Why Do We Have The Right To Die To Terminally Ill Children?

From the perspective of financial concerns, providing the right to die to terminally ill children could discontinue the meaningless medical treatments (because the death is almost destined), save great amount of medical and financial resources, and alleviate the emotional and financial burdens of parents (including other family members) as well as health insurance companies (so they could help other people).

Beneficence: for terminally ill children, who need to sustain their lives with large amount of painful medications and surgeries, one more minute alive could feel like a year of frustration and deadly suffering, it is spiritually good and positive to use euthanasia to rescue them from a longer period of suffering time and leave them with peace and termination of painful suffering, after clearly informing by doctors and receiving comprehensive responses (decisions) from these children.

Rights and Justice: if the current legislation permits our rights to survive or live, then it is also our rights to decide when and in what ways to end our own lives.

Prolonging the suffering and meaningless live by others’ wills is contradictory because it is we who receive and live our lives, and others could not feel the ways we feel (e.g. suffering and pain) and live the lives we live. Prolong the lives of terminally ill children against their own wills is no different from controlling them as puppets with wires (heavy medication and surgeries), besides what if, even though rarely, some lunatic parents or guardians favors to see the suffering of the children and purposely prolonged their lives to see more of that. This unfair and disrespectful robbery of others’ rights about their own life and death choices could not be righteous and

justified.
Unpredictable and abnormal mental status: Because these are terminally ill children, who are usually under the effects of anesthetic medication or the pain of surgeries, so the clear mind to make an informative, responsible and decisive choice is not always promoted. Moreover, these children would be easily lured into using the euthanasia because of the great suffering that they cannot or don’t want to bear. And our current legislation, pointed in the article, doesn’t give the legal rights to adolescents until they are 18 because of their immature mind and inability to make responsible acts, so how could we trust a 12-year-old to have a clear and rational mind to make responsible decisions about their own lives and future?
Informed consent and paternalism: Due to their lack of knowledge (because they are young) and experience about the colorful outside world and future, those terminally ill children would never achieve fully understanding about what they are about to give up and what those stuff would mean for themselves some days. Upon children’s vulnerable insights, which could easily be manipulated into the agreement for using euthanasia, the passed legislation for allowing euthanasia, which requires parents’ approvals as final permission, did not promote the justice and responsibility of the parents’ acts, and contrarily may cause the paternalistic abuses. The parents could give the permission to use euthanasia because they are tempted and want to kill the children, or they want to shear the heavy financial burdens of medication. Moreover, these abuses result either because they are stepfather or stepmother, or the child was adopted and the parents want to eliminate this child like garbage. Comparing to the percentage of the ethical option that intends to terminate the suffering lives for their children and “doing what is good for the other person,” those abusive motivations of paternalism are more likely to take larger accounts.
Nonmaleficence and death: Giving someone rights to die as they wish must include the procedure of killing, and it is, no doubt, against the principle of nonmaleficence (not doing any harm). Some people argued that giving those terminally ill children euthanasia and releasing them from suffering lives would be charity or benevolence. However, according to our current knowledge about death, no one has ever known how it feels to die or revived back to tell us how it felt, thus if we let these knowing-nothing children die because they can’t bear the current pain anymore, what if the death feels even more painful? What if they couldn’t bear it either, and change their mind? Then it would be too late and too irresponsible for the legislation and approval givers to let them die, which could literarily be called murder.
My response: I would vote support for this legislation of euthanasia. First, the functionality of euthanasia to rescue these terminally ill children from extensive suffering could not be denied. Even though, as argued above, those children might be inspired again if they live more and learn more about this colorful world, the terminal disease would strike them dead unexpectedly at any time, and then it becomes even more pitying to see the death of those inspired, innocent souls and imagine how sad they would be after death because they want to see the world (but they don’t get to see it anymore). Second, it is not the other’s responsibility as well as rights to interfere with these children’s live choices. Our current legislation has forced us to be responsible for ourselves and our own acts. If someone committed murders because he decided to, our legislation only considered his own responsibility and performed punishment solely on him regardless how grieved he later felt and how irrational his mind was at the time of murder. Thus, if a 12-year-old child clearly makes the decision of using euthanasia to terminate his life with rational thinking (supported by the psychologist’s approval that this terminally ill child is able to think rationally and clearly), then he is responsible for himself and his own choice now. No matter how suffering the death could be, and how this suffering could change his mind, he has to take the consequences of this acts by his own.
Dominant ethical principle of thinking: The main principle that supports my thinking about euthanasia is the deontology (duty or obligation). Since the consequence of using euthanasia is the ultimate death of its users, it is hard to explore and criticize its potential negative outcomes and further influences upon society, except its reliefs about financial burdens on the society and family, emotional detriments on family members. The deontological thinking has clearly interpreted the rational relationship between rights and duty: rights comes from duty (or responsibility), and obligation or duty facilitated deserved rights. Thus, if it is our natural (moral) right to be entitled with lives and to live lives, then the duty also comes from this natural rights. And it is our own duty (responsibility) and right (either moral or legal) to make live choices, not other’s. Thus, from the perspective of deontology, I facilitated my answer, the thorough responsibility, which exclusively belongs to individuals, as well as the right that exists along with human lives and within human nature.