On the 29th of January 2007, Barbaro was euthanized when his owners and doctors concluded that he could not be saved. You’ve probably not heard about this, despite euthanasia being such a heated topic for discussion. If I were to give a guess, it would be because Barbaro was an animal; the horse who won the 2006 Kentucky Derby. It is not even a much debated issue when it comes to animals, because they are unable to directly communicate with humans. What about humans, then? Well, I personally believe that euthanasia should definitely not be legalised. Humans are destructive by nature, and the legalisation of such a controversial issue would create an avenue for deception and manipulation. I oppose the legalisation of euthanasia because it is unethical and impractical.
Euthanasia should not be legalised because of the various ethics that surround the issue. When something as final as euthanasia is legalised, it puts a value on lives, and in essence, results in the destruction of respect for life. Many religions, Christianity being one of which, believe that life is a gift from God, and should be respected as such. Another cause for concern should euthanasia be legalised, is that people might feel obliged to request for euthanasia even though it is not in their personal best interests. In the British Broadcasting Corporation’s website discussing euthanasia, some incidents where patients might request for euthanasia despite it not being in their best interests could be when the patient is feeling depressed and makes a hasty decision due to seeing things as worse than they actually are, when they are under pressure because they feel that they are a burden to others as well as when they are wrongly diagnosed to be “terminally ill”. People must never forget that euthanasia is an irreversible option. There is no undo button, and once it is decided, there is no way to change it. As far as we humans know, we only have one life to live, and I honestly believe that it should be treasured.
Euthanasia is also an impractical solution. It is impossible to properly regulate euthanasia. There is no way that you can create a specific set of rules and expect it to work faultlessly for something such as euthanasia. In fact, euthanasia regulations might possibly even be abused. No matter how many safeguards people can think of putting in place in order to regulate euthanasia, there will always be cases of involuntary euthanasia; people forced into assisted suicide for the sake, or so they are made to believe, of a “greater good”. It also comes back to the whole issue of euthanasia exposing vulnerable people to moral and financial pressures. Not everyone has stable finances, and when medical bills start piling up, with euthanasia available as an option, there will be people who feel that it would serve as a solution to their financial problems. In some cases, the family members of the patient could even be overbearing to the point where the patient is manipulated into believing that it would be morally right to die rather than to be a burden to the family. It’s easy enough to say that anyone who succumbs to this kind of pressure probably deserves to die anyway, but give it a moment and put yourself in their shoes. If you were suffering and yet wanted to fight for your life, while your family made it clear that you were nothing but an extra burden to them. With euthanasia available as an option in such a situation, it’s not so easy to simply ignore all the pressure.
Euthanasia must not be legalised. Apart from the religious and regulation arguments regarding euthanasia, I believe that people who are less strong-willed need to be protected as well. Especially in our society today, where manipulation, selfishness and money-mindedness is plentiful, legalising euthanasia could very well end up becoming abused as a license to murder.
References:
British Broadcasting Corporation. (2011). Anti-euthanasia arguments. BBC. Retrieved on 5th September 2011, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/against/against_1.shtml#h1.
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