully educated or do not specifically know the reasons why euthanasia should be
legalized. Therefore, throughout this essay I will explain to you why I believe that
euthanasia should be legal.

We could not exactly know the pain of critical patients when we see them, maybe we
would think they are not suffering because they are not moving but even though the
patient is in vegetative state, we should know that they are suffering mentally, that’s
why I think that euthanasia makes patients comfortable. Keith G. Wilson (2000) said:
‘‘For these individuals, there might be some comfort in knowing that euthanasia or
assisted suicide were available if their worst fears about pain and symptoms indeed
came true’’. There is a desire among several patients at the end of often terrible battles
with debilitating, incurable diseases who want to end their suffering with the support of
their relatives. Therefore, to deny this right is to prolong the suffering for individuals
and families. In additions to this, in some cases the courts place relatives, already
dealing with the painful loss of a loved-one, in the middle of distressing legal battles
since euthanasia is not legal. In this way, we can understand that euthanasia makes
people feel comfortable because they are terrified to think that in the future, they will
feel a great amount of pain or because they will not be able to move due to their
incurable disease, with this, they know that they can decide what will occur if this event
happens someday.

The cost for life conservation medicine to maintain a critical patient alive is enormously
big and could be considered an expense that is unnecessary by the patient itself because
those treatments are only to extend their lives in a miserable way since it’s an incurable
illness. The New Zealand-based Life Information Website (2018) showed that 66% of
euthanasia requests in the US state of Oregon, where assisted dying is legal, involved
patients who did not want to be a financial burden. Most of these studies are not based
on the high cost of dying in terminal patients, but on medical expenses at the end of life,
which generally is between six months or the last year of life.  Thus, the high costs of
living and the source of concern about the waste of scarce resources in the care of sick
patients leads to great worry for the patient's relatives. Furthermore, insufficient funding
for palliative care and pain management, as well as the government’s reliance on
nursing homes, all of which increase the despair of many elderly people who suffer
from frustrating physical limitations or who suffer from debilitating diseases. The final
analysis explains another reason why euthanasia should be legalized, people with
terminal illnesses and their relatives worry about the costs of medicine for the
preservation of life since these are usually very high and unnecessary because the
patient is going to die anyways.

Some people may say that euthanasia gives too much power to doctors. According to a
BBC news article (2014), doctors give patients the information on which they will base
their decisions about euthanasia, any legalization of euthanasia, no matter how strictly
regulated, puts doctors in an unacceptable position of power. However, euthanasia is
only practiced if the patient has an advanced incurable disease and is a competent adult,
so that he does not suffer and his family does not spend money on treatments, since he
would die anyway. As stated on Journal of Clinical Research & Bioethics, physicians
are more prone to engage in practices that deliberately hasten death if the patient is in
end-stage disease with unbearable suffering (regarded as unrelieved and intractable
suffering) whether by reasons of pain, distress or otherwise by which the patient finds
so severe as to be an unacceptable condition. Euthanasia helps patients end their
suffering with the support of their families, and we can say that there are several people
who are at the end of terrible battles, who only want to end their suffering with the
people they love. To deny this right is to prolong the suffering for individuals and
families, something that simply cannot be allowed.

In summary, euthanasia is an act or practice of painlessly putting to death persons

suffering from painful and incurable disease or incapacitating physical disorder or
allowing them to die by withholding treatment or withdrawing artificial life-support
measures. As stated previously, we should understand that euthanasia makes the patient
feel comfortable because it gives them the option to decide what will happen to them in
a few years when they are not able to decide for themselves whether to continue
suffering and die slowly or die with less pain with their family members. In addition,
the cost of living to keep a critically ill patient alive is extremely big and may be
considered an unnecessary expense as the patient will die anyway. Extending the life of
a patient with medications that do not improve their quality of life is an unnecessary and
painful expense for them, since they will be alive, but suffering due to their critical or
terminal illness. On the other hand, it was mentioned that some people think that
euthanasia gives too much power to doctors since they are the one who explain to the
patient their condition, but euthanasia is only practiced if the patient is mentally capable
to take this decision or if they have a critical condition. Finally, if we take a moment to
think and consider each of the reasons why euthanasia should be legalized, we may
realize that this is not a bad decision if it is made consciously and in extreme cases. As
author Myra Mannes says, ‘‘Euthanasia is simply to be able to die dignity at a moment
when life is devoid of it’’.
 References
BBC - Ethics - Euthanasia: Anti-euthanasia arguments. (2014). British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC). http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/against/against_1.shtml
Nunes, R. (2016). Euthanasia: A Challenge to Medical Ethics. Journal of Clinical
Research & Bioethics. https://www.longdom.org/open-access/euthanasia-a-challenge-
to-medical-ethics-2155-9627-1000282.pdf
Staff, T. W. (2018, 10 August). The pros and cons of legalizing euthanasia. The Week
UK. https://www.theweek.co.uk/95754/the-pros-and-cons-of-legalising-euthanasia
The euthanasia debate: synthesizing the evidence on New Zealander’s attitudes. (2018).
Taylor & Francis.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1177083X.2018.1532915
Wilson, K. G. (2000, 11 septiembre). Attitudes of Terminally Ill Patients Toward
Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide. End of Life | JAMA Internal Medicine |
JAMA Network.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/485433