Personal Essay: The Three Different Types Of Euthanasia
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Euthanasia What exactly is Euthanasia? Some see the term and automatically think suicide while others think of helping to end someone 's suffering. Euthanasia is from a Greek Root meaning “good death.” In the Oxford English Dictionary it says Euthanasia is “the actions of inducing a gentle and easy death.” There are three different types of Euthanasia. The first is called voluntary, the second being nonvoluntary, and the third is called involuntary euthanasia. Voluntary euthanasia is an individual 's future wishes if something were to happen and they could not communicate their intentions for in the future, all written in a document. For example, voluntary euthanasia would be a physician knowing and seeing the patients wishes and giving them a lethal injection when the
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An example of nonvoluntary euthanasia would be if a doctor gives a lethal injection to an incompetent person who is suffering a great deal but never told his wishes to the physician when they were competent. Lastly is involuntary euthanasia. This type of euthanasia is done to a competent person or is against the individual 's wishes expressed in advance. An example would be a son giving an overdose to his mom who is suffering from cancer, but that was never his mom’s wishes. Although these are very clear definitions of all the different types of euthanasia, there are still blurred lines between involuntary and voluntary euthanasia and then the term assisted suicide. Suicide is an act of one intentionally killing oneself, but when assisted is put in front, people see it as someone providing assistance by supplying a person with the right tools to commit suicide. Assisted suicides have less legal sanctions than if one were to kill someone else even if it were to stop the pain and suffering of a terminally ill disease or sickness of an individual and can be called, “euthanasia.” Although assisted suicide and euthanasia have different definitions there is still a fine line between both words.
An example of nonvoluntary euthanasia would be if a doctor gives a lethal injection to an incompetent person who is suffering a great deal but never told his wishes to the physician when they were competent. Lastly is involuntary euthanasia. This type of euthanasia is done to a competent person or is against the individual 's wishes expressed in advance. An example would be a son giving an overdose to his mom who is suffering from cancer, but that was never his mom’s wishes. Although these are very clear definitions of all the different types of euthanasia, there are still blurred lines between involuntary and voluntary euthanasia and then the term assisted suicide. Suicide is an act of one intentionally killing oneself, but when assisted is put in front, people see it as someone providing assistance by supplying a person with the right tools to commit suicide. Assisted suicides have less legal sanctions than if one were to kill someone else even if it were to stop the pain and suffering of a terminally ill disease or sickness of an individual and can be called, “euthanasia.” Although assisted suicide and euthanasia have different definitions there is still a fine line between both words.