Can the value of life be measured? Within moral jurisdiction can one determine the quality of life worth living? Do people with disabilities want to be a financial burden or artificially sustained? These questions open the controversy surrounding euthanasia. Supporters of the right to die movement follow the belief that, just as there is a constitutional right to life, there is also a constitutional right to die.
They claim that terminally ill patients do not value life’s pleasures and prefer to die through euthanasia, a peaceful death, as opposed to being artificially sustained. In contrast, those who believe in the right to live, give voice to the disabled and to those who cannot speak themselves. They maintain that all life is sacred. …show more content…
Who has the right to tell me that I don’t deserve this choice?” (Brittany Maynard,CNN.com 2014) Maynard’s case is heartbreaking, but it definitely shouldn’t be taken out of context as a carte blanche in facilitating the highly controversial permissibility of euthanasia. If assisted- suicide laws went nationwide, it would create “explicit and implicit pressure” on millions of elderly, disabled, and chronically sick poor people to do the decent thing and end their lives prematurely. Establish the right of sick individuals to kill themselves, and that right begins to look more and more like an expectation.
That isn’t a society we want to live or die in. (Marilyn Golden, CNN.com 2014 ) Not to mention the catch
22 that doctor’s will inevitably find themselves entangled in should they be broached with the antithetical situation of a patient wanting to end his life. We expect our medical professionals to assert that it is fundamentally wrong to kill vulnerable people, whether or not they have requested death. It is with great consternation that we remember the notorious Dr. Kevorkian, …show more content…
He was subsequently arrested and convicted of second-degree murder after which he served sentence and died in jail on June 3, 2011.
Jack Kevorkian’s unorthodox methods drew attention to assisted suicide. Decades later, Americans still struggle with whether doctors should be allowed to help suffering patients end their lives. It would be a mistake to jump on that bandwagon ( Maggie Karner, The Federalist.com 2014)
Maggie Karner was recently diagnosed with the same form of aggressive brain cancer as Brittany
Maynard, but has firmly decided that assisted suicide is not the way out for her. Maggie was advised that her recurrent cancer was no longer in remission and modern medicine had nothing left to offer.
Looking at her cheerful, radiant face, no one would dream that she knew her condition was terminal.
Maggie has a defiant spirit that even imminent death could not extinguish. She feels that as her daughters care for her, they are simultaneously receiving a rich, deeply spiritual lesson in compassion, selflessness and human mortality. “Yes, death sucks, but there is not tragedy in surrendering to dependence on others or even to suffering. Rather than comfort myself with the illusion of control