The Right to Die

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The Right to Die

Is euthanasia a form of murder? Should this be a legal option for sick or terminally ill patients? Is it moral to assist people in suicide? These are just a few of the difficult questions we are confronted with today. In many cases, limits have been put on this practice, and in a few states it is a legal practice. Courts have been left to decide who lives and who should die. Doctors and nurses have been accused of murder for helping euthanize patients. Their Hippocratic oath is being put in jeopardy. To suffering, terminally ill patients who are dying natural deaths, euthanasia should be a legal option.

We often hear, "The person was going to die anyway. We were just letting nature take its course." We can not be held responsible for the death of a person if we are prolonging their life my means of technology. If a person is sick then they usually take medicine, which is a technological aid. We can compare giving a sick person medicine to giving a dying person life, but we can't stand in the way of the sick if they want to be sick. If a terminally sick person wants to die, we can't stand in their way either.

Suicide is murder, and that is why it is against the law. Letting a dying person die and helping a dying person die are two different things. If someone holds a gun up to his or her own head, yet someone else pulls the trigger, it is not suicide. It is murder. In most cases euthanasia is just this. For example, a terminally ill patient asks a doctor to give him medicines that will result in his death. If the doctor gives the patient these medicines knowing what the patient's intentions are, he has assisted in the death of this patient. Although the patient was terminally ill, this is still an example of murder. When a patient asks to be taken off of the heart monitor, or the respirator, or for the defribulator never to be used on him again, he is only asking that nature be left alone to take its course. This is not a form of suicide or murder.

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