Euthanasia-Morally Right?

EUTHANASIA AND ASSISTED SUICIDE

Euthanasia is translated from Greek as "good death" or "easy death." As originally used, the term referred to painless and peaceful natural deaths in old age that occurred in comfortable and familiar surroundings. That usage is now archaic. As the word is currently understood, euthanasia occurs when one person ends the life of another person for the purpose of ending the killed person's pain or suffering.

In the context of the modern moral and public policy debates, the motive in assisted suicide, as in euthanasia, is to bring about an end to suffering. Suicide per se is not considered to be the same as "assisted suicide" because the former is an individual act while the latter involves a joint enterprise between the suicidal person and a helper to bring about death.

The Hippocratic oath explicitly prohibited doctors from giving their patients poisons to end life and thus, traditionally, euthanasia and assisted suicide have not been considered legitimate medical acts. Legalizing either practice would transform hastening patient deaths from an ethically proscribed and (usually) criminal act into a legitimate medical practice. Thus, widespread legalization would be a profound and dramatic shift in the traditional ethics of medical practice.

Euthanasia is currently illegal and punishable as murder throughout the United States. Assisted suicide is a felony akin to manslaughter in most states, proscribed either by statute or court interpretation of the common law. The federal government has outlawed the use of federal funds in assisted suicide. Assisted suicide is, however, legal in Oregon, where state law authorizes physicians to write lethal prescriptions at the request of patients who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness reasonably likely to cause death within six months.

Pros and Cons

Perhaps the strongest argument made on behalf of legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide is that it, like abortion, is a "choice"...