Essay on Euthanasia
Euthanasia
is a topic so delicate it is often uncomfortable for majority of people to
discuss. It is usually a battle of moral and practical reasoning that commonly
lead to arguments anchored in one’s religious beliefs. It is a point of
argument that reflects people’s take on battling to live or backing down
graciously when they know that the fight is over due to incurable illness. As
they always say, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.”, but each opinion
however, should be upheld with strong position and firm perception. In this
case, my opinion would be for
euthanasia. Liberty for me is meaningless if an individual has no
self-determination – when one cannot enjoy the freedom to determine how and
when he is going to die at the point of too much suffering. Freedom is marked
by choices and the choices we make determine the life we want to lead and how
we want to end it. If freedom is suppressed, then we’ve got nothing but a life lived
in desperation. Desperation besets inhumane behaviour; it results to more
tragic means of coping just to prolong life; others may even resort to fraud
just to sustain medical needs. Desperation equates helplessness. When we think
about its horrid effects, it drives people to worst remedies just to alleviate
the adversity it entails. At the end, it’s all about the choices we make to
either fight to live or live just to wait for death.
Typically,
euthanasia is considered
to be a rejection of the importance and value of human life and often it is
frowned upon because people made their own determination that it is similar
with psychological suicide. The problem with this perception is overlooking the
practical and moral reasons of practising euthanasia. “Euthanasia must be supposed to be a good to the
person killed. But it is difficult to decide when death is better than life,
perhaps because we see a conceptual connection between life and good.”
(Foot, 2003) But isn’t it practical to
have euthanasia done when a person is terminally-ill, when that person himself
has determined he cannot take a single day more living in a pit just waiting
for his death and when he knows that he’d rather end his life fulfilled knowing
that until the end of it he had the freedom to choose which way to go? It is
said that the decision to have euthanasia done is supposed to be a good
to the person killed and morally, it
acceptable to have it done because we respect that person’s choice; we respect
his personal reasons and understand that is still up to him whether to submit
himself in a facility that would only inflict more depression and desperation
as he sees himself withering away from the real detectors of living a good
life. Another argument against euthanasia may set the idea that
it makes life disposable – that it could be the first step to give up on life easily
because all possible means are not exhausted. But must we forget to think that
fighting death sometimes just rely on scientific means, that is the magic of
medical procedures that people stay on oxygen tanks and tubes just to get
through a day? That it is really not God Who we believe to be giving life that
supports this kind of “life” we call? For me, all I can give is a single
question that I believe only oneself has the right to determine its equitable
answer: “Live on tanks and tubes struggling or make your own free choice to die
in peace?”
It may sound harsh, but as we know it, life’s reality bites
and I must say that the reality is: when we suffer terminal illness, we have to
accept it and just prepare for death to come knocking on our doors. If it is
our time to die, we will die; no argument in that. No matter how exceptional
doctors are, how advance technology is, how faithful a person is to his God, we
are all going to die – it’s just a matter of “when”. With euthanasia, a human
being is given the ultimate freedom to decide and when he has decided that his existence
had lost its meaning, nobody can judge that.
In a nutshell, life is about the choices people make.
This is called freewill and God gave us that. These choices give meaning to our
lives; give purpose to experiencing the gift of life. Life without meaning is
no “life” after all. It is with this meaning that we experience life, it is
with it that we see reason to live each day, it is with it that all people see
hope to prolong time on earth. In essence, when a terminally-ill person has
determined his existence lost its meaning, euthanasia is the best option to
take than insist on living a life out of desperation, suffering and depression.
Euthanasia, often called “mercy killing”, got its name to bring forth its
message of giving mercy to a person seeking help to alleviate the suffering he
no longer finds moral.
Reference:
Foot,
Philippa (2003). Virtues and Vices: and other essays in moral philosophy.
Retrieved May 19, 2013, from http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0199252866.001.0001/acprof-9780199252862-chapter-3
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