Legalizing Euthanasia

           Death. Everyone fears it, resent the thought of it happening to them or to any of the people close to them. Most of us probably don’t want to die, yet if you are given the opportunity to choose death what would you do? Imagine yourself in a death threatening medical condition and are suffering unbearable pain everyday. Would you still choose to keep on living? Incurable, painful disease and irreversible coma are two ways in which living can be worse than dying. In these cases, we might say life is not worth living. The practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve a pain and suffering is called Euthanasia. It has already been legalized in countries such as Belgium, Luxemburg, Netherlands and some parts in the United States. Basically Euthanasia should be legalized for the following reasons, Human beings have the right to die when and how they want to, the never ending medical resources which are wasted on dying patients and the concern for their quality of life while being in care.

            First of all, deciding if you want to be alive or not is a personal decision. Neither the doctors nor the government has the power to decide if you should live or not. Since it is not their life and they are not in your situation, they cannot make that kind of decision for you. It might sound like suicide but again, that is our problem and not theirs. They give us the liberty to decide our job, our family, our religion, and even our sex preference. Why should they not give us the right to decide if we want to live or not? It is not logical that we can choose in all those other decisions if we cannot first choose to live or die. “In...cases where there are no dependants who might exert pressure one way or the other, the right of the individual to choose should be paramount. So long as the patient is lucid, and his or her intent is clear beyond doubt, there need be no further questions” (The Independent, March 2002). “Total percentage of medical practitioners that support Euthanasia is 54% and Percentage of public who support euthanasia for the terminally ill/on life support is 86%”(Gallup Poll, Angelfire, Nightingale Alliance, 2012). Euthanasia is not about giving rights to the person who dies but, instead, is about changing the law and public policy so that doctors, relatives and others can directly and intentionally end another person's life. People do have the power to commit suicide. Suicide and attempted suicide are not criminalized. Suicide is a tragic, individual act. Euthanasia is not about a private act. It's about letting one person facilitate the death of another (International task force on euthanasia, 2012).

            Next is the economic factor. “As soon as he goes beyond 60-65 years of age man lives beyond his capacity to produce, and he costs society a lot of money…euthanasia will be one of the essential instruments of our future societies” (Attali, 2003). Many times people do not have enough money to pay for the needed medical care not knowing if the patient is going to get any better. In a way, they are just wasting time and money on a situation that won’t get better. If the patient wants euthanasia, why not just do it if they cannot end the huge amount of money wasted on a treatment which in most cases prolongs their lifespan but still causes pain and suffering. Furthermore in less developed countries there is a shortage of health resources. As a result some people who are ill and could be cured are not able to get immediate access to the facilities they need for treatment. At the same time health resources are being used on people who cannot be cured and who, for their own reasons would prefer not to continue living. Allowing such people to commit euthanasia would not only let them have what they want, it would free valuable resources to treat people who want to live. Today’s hospitals are overcrowded and have too many patients. United States alone has 124.9 million emergency visits in 2008, Four out of five were treated and released, while 18.5% had illnesses serious enough to warrant admission. About 93.7% of those released were discharged home, the remainder left against medical advice, were transferred to another acute care facility or went to another type of long-term or immediate care facility. Some of these died, or were referred to home health or psychiatric care. Some argue that they should let those die that do not have a chance of living on. In that way there could be more room for patients with diseases that can be cured (Clark, 2010).

            Finally the basic reason why euthanasia should be practiced is because it stops the person from having a bad quality of life. To begin with a familiar type of situation, a patient who is dying of incurable cancer of the throat is in terrible pain, which can no longer be cured. He is certain to die within a few days, even if present treatment is continued, but he does not want to go on living for those days since the pain is unbearable. So he asks the doctor for an end to it, and his family joins in the request. What is wrong with that? His suffering wouldn’t be prolonged needlessly and his agony would be erased along with his family’s agony. Even if doctors could offer the patient any kind of treatment or options, it is the patient who should decide how he wants to live his life. The point is that the process of being "allowed to die" can be relatively slow and painful, whereas being given a lethal injection is relatively quick and painless. The doctors are paid so he can do the best he can. Helping us in having a better quality of life is about giving the patient what’s best for him as long as he wants it. The kind of quality of life is defined by the patient, not the doctor or government. “Consequently when the patient feels he is not getting the quality of life he wants, the least a doctor can do is to grant him what he wants. If the patient’s decision is to die, so be it” (Baack, 2010).

           

            Now there are many counter arguments for Euthanasia, involving religions, nation’s laws, the immorality of killing another human being, etc. But actually Euthanasia is not about murdering people or things alike, it’s giving people and their families a choice. To shorten their suffering and pain while relieving them from the thought of death and medical cost, or to prolong their sadness with the inevitable outcome of death. In the end, it’s their choice.

