Persuasive Speech On Euthanasia

More than likely, a good majority of people have heard about euthanasia at least once in their existence. For those out there who have been living under a rock their entire lives, euthanasia “is generally understood to mean the bringing about of a good death – ‘mercy killing’, where one person, ‘A’, ends the life of another person, ‘B’, for the sake of ‘B’.” (Kuhse 294). There are people who believe this is a completely logical scenario that should be allowed, and there are others that oppose this view. For the purpose of this essay, I will be defending those who are for euthanasia. My thesis, just by looking at this issue from a logical standpoint, is that if someone is suffering, I believe they should be allowed the right to end their

A Life or Death Situation, by Robin Marantz Henig, New York Times, July, 2013, is a review of the debate surrounding the right to a dignified death. It examines the purely philosophical view of the issue; as well as the heart wrenching reality of being faced with that question in one 's personal life. Does a person have a right to choose how he or she dies? How does that choice impact the people who care about about him or her? Should a person who cares about someone be required to cause or aide in his or her death? These questions weigh heavy on the minds of many people, who live

Why should they not give us the right to decide if we want to live or not? That should be the first right before all the ones I have mentioned. It is not logical that we can choose in all those other decisions if we cannot first choose to live or die.

As humans, we have the right to life. In Canada, in section 7 of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadians can expect “life, liberty and security of the person.” This means not only to simply exist, but have a minimum quality and value in each of our lives. Dying is the last important, intimate, and personal moment, and this process of dying is part of life. Whether death is a good or bad thing is not the question, as it is obviously inevitable, but as people have the right to attempt to make every event in their life pleasant, so they should have the right to make their dying as pleasant as possible. If this process is already very painful and unpleasant, people should have the right to shorten the unpleasantness. In February of this year, judges declared that the right to life does not mean individuals “cannot ‘waive’ their right to life.” Attempting suicide is not illegal in Canada, but the issue here is for those whose physical handicaps prevent them from doing so, and to allow access to a safe, regulated and painless form of suicide. It is a very difficult, sensitive and much-debated subject which seeks to balance the value of life with personal autonomy. In this essay, I will argue that the philosophical case for pro-euthanasia is more complete than those arguments against it due to the

The issues of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) are both emotional and controversial. Some argue PAS is ethically permissible for a dying person who has chosen to escape unbearable suffering at the end of life; it is the physician’s duty to alleviate the patient’s suffering and justifies aid-in-dying. These arguments rely on the respect for individual autonomy. “Individual autonomy is an idea that is generally understood to refer to the capacity to be one's own person, to live one's life according to reasons and motives that are taken as one's own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces.” (STANDFORD REF)

right to choose what happens to his or her own body, but the life of a patient should not be put

Humans are given the right to life which states that “nobody should be arbitrarily deprived of their life.” Imagine being given your lifespan at birth, and a person that does not personally know you or your family told you how to spend those years. This is essentially what the government is doing by withholding and criminalizing patients of the resources with which to end their lives. If people have the right to life, that right should also include the right to control their quality of life; the right to life should not entail the life that has been chosen for the individual, but rather the life that the individual choses. Over 91 percent of patients said that losing autonomy was the reason that they chose physician assisted suicide, and 71 percent said that they wanted to die with dignity. The desire to increase autonomy among terminally ill individuals is one that is shared by Dr. Timothy Quill M.D., a palliative care specialist from the University of Rochester Medical Center: “Patients with serious illness wish to have control over their own bodies, their own lives, and concern about future physical and psychosocial distress. Some view potential access to physician-assisted death as the best option to address these concerns.” If we aim to promote freedom and autonomy of oneself, why then, should we deny people the right to choose when, and on what terms, they die? Supreme Court Justice William Brennan states that: "An ignoble end steeped in decay is abhorrent. A quiet, proud death, bodily integrity intact, is a matter of extreme

As we have explained so far throughout our speeches, we think that for the people that are suffering because their treatment is not working, that they should have the option of euthanasia.Under such circumstances, because they are suffering and nothing is working they should have a choice - that means it is of their own will - to die a painless death with the assistance of a doctor. We believe there are too many stories of people who are suffering and want the pain to end but can't die with dignity. Some of them end up committing suicide on their own.

