The Laws are killing the Right to Die

Is breaking an unjust law justified or punishable? Unjust laws cause people to rebel because they go against their beliefs. In the play Antigone by Sophocles, Antigone goes against the law to help her family member. The pressures of society cause Antigone and modern day physicians to go against the laws and take action on events that no one else is going to act upon because they do not have the courage to do so. Patients suffering from a terminally ill disease that give their consent to the doctor, give the right to their doctor to euthanize them. Situations in modern society like euthanasia demonstrate how breaking the law can be justified in certain situations of life and death. Sophocles’ Antigone and many sources demonstrate a persons’ justification for breaking unjust laws when they cause suffering and violence and violate people’s morals.

There are two different ways to describe euthanasia. “Euthanasia, also called mercy killing act or practice of painlessly putting to death persons suffering from painful and incurable disease: or incapacitating physical disorder or allowing them to die by withholding treatment or withdrawing artificial life-support measure” (“Euthanasia” 2014). Passive euthanasia occurs when a doctor removes a patient’s respirator or life-support. When a medical personnel conducts an action that will deliberately cause death as in injecting morphine or insulin, the patient undergoes active euthanasia (“Euthanasia” 2014). In 1989, Jack Kevorkian designed a suicide machine called the Thanatron or death machine that would inject the fatal dose (“Physician-Assisted Suicide” 2004).

Some laws allow patients to choose whether they want to choose death or choose to stay on life support. In the Right-to-Die prin...

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"Physician-Assisted Suicide Shows No Mercy." American Decades Primary Sources. Ed. Cynthia Rose. Vol. 10: 1990-1999. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 501-504. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 18 Dec. 2013.

Sophocles. "Antigone." Trans. Paul Roche. 1958. The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles. By Sophocles. Trans. Paul Roche. New York: Penguin Group, 1958. 191-252. Print.