References:

-                     Rachels, J. (1975). Active and passive euthanasia. THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, 292, 78-80. Retrieved from http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/pecorip/scccweb/etexts/deathanddying_text/Active and Passive Euthanasia.pdf

-                     Clark, C. (2010, 11 19). Soaring ed visits cause hospital overcrowding. HealthLeaders Media Online, Retrieved from http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/QUA-259265/Soaring-ED-Visits-Cause-Hospital-Overcrowding

-                     Poll, G., , A., & Alliance, N. (2012, 03 23). Euthanasia statistics. Retrieved from http://www.statisticbrain.com/euthanasia-statistics/

-    Pro euthanasia arguments. (2012, 02 14). Retrieved from      http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/infavour/infavour_1.shtml 

Should Capital Punishment be Abolished?

               The death penalty is the most severe punishment in the world. It is a controversial issue with a long and bloody history. More than 60% of the worldwide population lives in countries where executions take place. The four most populated countries in the world are the People’s Republic of China, India, the United States and Indonesia. All of these areas enforce the death penalty and are unlikely to abolish it any time soon. Did you know in 2009 a total of 69 people were publicly beheaded in Saudi Arabia, not only that but in the United States about 13,000 people have been legally executed since colonial times. Thus capital punishment should be abolished because it is immoral, the issue of inadequate legal representation and the threat of executing an innocent person.

            The action of taking another person’s life is widely considered immoral and against human rights. Let’s take a look at the 1992 Robert Harris case, the State of California murdered a man. With much fanfare, law enforcement officials strapped him into an airtight torture chamber and slowly pumped in cyanide gas until he was dead. Under common law the killing of another human being is justifiable only in self-defense. At the time of his execution though, Robert Harris was incarcerated, unable to threaten anyone. And still the State of California murdered him, in a manner so gruesome that it has been banned in warfare since 1925 (H.Hersch, 1992). Isn’t this the same as murder? In fact according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 3, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person” As a matter of fact many victim’s families rejects the use of death penalty, using an execution to try to right the wrong of their loss is an affront to them and only causes more pain. For example, Bud Welch's daughter Julie was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Although his first reaction was to wish that those who committed this terrible crime be killed, he ultimately realized that such killing "is simply vengeance and it was vengeance that killed Julie....Vengeance is a strong and natural emotion, but it has no place in our justice system." Some people might argue our first instinct is to inflict immediate pain on someone who wrongs us, the standards of a mature society demand a more measured response. The emotional impulse for revenge is not a sufficient justification for invoking a system of capital punishment, with all its accompanying problems and risks. Our laws and criminal justice system should lead us to higher principles that demonstrate a complete respect for life, even the life of a murderer. Encouraging our basest motives of revenge, which ends in another killing, extends the chain of violence (Michigan State University, 2000).

            Perhaps the most important factor in determining whether a defendant will receive the death penalty is the quality of the representation he or she is provided.

Almost all defendants in capital cases cannot afford their own attorneys. In many cases, the appointed attorneys are overworked, underpaid, or lacking the trial experience required for death penalty cases. There have even been instances in which lawyers appointed to a death case were so inexperienced that they were completely unprepared for the sentencing phase of the trial. Other appointed attorneys have slept through parts of the trial, or arrived at the court under the influence of alcohol. In the words of  Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “I have yet to see a death case among the dozens coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial…People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.” In Washington state, one-fifth of the 84 people who have faced execution in the past 20 years were represented by lawyers who had been, or were later, disbarred, suspended or arrested. Overall, the state's disbarment rate for attorneys is less than 1% (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Aug. 6-8, 2001). Other examples such as an investigation by the Chicago Tribune, 12% of those sentenced to death from 1976-1999 were represented by, "an attorney who had been, or was later, disbarred or suspended--disciplinary sanctions reserved for conduct so incompetent, unethical or even criminal that the state believes an attorney's license should be taken away." An additional 9.5% inmates, "have received a new trial or sentencing because their attorneys' incompetence rendered the verdict or sentence unfair, court records show" (Armstrong & Mills, 1999).

            Once an inmate is executed, nothing can be done to make amends if a mistake has been made. There is considerable evidence that many mistakes have been made in sentencing people to death. According to Michigan State University and Death Penalty Information Center, Since 1973 at least 88 people have been released from death row after evidence of their innocence emerged. During the same period of time, over 650 people have been executed. Thus for every seven people executed we have found one person on death row who never should have been convicted. If this keeps on going we are naively imposing the death penalty to innocent people based on inaccurate reasons.

            So from this entire data what have we found? We have found that capital punishment is against human rights plus the large influence which the legal representation has is unjust considering the lower income class, lastly there’s the issue of innocence. There is no credible evidence that capital punishment deters crime, so why support it?

                                     

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References :

- Filip, S. (2011, 04 06). Statistics on capital punishment. Retrieved from http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/statistics-on-capital-punishment/

- Michigan State University. , & Death Penalty Information Centre, (2000). Arguments for and against the death penalty. Retrieved from http://deathpenaltyinfo.msu.edu/

- Armstrong, K., & Mills, S. (1999, 11 15). Inept defenses cloud verdict. Chicago Tribune

- Inadequate legal representation. (2001, 08 14). Retrieved from http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=83

- H.Hersch, M. (1992, 04 24). Death penalty cannot be justified with arguments. The Tech. Retrieved from http://tech.mit.edu/V112/N22/hersch.22o.html