Furthermore, the right to die, according to the book, Euthanasia, by Linda Jackson, is considered a basic human right. Medical professionals have claimed to have had their patients not wish to undergo the heaviness of sedation. Today, relationships between doctors and their patients have appeared to be more equal, instead of just relying on the doctor, when it comes to making decisions about the patient’s health (Jackson 30). Given these points, allowing euthanasia to terminally ill patients would give them the chance to choose to end their distress, which therefore allows the right to die and the right to decide which type of treatment the patient would receive.

Opposing viewpoints argue that human euthanasia is inhumane and unethical to patients and the doctors responsible. Many doctors feel that physician assisted suicide stands against everything they stand for. Physicians feel that they have a responsibility to treat patients not murder them. This viewpoint is concerned incorrect to those whom support the Right to Die movement because a doctor's first responsibility to a patient is not only to heal but as quoted in the Hippocratic Oath is to,"First do no harm” which includes allowing an individual to suffering in longing

Picture this! You’re lying on a hospital bed with sharp, thick needles poking into your skin. Now imagine someone cutting your stomach open, digging in, and scarping your organs. The pain in unbearable, but do you know what’s worse? Knowing that you’ll eventually die, but still enduring the pain because it would be illegal to kill you. A survey taken in the United States has shown that 54% agree to physician assisted suicide or euthanasia. Euthanasia preserves rights of an individual, brings an end to the pain, and provides death with dignity. Even though others may disagree and say that its religiously incorrect, physician assisted suicide should be legalized.

Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide can often get confused with one another and although both are 2 different practices, they share the same end goal; a peaceful death. Today, only a few countries in the entire world have legalized the practice of euthanasia, showing just how controversial the topic has become in recent years. Should someone be able to die just because they feel like it or should valid reasons be required? And who gets to decide whether an assisted suicide is allowed or not? The answers to questions like these are never simple but to guarantee the freedoms of liberty that were given to many in the form of government constitutions, all these questions and more must be answered. Although life on Earth is a gift that was

Is the phrase “right to die” applicable as a right? Leon R. Kass believes that the claim of a “right to die” is insubstantial because of the precursors pertaining to the meaning of rights. Leon R. Kass believes that the right to die is an ineffectual statement and unprecedented, that it is portrayed as a civil duty to which all should be in unison because Euthanasia is after all “Mercy Killing”. Right!? This case delves into the moral domain, within which it derives it’s relevance to the subject of Bioethics, Euthanasia is a popular subject that health care professionals, lawyers and theologians have dealt with for a long time. While it is an extreme and exceptional case to support and argue in favor of,

Trapped in the same four walls everyday, slowly they appear to look as though they are closing in on you. The tiny window, that once gave you hope and light, now began to ever so steadily fade away into nothing. The door that once let in visitors many times a day, now only opened to let in a fake smiling face a few times a week, if you were lucky. Your hope was slowly withering away. You had i.v. lines in for medication, heart monitors and every other hospital machine you could think of attached to you, all to keep you ‘alive’. Everyday you got to lay there all alone, thinking, and waiting, waiting for the day you could just escape the torture. But even if the treatment plan worked, did you want to be alive, you are never going to be your old self again, never going to be able to walk, talk, or even think for yourself ever again. Imagine this was you. Would you want to live a life that you had no control over? Or would you like to be able to make the final decision in your life and be able to have an assisted suicide in order to die happy, in a peaceful way, so that everyone could remember you for the person you were and not the person you became. Euthanasia is still illegal in many countries including New Zealand but together we can work together as a nation in making it legalised as it has many benefits.

I am going to answer these two questions in this essay. They are “Do you think that the right to life entails a right to die under certain circumstances?” and “Should the laws be changed to grant a universal right to voluntary euthanasia?”. In this essay, I am going to give reasons using ethical theories to justify these questions.