Euthanasia Cons

Euthanasia, a physician assisted suicide, has become a controversial topic in the United States in relatively recent years. The debate on whether someone should have the ability, in special cases, to have their life ended has resulted in many court cases, meetings, and votes. Although euthanasia is illegal in the majority of the United States, this has not stopped suffering patients from crying out for help; therefore, a literal call for death. The act of forcing someone to live every day with an almost unbearable amount of pain needs to be a heinous crime against humanity. In certain cases, human beings should be able to decide when they have had enough and should be eligible for euthanasia in the United States. One of the conditions that …show more content…
found that 45% of patients expressed an occasional and fleeting desire to die. This percentage was much greater than was found either by Brown et al. or by studies of The Netherlands euthanasia cohort. Furthermore, 8.5% (17 patients) expressed a sincere and unequivocal desire for death that persisted over time. (Guy and Stern) In the United States, only Washington, Oregon, California, and Vermont have legalized physician- assisted suicide. “[Euthanasia] has been legal in the state of Oregon since 1997 . . . from 1998 to 2005, 246 people died in Oregon as a result of physician-assisted suicide, accounting for 32.8 deaths per 10,000 Oregon deaths during that time” (Guy and Stern). Terminally ill individuals, who have a limited number of days left in this life, should be allowed to participate in physician-assisted …show more content…
One of the biggest arguments against physician- assisted suicide is the procedure being administered on children. Many acts attempting to protect children from death by physicians with parental permission have been passed in the past; however, these acts were unable to save a baby, Baby Doe, in 1982 (Beckham 275). Beckham writes about the event involving Baby Doe by saying that “Baby Doe, was born . . . with both Down syndrome and correctable esophageal fistula . . . against advice from the hospital, [parents] opted for no surgical procedure for their child . . . hospital sought a court order from Indiana state courts . . . Baby Doe died” (276). If a child can be saved, he or she should be entitled to an operation regardless of the parents’ input. If neonates are subjected to euthanasia, it is different from adults. Adults participate in active or traditional euthanasia, and neonates are administered by the process of passive euthanasia (Beckham 280). Passive euthanasia is the act of heavily sedating the patient and allowing he or she to dehydrate and starve to death (Beckham 280). An anonymous doctor once wrote talked about how emotional the passive route could be by saying, “The median time from withdrawal of hydration to death was 10 days . . . the unique horror of witnessing a child become smaller and shrunken . . . “ (qtd. in Beckham 282). Euthanasia should not be allowed in small children or