Euthanasia Should Be Legalized

Imagine a loved one slowly and excruciatingly dying before your eyes in an uncontrollable way. Knowing that all they want is for the pain and suffering to end and there is nothing you can do to help, you feel helpless. Euthanasia should be legal in the world we live in today. Euthanasia, otherwise known as mercy killing, is the practice of ending a life in order to release someone from a disease or from horrendous suffering. Under certain circumstances the use of euthanasia can be viewed as reasonable to some, but to others it is seen as murder and going against their religion. There are four types of euthanasia; voluntary, involuntary, direct, and indirect. For the past several decades, euthanasia has been a major issue. The debate over euthanasia was first brought to the public eye in 1988 with an article published in The New England Journal of Medicine about an experience in committing active euthanasia. The act of euthanasia is acceptable in only one nation in the world, the Netherlands. Even there it is permitted only under certain circumstances, and is well supervised by the legal system, and has yet to be fully legalized. Euthanasia should be legalized because it is a personal choice.

The controversy over euthanasia is extremely complex with many different views, mostly having to do with the people that are involved in performing the act such as doctors, the patient, and the loved ones of the patient. Many people, in the argument against euthanasia, say that if euthanasia were made legal the law would be abused. There are ideas that the insurance companies, for those in America, would pressure people to use euthanasia in a way to lessen medical costs. Another is that doctors would become lazy, and give up easily in saving someone's life, all together very valid points. More realistically, doctors would become more likely to hold a strong moral and ethical outlook on the use of euthanasia and be instructed in following a set of strict professional rules. The entire medical community would have to set guidelines for doctors of euthanasia to follow, which would ensure the safety of patients. It has become clear; however, that euthanasia still has many obstacles in its way before legalization. To this day, many physicians aid in the suicides of terminally ill patients by giving them the drugs necessary to commit the act on their own. The doctor would then list the patient as passing away under the terminal illness, rather than suicide. Although this is extremely unprofessional, the idea behind the act is good. Even though it can result in more pain for the patient and his or her loved ones it is still doing what the patient is asking.

It has been placed on doctors since the dawn of medicinal time that the doctor's place is as a healer, as the one to cure the patient. "A physician is supposed to help patients maintain or regain health and avoid suffering" (Leone 10). But the decision to live or die with the circumstance of an almost certain, or probably painful death should be decided by the person that is suffering, or will be suffering. The fact of the matter is that as a physician they