Recently, a friend of mine, known as The Psychonomist wrote
in his blog post, 5 Ways To Stop Population Growth, that euthanasia could, or maybe
even should be legalised. I’m not going to try and hide my view that we do in
fact need to do something about the size of the population of the Earth – see previous
blog posts and particularly Population Crisis – however in this post, I’m going
to try and focus on the ethical debate surrounding euthanasia.
Euthanasia is without doubt a controversial topic. Although,
many people support the legalisation of euthanasia - at
least to some extent – many more seem to be against it. At the present moment,
active euthanasia is only legal in the three Benelux countries (that is,
Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg), and assisted suicide is only legal in
Switzerland and three US states. For those that don’t know, active euthanasia
is, most commonly, the act of administering the drugs that will kill the
patient, whereas assisted suicide is just providing the drugs to the patient
for them to effectively commit suicide.
Personally, I don’t believe there should be any controversy
around the issue. If a patient has an incurable, painful disease, then they
should be allowed to end their own life and so assisted suicide should not be
considered a crime in my eyes. It is the patient that has made the decision,
and the patient that has committed the act, and it is senseless to force
someone to suffer, sometimes for years on end when they do not want to live any
longer.
Furthermore, if assisted suicide was legalised, then it only
makes sense for active euthanasia to be legalised. If the patient is going to
be given the drugs they need to take their own life, then the drugs may as well
be administered by a doctor who has the knowledge needed to make the process as
swift and as painless as possible. I would say that no doctor should be forced to
carry out this process if they view active euthanasia as homicide.
Much of the opposition to euthanasia comes on religious
grounds. I will focus on Christianity as this is the most familiar religion to
me, and as it is the largest religion in today’s world. Christian teaching, and
I believe also the teaching of the other Abrahamic religions, believe that
euthanasia is a crime against God and quote the ‘sanctity of life.’ As well as this,
suicide is seen as a sin in The Bible and so not even assisted suicide is
acceptable to the majority of Christians.
Now, to qualify as a Christian, one has to be hypocritical
and many seem to forget that The Bible, and Jesus, the saviour of all mankind, also
teach that we should do the most loving thing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I
can’t see how forcing someone to live through immense suffering when they have
suffered for too long already is a loving thing to do. In my opinion,
Christians have no right to stop non-Christians, or even other Christians who
do agree with euthanasia, from going through with it. It does not affect them
in any way, apart from the fact that Heaven may be a little less crowded if
euthanasia was legalised.
Therefore, I have to conclude that Euthanasia should be
legalised as everyone should be able to have their life, and its evil twin,
death in their own hands. If the first step is only legalising assisted
suicide, this is a step that I would fully support.
Note: the euthanasia I am discussing in this blog post is strictly
limited to voluntary euthanasia. I do not condone involuntary euthanasia in any
way at this present moment in time.
For more information on Euthanasia, see:
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