Right to Die: An Examination of Euthanasia

My claim

I argue in favor of the right to die. If someone is suffering from a terminal illness that is: 1) causing them great pain – the pain they are suffering outweighs their will to live (clarification below) 2) wants to commit suicide, and is of sound mind such that their wanting is reasonable. In this context, “sound mind” means the ability to logically reason and not act on impulse or emotions. 3) the pain cannot be reduced to the level where they no longer want to commit suicide then they should have the right to commit suicide. It should not be considered wrong for someone to give that person the tools needed to commit suicide. The purpose of all three requirements

The first requirement – causing great pain – is one based on

The word “euthanasia” comes from the Ancient Greek “eu” - good and “thanatos” - death. Plato argued that suicide was against the will of the gods, and was therefore wrong. He does say that patients that are unable to live normally should be denied treatment. Aristotle believed that suicide is wrong because the law forbids it. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, was against active euthanasia. In his famous “Hippocratic oath”, a line forbids giving a “deadly drug” [9][11]. During the Medieval times, assisted suicide was illegal. Thomas Aquinas argued that suicide goes against one 's own love for themselves and desire for continued existence. He also viewed suicide as a violation of God 's right to decide how long one lives for

This is weak once one looks at the reasons why murder is wrong. Murder is wrong because of various reasons – denying someone the right to life, causing fear in people that they might be murdered, the grief that the loved ones will suffer, etc. All of these are inapplicable to assisted suicide. The person has waived their right to life by consenting to suicide, there is no fear that would be caused if only those who are terminally ill and consent are killed, and the grief is inevitable anyways as death is imminent.

They go on further to make an analogy with starving children [1]. This analogy does not hold, as the reason that assisted suicide is pursued is to relieve suffering, and is unrelated to the “value” that human life has.

Finally, they argue that allowing assisted suicide will cause people to be pressured into committing suicide [1]. This is an extremely weak argument. By this logic, a lot of things should be forbidden: for example, alcohol will be forbidden because allowing it will mean that people will be pressured into drinking. Additionally, it begs the question – it assumes the conclusion as a premise. The premise is that allowing assisted suicide causes pressure to commit suicide, and there is an implicit premise that committing suicide is bad, but that is exactly the conclusion they are trying to